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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30421 ***
+
+HANDBOOKS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
+
+EDITED BY PROFESSOR HALES.
+
+_Crown 8vo, 5s. net each._
+
+
+THE AGE OF ALFRED (664-1154). By F. J. SNELL, M.A.
+
+THE AGE OF CHAUCER (1346-1400). By F. J. SNELL, M.A. With an
+    Introduction by Professor HALES. _3rd Edition, revised._
+
+THE AGE OF TRANSITION (1400-1580). By F. J. SNELL, M.A. 2 vols. Vol. I.
+    The Poets. Vol. II. The Dramatists and Prose Writers. With an
+    Introduction by Professor HALES. _3rd Edition._
+
+THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE (1579-1631). By THOMAS SECCOMBE and J. W. ALLEN.
+    With an Introduction by Professor HALES. 2 vols. Vol. I. Poetry and
+    Prose. Vol. II. The Drama. _8th Edition, revised._
+
+THE AGE OF MILTON (1632-1660). By the Rev. J. H. B. MASTERMAN, M.A. With
+    Introduction, etc., by J. BASS MULLINGER, M.A. _8th Edition,
+    revised._
+
+THE AGE OF DRYDEN (1660-1700). By R. GARNETT, C.B., LL.D. _8th Edition._
+
+THE AGE OF POPE (1700-1748). By JOHN DENNIS. _11th Edition._
+
+THE AGE OF JOHNSON (1748-1798). By THOMAS SECCOMBE. _7th Edition,
+    revised._
+
+THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH (1698-1832) By Professor C. H. HERFORD, Litt.D.
+    _12th Edition._
+
+THE AGE OF TENNYSON (1830-1870). By Professor HUGH WALKER. _9th
+    Edition._
+
+LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
+
+
+
+
+HANDBOOKS
+
+OF
+
+ENGLISH LITERATURE
+
+EDITED BY PROFESSOR HALES
+
+THE AGE OF POPE
+
+
+
+
+LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS LTD.
+
+PORTUGAL STREET, KINGSWAY, W.C.
+
+CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL & CO.
+
+NEW YORK: HARCOURT BRACE & CO.
+
+BOMBAY: A. H. WHEELER & CO.
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+AGE OF POPE
+
+(1700-1744)
+
+BY
+
+JOHN DENNIS
+
+AUTHOR OF "STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE" ETC.
+
+_ELEVENTH EDITION_
+
+[Illustration]
+
+LONDON
+G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
+1921
+
+
+
+
+First Published, 1894.
+
+Reprinted, 1896, 1899, 1901, 1906, 1908, 1909,
+           1913, 1917, 1918, 1921.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The _Age of Pope_ is designed to form one of a series of Handbooks,
+edited by Professor Hales, which it is hoped will be of service to
+students who love literature for its own sake, instead of regarding it
+merely as a branch of knowledge required by examiners. The period
+covered by this volume, which has had the great advantage of Professor
+Hales's personal care and revision, may be described roughly as lying
+between 1700, the year in which Dryden died, and 1744, the date of
+Pope's death.
+
+I believe that no work of the class will be of real value which gives
+what may be called literary statistics, and has nothing more to offer.
+Historical facts and figures have their uses, and are, indeed,
+indispensable; but it is possible to gain the most accurate knowledge of
+a literary period and to be totally unimpressed by the influences which
+a love of literature inspires. The first object of a guide is to give
+accurate information; his second and larger object is to direct the
+reader's steps through a country exhaustless in variety and interest. If
+once a passion be awakened for the study of our noble literature the
+student will learn to reject what is meretricious, and will turn
+instinctively to what is worthiest. In the pursuit he may leave his
+guide far behind him; but none the less will he be grateful to the
+pioneer who started him on his travels.
+
+If the _Age of Pope_ proves of help in this way the wishes of the writer
+will be satisfied. It has been my endeavour in all cases to acknowledge
+the debt I owe to the authors who have made this period their study; but
+it is possible that a familiar acquaintance with their writings may have
+led me occasionally to mistake the matter thus assimilated for original
+criticism. If, therefore--to quote the phrase of Pope's enemy and my
+namesake--I have sometimes borrowed another man's 'thunder,' the fault
+of having 'made a sinner of my memory' may prove the reader's gain, and
+will, I hope, be forgiven.
+
+J. D.
+
+HAMPSTEAD,
+_August, 1894_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+INTRODUCTION                                                          1
+
+
+                          PART I. THE POETS.
+
+CHAP.
+
+  I. ALEXANDER POPE                                                  27
+
+ II. MATTHEW PRIOR--JOHN GAY--EDWARD YOUNG--ROBERT BLAIR--JAMES
+     THOMSON                                                         65
+
+III. SIR SAMUEL GARTH--AMBROSE PHILIPS--JOHN PHILIPS--NICHOLAS
+     ROWE--AARON HILL--THOMAS PARNELL--THOMAS TICKELL--WILLIAM
+     SOMERVILLE--JOHN DYER--WILLIAM SHENSTONE--MARK AKENSIDE--DAVID
+     MALLET--SCOTTISH SONG-WRITERS                                   96
+
+
+                      PART II. THE PROSE WRITERS.
+
+ IV. JOSEPH ADDISON--SIR RICHARD STEELE                             125
+
+  V. JONATHAN SWIFT--JOHN ARBUTHNOT                                 151
+
+ VI. DANIEL DEFOE--JOHN DENNIS--COLLEY CIBBER--LADY MARY WORTLEY
+     MONTAGU--EARL OF CHESTERFIELD--LORD LYTTELTON--JOSEPH SPENCE   180
+
+VII. FRANCIS ATTERBURY--LORD SHAFTESBURY--BERNARD DE
+     MANDEVILLE--LORD BOLINGBROKE--GEORGE BERKELEY--WILLIAM
+     LAW--JOSEPH BUTLER--WILLIAM WARBURTON                          207
+
+INDEX OF MINOR POETS AND PROSE WRITERS                              242
+
+CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE                                                 249
+
+ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WRITERS                                        253
+
+INDEX                                                               255
+
+
+
+
+THE AGE OF POPE.
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+I.
+
+The death of John Dryden, on the first of May, 1700, closed a period of
+no small significance in the history of English literature. His faults
+were many, both as a man and as a poet, but he belongs to the race of
+the giants, and the impress of greatness is stamped upon his works. No
+student of Dryden can fail to mark the force and sweep of an intellect
+impatient of restraint. His 'long-resounding march' reminds us of a
+turbulent river that overflows its banks, and if order and perfection of
+art are sometimes wanting in his verse, there is never the lack of
+power. Unfortunately many of the best years of his life were devoted to
+a craft in which he was working against the grain. His dramas, with one
+or two noble exceptions, are comparative failures, and in them he too
+often
+
+    'Profaned the God-given strength, and marred the lofty line.'
+
+In two prominent respects his influence on his successors is of no
+slight significance. As a satirist Pope acknowledged the master he was
+unable to excel, and so did many of the eighteenth century versemen, who
+appear to have looked upon satire as the beginning and the end of
+poetry. Moreover Dryden may be regarded, without much exaggeration, as
+the father of modern prose. Nothing can be more lucid than his style,
+which is at once bright and strong, idiomatic and direct. He knows
+precisely what he has to say, and says it in the simplest words. It is
+the form and not the substance of Dryden's prose to which attention is
+drawn here. There is a splendour of imagery, a largeness of thought, and
+a grasp of language in the prose of Hooker, of Jeremy Taylor, and of
+Milton which is beyond the reach of Dryden, but he has the merit of
+using a simple form of English free from prolonged periods and classical
+constructions, and fitted therefore for common use. The wealthy baggage
+of the prose Elizabethans and their immediate successors was too
+cumbersome for ordinary travel; Dryden's riches are less massive, but
+they can be easily carried, and are always ready for service.
+
+In these respects he is the literary herald of a century which, in the
+earlier half at least, is remarkable in the use it makes of our mother
+tongue for the exercise of common sense. The Revolution of 1688 produced
+a change in English politics scarcely more remarkable than the change
+that took place a little later in English literature and is to be seen
+in the poets and wits who are known familiarly as the Queen Anne men. It
+will be obvious to the most superficial student that the gulf which
+separates the literary period, closing with the death of Milton in 1674,
+from the first half of the eighteenth century, is infinitely wider than
+that which divides us from the splendid band of poets and prose writers
+who made the first twenty years of the present century so famous. There
+is, for example, scarcely more than fifty years between the publication
+of Herrick's _Hesperides_ and of Addison's _Campaign_, between the _Holy
+Living_ of Taylor and the _Tatler_ of Steele, and less than fifty years
+between _Samson Agonistes_, which Bishop Atterbury asked Pope to polish,
+and the poems of Prior. Yet in that short space not only is the form of
+verse changed but also the spirit.
+
+Speaking broadly, and allowing for exceptions, the literary merits of
+the Queen Anne time are due to invention, fancy, and wit, to a genius
+for satire exhibited in verse and prose, to a regard for correctness of
+form and to the sensitive avoidance of extremes. The poets of the period
+are for the most part without enthusiasm, without passion, and without
+the 'fine madness' which, as Drayton says, should possess a poet's
+brain. Wit takes precedence of imagination, nature is concealed by
+artifice, and the delight afforded by these writers is not due to
+imaginative sensibility. Not even in the consummate genius of Pope is
+there aught of the magical charm which fascinates us in a Wordsworth and
+a Keats, in a Coleridge and a Shelley. The prose of the age, masterly
+though it be, stands also on a comparatively low level. There is much in
+it to attract, but little to inspire.
+
+The difference between the Elizabethan and Jacobean authors, and the
+authors of the Queen Anne period cannot be accounted for by any single
+cause. The student will observe that while the inspiration is less, the
+technical skill is greater. There are passages in Addison which no
+seventeenth century author could have written; there are couplets in
+Pope beyond the reach of Cowley, and that even Dryden could not rival.
+In these respects the eighteenth century was indebted to the growing
+influence of French literature, to which the taste of Charles II. had in
+some degree contributed. One notable expression of this taste may be
+seen in the tragedies in rhyme that were for a time in vogue, of which
+the plots were borrowed from French romances. These colossal fictions,
+stupendous in length and heroic in style, delighted the young English
+ladies of the seventeenth century, and were not out of favour in the
+eighteenth, for Pope gave a copy of the _Grand Cyrus_ to Martha Blount.
+
+The return, as in Addison's _Cato_, to the classical unities, so
+faithfully preserved in the French drama, was another indication of an
+influence from which our literature has never been wholly free. That
+importations so alien to the spirit of English poetry should tend to the
+degeneration of the national drama was inevitable. For a time, however,
+the study of French models, both in the drama and in other departments
+of literature, may have been productive of benefit. Frenchmen knew
+before we did, how to say what they wanted to say in a lucid style.
+Dryden, who was open to every kind of influence, bad as well as good,
+caught a little of their fine tact and consummate workmanship without
+lessening his own originality; so also did Pope, who, if he was
+considerably indebted to Boileau, infinitely excelled him. That, in M.
+Taine's judgment, would have been no great difficulty. 'In Boileau,' he
+writes, 'there are, as a rule, two kinds of verse, as was said by a man
+of wit (M. Guillaume Guizot); most of which seem to be those of a sharp
+school-boy in the third class; the rest those of a good school-boy in
+the upper division.' And Mr. Swinburne, who holds a similar opinion of
+the famous French critic's merit, observes, that while Pope is the
+finest, Boileau is 'the dullest craftsman of their age and school.'[1]
+
+With the author of the _Lutrin_ Addison, unlike Pope, was personally
+acquainted. Boileau praised his Latin verses, and although his range was
+limited, like that of all critics lacking imagination, Addison, then a
+comparatively youthful scholar, was no doubt flattered by his
+compliments and learnt some lessons in his school. Prior, who acquired a
+mastery of the language, was also sensitive to French influence, and
+shows how it affected him by irony and satire. It would be difficult to
+estimate with any measure of accuracy the effect of French literature on
+the Queen Anne authors. There is no question that they were considerably
+attracted by it, but its sway was, I think, never strong enough to
+produce mere imitative art. While the most illustrious of these men
+acknowledged some measure of fealty to our 'sweet enemy France,' they
+were not enslaved by her, and French literature was but one of several
+influences which affected the literary character of the age. If
+Englishmen owed a debt to France the obligation was reciprocal. Voltaire
+affords a prominent illustration of the power wielded by our literature.
+He imitated Addison, he imitated, or caught suggestions from Swift, he
+borrowed largely from Vanbrugh, and although, in his judgment of English
+authors, he made many critical blunders, they were due to a want of
+taste rather than to a want of knowledge.
+
+A striking contrast will be seen between the position of literary men in
+the reign of Queen Anne and under her Hanoverian successors. Literature
+was not thriving in the healthiest of ways in the earlier period, but
+from the commercial point of view it was singularly prosperous. Through
+its means men like Addison and Prior rose to some of the highest offices
+in the service of their country. Tickell became Under-Secretary of
+State. Steele held three or four official posts, and if he did not
+prosper like some men of less mark, had no one but himself to blame.
+Rowe, the author of the _Fair Penitent_, was for three years of Anne's
+reign Under-Secretary, and John Hughes, the friend of Addison, who is
+poet enough to have had his story told by Johnson, had 'a situation of
+great profit' as Secretary to the Commissions of the Peace. Prizes of
+greater or less value fell to some men whose abilities were not more
+than respectable, but under Walpole and the monarch whom he served
+literature was disregarded, and the Minister was content to make use of
+hireling writers for whatever dirty work he required; spending in this
+way, it is said, £50,000 in ten years.
+
+It was far better in the long run for men of letters to be free from the
+servility of patronage, but there was a wearisome time, as Johnson and
+Goldsmith knew to their cost, during which authors lost their freedom in
+another way, and became the slaves of the booksellers. It is pleasant to
+observe that the last noteworthy act of patronage in the century was one
+that did honour to the patron without lessening the dignity and
+independence of the recipient. Literature owes much to the noblest of
+political philosophers for discovering and fostering the genius of one
+of the most original of English poets, and every reader of Crabbe will
+do honour to the generous friendship of Edmund Burke.
+
+
+II.
+
+The lowest stage in our national history was reached in the Restoration
+period. The idealists, who had aimed at marks it was not given to man to
+reach, were superseded by men with no ideal, whether in politics or
+religion. The extreme rigidity in morals enjoined by State authority in
+Cromwell's days, when theological pedantry discovered sin in what had
+hitherto been regarded as innocent, led, among the unsaintly mass of
+the people, to a hypocrisy even more corrupting than open vice, and the
+advent of the most publicly dissolute of English kings opened the
+floodgates of iniquity. The unbridled vice of the time is displayed in
+the Restoration dramatists, in the Grammont memoirs, in the diary of
+Pepys, and also in that of the admirable John Evelyn, 'faithful among
+the faithless.' Charles II. was considered good-natured because his
+manners, unlike those of his father, were sociable, and unrestrained by
+Court etiquette. Londoners liked a monarch who fed ducks in St. James's
+Park before breakfast; but an easy temper did not prevent the king from
+sanctioning the most unjust and cruel laws, and it allowed him to sell
+Dunkirk and basely to accept a pension from France. The corruption of
+the age pervaded politics as well as society, and the self-sacrificing
+spirit which is the salt of a nation's life seemed for the time extinct
+among public men.
+
+When Dutch men-of-war appeared at the Nore the confusion was great, but
+there were few resources and few signs of energy in the men to whom the
+people looked for guidance. A man conversant with affairs expressed to
+Pepys his opinion that nothing could be done with 'a lazy Prince, no
+Council, no money, no reputation at home or abroad,' and Pepys also
+gives the damning statement which is in harmony with all we know of the
+king, that he 'took ten times more care and pains in making friends
+between my Lady Castlemaine and Mrs. Stewart, when they have fallen out,
+than ever he did to save his kingdom.'
+
+There was nothing in the brief reign of James, a reign for ever made
+infamous by the atrocious cruelty of Jeffreys, that calls for comment
+here, but the Revolution, despite the undoubted advantages it brought
+with it, among which must be mentioned the abolition of the censorship
+of the press, brought also an element of discord and of political
+degradation. The change was a good one for the country, but it caused a
+large number of influential men to renounce on oath opinions which they
+secretly held, and it led, as every reader of history knows, to an
+unparalleled amount of double-dealing on the part of statesmen, which
+began with the accession of William and Mary and did not end until the
+last hopes of the Jacobites were defeated in 1746. The loss of principle
+among statesmen, and the bitterness of faction, which seemed to increase
+in proportion as the patriotic spirit declined, had a baleful influence
+on the latter days of the seventeenth century and on the entire period
+covered by the age of Pope. The low tone of the age is to be seen in the
+almost universal corruption which prevailed, in the scandalous
+tergiversation of Bolingbroke, and in the contempt for political
+principle openly avowed by Walpole, who, as Mr. Lecky observes, 'was
+altogether incapable of appreciating as an element of political
+calculation the force which moral sentiments exercise upon mankind.'[2]
+
+The enthusiasm and strong passions of the first half of the seventeenth
+century, which had been crushed by the Restoration, were exchanged for a
+state of apathy that led to self-seeking in politics and to scepticism
+in religion. There was a strong profession of morality in words, but in
+conduct the most open immorality prevailed. Virtue was commended in the
+bulk of the churches, while Christianity, which gives a new life and aim
+to virtue, was practically ignored, and the principles of the Deists,
+whose opinions occupied much attention at the time, were scarcely more
+alien to the Christian revelation than the views often advocated in the
+national pulpits. The religion of Christ seems to have been regarded as
+little more than a useful kind of cement which held society together.
+The good sense advocated so constantly by Pope in poetry was also
+considered the principal requisite in the pulpit, and the careful
+avoidance of religious emotion in the earlier years of the century led
+to the fervid and too often ill-regulated enthusiasm that prevailed in
+the days of Whitefield and Wesley. At the same time there appears to
+have been no lack of religious controversy. 'The Church in danger' was a
+strong cry then, as it is still. The enormous excitement caused in 1709
+by Sacheverell's sermon in St. Paul's Cathedral advocating passive
+obedience, denouncing toleration, and aspersing the Revolution
+settlement, forms a striking chapter in the reign of Queen Anne.
+Extraordinary interest was also felt in the Bangorian controversy raised
+by Bishop Hoadly, who, in a sermon preached before the king (1717), took
+a latitudinarian view of episcopal authority, and objected to the entire
+system of the High Church party.
+
+Queen Caroline, whose keen intellect was allied to a coarseness which
+makes her a representative of the age, was considerably attracted by
+theological discussion. She obtained a bishopric for Berkeley,
+recommended Walpole to read Butler's _Analogy_, which was at one time
+her daily companion at the breakfast-table, and made the preferment of
+its author one of her last requests to the king. She liked well to
+reason with Dr. Samuel Clarke, 'of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and
+Fate,' and wished to make him Archbishop of Canterbury, but was told
+that he was not sufficiently orthodox. Theology was not disregarded
+under the first and second Georges; it was only religion that had fallen
+into disrepute. The law itself was calculated to excite contempt for the
+most solemn of religious services. 'I was early,' Swift writes to
+Stella, 'with the Secretary (Bolingbroke), but he was gone to his
+devotions and to receive the sacrament. Several rakes did the same. It
+was not for piety, but for employment, according to Act of Parliament.'
+
+A glance at some additional features in the social condition of the age
+will enable us to understand better the character of its literature.
+
+
+III.
+
+It is a platitude to say that authors are as much affected as other men
+by the atmosphere which they breathe. Now and then a consummate man of
+genius seems to stand so much above his age as for all high purposes of
+art to be untouched by it. Like Milton as a poet, though not as a prose
+writer, his 'soul is like a star and dwells apart;' but in general,
+imaginative writers, are intensely affected by the society from which
+they draw many of their intellectual resources. In the so-called
+'Augustan age'[3] this influence would have been felt more strongly than
+in ours, since the range of men of letters was generally restricted to
+what was called the Town. They wrote for the critics in the
+coffee-houses, for the noblemen from whom they expected patronage, and
+for the political party they were pledged to support.
+
+England during the first half of the eighteenth century was in many
+respects uncivilized. London was at that time separated from the country
+by roads that were often impassable and always dangerous. Travellers had
+to protect themselves as they best could from the attacks of highwaymen,
+who infested every thoroughfare leading from the metropolis, while the
+narrow area of the city was guarded by watchmen scarcely better fitted
+for its protection than Dogberry and Verges. Readers of the _Spectator_
+will remember how when Sir Roger de Coverley went to the play, his
+servants 'provided themselves with good oaken plants' to protect their
+master from the Mohocks, a set of dissolute young men, who, for sheer
+amusement, inflicted the most terrible punishments on their victims.
+Swift tells Stella how he came home early from his walk in the Park to
+avoid 'a race of rakes that play the devil about this town every night,
+and slit people's noses,' and he adds, as if party were at the root of
+every mischief in the country, that they were all Whigs. 'Who has not
+trembled at the Mohock's name?' is Gay's exclamation in his _Trivia_;
+and in that curious poem he also warns the citizens not to venture
+across Lincoln's Inn Fields in the evening. Colley Cibber's brazen-faced
+daughter, Mrs. Charke, in the _Narrative_ of her life, describes also
+with sufficient precision the dangers of London after dark.
+
+The infliction of personal injury was not confined to the desperadoes of
+the streets. Men of letters were in danger of chastisement from the
+poets or politicians whom they criticised or vilified. De Foe often
+mentions attempts upon his person. Pope, too, was threatened with a rod
+by Ambrose Philips, which was hung up for his chastisement in Button's
+Coffee-house; and at a later period, when his satires had stirred up a
+nest of hornets, the poet was in the habit of carrying pistols, and
+taking a large dog for his companion when walking out at Twickenham.
+
+Weddings within the liberties of the Fleet by sham clergymen, or
+clergymen confined for debt, were the source of numberless evils. Every
+kind of deception was practised, and the victims once in the clutches of
+their reverend captors had to pay heavily for the illegal ceremony.
+Ladies were trepanned into matrimony, and Smollett in his _History_
+observes, that the Fleet parsons encouraged every kind of villainy. It
+is astonishing that so great an evil in the heart of London should have
+been allowed to exist so long, and it was not until the Marriage Act of
+Lord Hardwicke in 1753, which required the publication of banns, that
+the Fleet marriages ceased. On the day before the Act came into
+operation three hundred marriages are said to have taken place.[4]
+
+Marriages of a more lawful kind were generally conducted on business
+principles. Young women were expected to accept the husband selected for
+them by their parents or guardians, and the main object considered was
+to gain a good settlement. It was for this that Mary Granville, who is
+better known as Mrs. Delany, was sacrificed at seventeen to a gouty old
+man of sixty, and when he died she was expected to marry again with the
+same object in view. Mrs. Delany detested, with good cause, the
+commercial estimate of matrimony. Writing, in 1739, to Lady
+Throckmorton, she says, 'Miss Campbell is to be married to-morrow to my
+Lord Bruce. Her father can give her no fortune; she is very pretty,
+modest, well-behaved, and just eighteen, has two thousand a year
+jointure, and four hundred pin-money; _they say_ he is cross, covetous,
+and threescore years old, and this unsuitable match is the _admiration
+of the old and the envy of the young_! For my part I _pity her_, for if
+she has any notion of social pleasures that arise from true esteem and
+sensible conversation, how miserable must she be.'[5]
+
+Girls dowered with beauty or with fortune were not always suffered to
+marry in this humdrum fashion. Abduction was by no means an imaginary
+peril. Mrs. Delany tells the story of a lady in Ireland, from whom she
+received the relation, who was entrapped in her uncle's house, carried
+off by four men in masks, and treated in the most brutal manner. And in
+1711 the Duke of Newcastle, having become acquainted with a design for
+carrying off his daughter by force, was compelled to ask for a guard of
+dragoons.
+
+Duelling, against which Steele, De Foe, and Fielding inveighed with
+courage and good sense, was a danger to which every gentleman was liable
+who wore a sword. Bullies were ready to provoke a quarrel, the slightest
+cause of offence was magnified into an affair of honour, and the lives
+of several of the most distinguished men of the century were imperilled
+in this way. 'A gentleman,' Lord Chesterfield writes, 'is every man who,
+with a tolerable suit of clothes, a sword by his side, and a watch and
+snuffbox in his pockets, asserts himself to be a gentleman, swears with
+energy that he will be treated as such, and that he will cut the throat
+of any man who presumes to say the contrary.'
+
+The foolish and evil custom died out slowly in this kingdom. Even a
+great moralist like Dr. Johnson had something to say in its defence, and
+Sir Walter Scott, who might well have laughed to scorn any imputation of
+cowardice, was prepared to accept a challenge in his old age for a
+statement he had made in his _Life of Napoleon_.
+
+Ladies had a different but equally doubtful mode of asserting their
+gentility. On one occasion the Duchess of Marlborough called on a lawyer
+without leaving her name. 'I could not make out who she was,' said the
+clerk afterwards, 'but she swore so dreadfully that she must be a lady
+of quality.'
+
+There was a fashion which our wits followed at this time that was not
+of English growth, namely, the tone of gallantry in which they addressed
+ladies, no matter whether single or married. Their compliments seemed
+like downright love-making, and that frequently of a coarse kind, but
+such expressions meant nothing, and were understood to be a mere
+exercise of skill. Pope used them in writing to Judith Cowper, whom he
+professes to worship as much as any female saint in heaven; and in much
+ampler measure when addressing Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, but neither
+lady would have taken this amatory politeness seriously. Thus he writes
+after an evening spent in Lady Mary's society: 'Books have lost their
+effect upon me; and I was convinced since I saw you, that there is
+something more powerful than philosophy, and since I heard you, that
+there is one alive wiser than all the sages.' He tells her that he hates
+all other women for her sake; that none but her guardian angels can have
+her more constantly in mind; and that the sun has more reason to be
+proud of raising her spirits 'than of raising all the plants and
+ripening all the minerals in the earth.' He will fly to her in Italy at
+the least notice and 'from thence,' he adds, 'how far you might draw me
+and I might run after you, I no more know than the spouse in the song of
+Solomon.'
+
+This was the foible of an age in which women were addressed as though
+they were totally devoid of understanding; and Pope, as might have been
+expected, carried the folly to excess.
+
+Against another French custom Addison protests in the _Spectator_,
+namely, that of women of rank receiving gentlemen visitors in their
+bedrooms. He objects also to other foreign habits introduced by
+'travelled ladies,' and fears that the peace, however much to be
+desired, may cause the importation of a number of French fopperies. But
+the proneness to follow the lead of France in matters of fashion is a
+folly not confined to the belles and beaux of the last century.
+
+If a chivalric regard for women be an indication of high civilization,
+that sign is but faintly visible in the reigns of Anne and of the first
+Georges. Sir Richard Steele paid a noble tribute to Lady Elizabeth
+Hastings when he said that to know her was a liberal education, but his
+contemporaries usually treat women as pretty triflers, better fitted to
+amuse men than to elevate them. Young takes this view in his _Satires_:
+
+    'Ladies supreme among amusements reign;
+    By nature born to soothe and entertain.
+    Their prudence in a share of folly lies;
+    Why will they be so weak as to be wise?'
+
+and Chesterfield, writing to his son, treats women with similar
+contempt.... 'A man of sense,' he says, 'only trifles with them, plays
+with them, humours and flatters them as he does with a sprightly,
+forward child; but he neither consults them about, nor trusts them with,
+serious matters, though he often makes them believe that he does both,
+which is the thing in the world that they are proud of.... No flattery
+is either too high or too low for them. They will greedily swallow the
+highest and gratefully accept of the lowest.'
+
+Nearly twenty years passed, and then Chesterfield wrote in the same
+contemptuous way of women in a letter to his godson, a 'dear little boy'
+of ten.
+
+'In company every woman is every man's superior, and must be addressed
+with respect, nay, more, with flattery, and you need not fear making it
+too strong ... it will be greedily swallowed.'
+
+Even Addison, while trying to instruct the 'Fair Sex' as he likes to
+call them, apparently regarded its members as an inferior order of
+beings. He delights to dwell upon their foibles, on their dress, and on
+the thousand little artifices practised by the flirt and the coquette.
+Here is the view the Queen Anne moralist takes of the 'female world' he
+was so eager to improve:
+
+'I have often thought there has not been sufficient pains in finding out
+proper employments and diversions for the fair ones. Their amusements
+seem contrived for them, rather as they are women, than as they are
+reasonable creatures; and are more adapted to the sex than to the
+species. The toilet is their great scene of business, and the right
+adjustment of their hair the principal employment of their lives. The
+sorting of a suit of ribands is considered a very good morning's work;
+and if they make an excursion to a mercer's or a toy-shop, so great a
+fatigue makes them unfit for anything else all the day after. Their more
+serious occupations are sewing and embroidery, and their greatest
+drudgery the preparations of jellies and sweetmeats. This I say is the
+state of ordinary women; though I know there are multitudes of those
+that move in an exalted sphere of knowledge and virtue, that join all
+the beauties of the mind to the ornaments of dress, and inspire a kind
+of awe and respect as well as of love into their male beholders.'
+
+The qualification made at the end of this description does not greatly
+lessen the significance of the earlier portion, which is Addison's
+picture, as he is careful to tell us of 'ordinary women.' Much must be
+allowed for the exaggeration of a humourist, but the frivolity of women
+is a theme upon which Addison harps continually. Indeed, were it not for
+this weakness in the 'feminine world' half his vocation as a moralist in
+the _Spectator_ would be gone, and if the general estimate in his Essays
+of the women with whom he was acquainted be to any extent a correct one,
+the derogatory language used by men of letters, and especially by
+Swift, Prior, Pope, and Chesterfield may be almost forgiven.
+
+It was the aim of Addison and Steele to represent, and in some degree to
+caricature, the follies of fashionable life in the Town. That life had
+also its vices, which, if less unblushingly displayed than under the
+'merry Monarch,' were visible enough. 'In the eighteenth century,' says
+Victor Hugo, in his epigrammatic way, 'the wife bolts out her husband.
+She shuts herself up in Eden with Satan. Adam is left outside.'
+
+Drunkenness was a habit familiar to the fine gentlemen of the town and
+to men occupying the highest position in the State. Harley went more
+than once into the queen's presence in a half-intoxicated condition;
+Carteret when Secretary of State, if Horace Walpole may be credited, was
+never sober; Bolingbroke, who practised every vice, is said to have been
+a 'four-bottle man;' and Swift found it perilous to dine with Ministers
+on account of the wine which circulated at their tables. 'Prince
+Eugene,' he writes, 'dines with the Secretary to-day with about seven or
+eight general officers or foreign Ministers. They will be all drunk I am
+sure.' Pope's frail body could not tolerate excess, and he is said to
+have hastened his end by good living. His friend Fenton 'died of a great
+chair and two bottles of port a day.' Parnell, who seems to have been in
+many respects a man of high character, is said to have shortened his
+life by intemperance; and Gay, who was cossetted like a favourite lapdog
+by the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, died from indolence and good
+living.
+
+It may be questioned whether there is a single Wit of the age who did
+not love port too well, like Addison and Fenton, or suffer from
+'carnivoracity' like Arbuthnot. Every section of English society was
+infected with the 'devil drunkenness,' and the passion for gin created
+by the encouragement of home distilleries produced a state of crime,
+misery, and disease in London and in the country which excited public
+attention. 'Small as is the place,' writes Mr. Lecky, 'which this fact
+occupies in English history, it was probably, if we consider all the
+consequences that have flowed from it, the most momentous in that of the
+eighteenth century--incomparably more so than any event in the purely
+political or military annals of the country.'[6]
+
+The cruelty of the age is seen in a contempt for the feelings of others,
+in the brutal punishments inflicted, in the amusements then popular, and
+in a general contempt for human suffering. Public executions were so
+frequent that they were disregarded; and criminals of any note, like Dr.
+Dodd, were exhibited in their cells for the gaolers' benefit prior to
+execution; mad people in Bedlam, chained in their cells, also formed one
+of the sights of London. As late as 1735 men were pressed to death who
+refused to plead on a capital charge; and women were publicly flogged,
+and were also burnt at the stake by a law that was not repealed until
+1794. Of the heads on Temple Bar, daily exposed to Johnson's eyes in his
+beloved Fleet Street, we are reminded by an apposite quotation of
+Goldsmith; and Samuel Rogers, the banker-poet, who died as recently as
+1855, remembered having seen one there in his childhood. The public
+exhibition of offenders in the pillory was not calculated to refine the
+manners of the people. It afforded a cruel entertainment to the mob, who
+may be said to have baited these poor victims as they were accustomed to
+bait bulls and bears. Every kind of offensive missile was thrown at
+them, and sometimes the strokes proved deadly.
+
+Men who could thus torture a human being were not likely to abstain
+from cruelty to the lower animals. The poets indeed protested then, as
+poets had done before, and always have done since, against the unmanly
+treatment of the dumb fellow-creatures committed to our care, but their
+voices were little heeded, and even the Prince of Wales visited
+Hockley-in-the-Hole, in disguise, to witness the torturing of bulls.
+'The gladiatorian and other sanguinary sports,' says the author of the
+_Characteristics_, 'which we allow our people, discover sufficiently our
+national taste. And the baitings and slaughters of so many sorts of
+creatures, tame as well as wild, for diversion merely, may witness the
+extraordinary inclination we have for amphitheatrical spectacles.'[7]
+
+The majesty of the law was maintained by disembowelling traitors, by
+cutting off the ears, or branding the cheeks of political offenders, and
+by the penalties inflicted on Roman Catholics, and on Protestant
+dissenters. Men who deemed themselves honourable gained power through
+bribery and intrigue. It was through a king's mistress and a heavy bribe
+that Bolingbroke was enabled to return from exile; Chesterfield
+intrigued against Newcastle with the Duchess of Yarmouth; and clergymen
+eager for promotion had no scruple in paying court to women who had lost
+their virtue.
+
+Never, unless perhaps during the Civil War, was the spirit of party more
+rampant in the country. Patriotism was a virtue more talked about than
+felt, and in the cause of faction private characters were assailed and
+libels circulated through the press. Addison, who did more than any
+other writer to humanize his age, saw the evil of the time and struck a
+blow at it with his inimitable humour. The _Spectator_ discovers, on his
+journey to Sir Roger de Coverley's house, that the knight's Toryism
+grew with the miles that separated him from London:
+
+'In all our journey from London to his house we did not so much as bait
+at a Whig inn; or if by chance the coachman stopped at a wrong place,
+one of Sir Roger's servants would ride up to his master full speed, and
+whisper to him that the master of the house was against such an one in
+the last election. This often betrayed us into hard beds and bad cheer;
+for we were not so inquisitive about the inn as the innkeeper; and
+provided our landlord's principles were sound did not take any notice of
+the staleness of his provisions. This I found still the more
+inconvenient, because the better the host was, the worse generally were
+his accommodations; the fellow knowing very well that those who were his
+friends would take up with coarse diet and hard lodging. For these
+reasons, all the while I was upon the road, I dreaded entering into an
+house of anyone that Sir Roger had applauded for an honest man.'[8]
+
+Against the party zeal of female politicians Addison indulges frequently
+in humorous sallies. He assures them that it gives an ill-natured cast
+to the eye, and flushes the cheeks worse than brandy. Party rage, he
+says, is a male vice, and is altogether repugnant 'to the softness, the
+modesty, and those other endearing qualities which are natural to the
+fair sex.'
+
+'When I have seen a pretty mouth uttering calumnies and invectives, what
+would I not have given to have stopt it? how have I been troubled to see
+some of the finest features in the world grow pale and tremble with
+party rage. Camilla is one of the greatest beauties in the British
+nation, and yet values herself more upon being the virago of one party
+than upon being the toast of both. The dear creature about a week ago
+encountered the fierce and beautiful Penthesilea across a tea-table; but
+in the height of her anger, as her hand chanced to shake with the
+earnestness of the dispute, she scalded her fingers, and spilt a dish of
+tea upon her petticoat. Had not this accident broke off the debate,
+nobody knows where it would have ended.'
+
+The coffee-houses in which men aired their wit and discussed the news of
+the day were wholly dominated by party. 'A Whig,' says De Foe, 'will no
+more go to the Cocoa Tree or Ozinda's than a Tory will be seen at the
+coffee-house of St. James's.' Swift declared that the Whig and Tory
+animosity infected even the dogs and cats. It was inevitable that it
+should also infect literature. Books were seldom judged on their merits,
+the praise or blame being generally awarded according to the political
+principles of their authors. An impartial literary journal did not exist
+in the days when Addison 'gave his little senate laws' at Button's, and
+perhaps it does not exist now, but if critical injustice be done in our
+day it is rarely owing to political causes.
+
+One of the most prominent vices of the time was gambling, which was
+largely encouraged by the public lotteries, and practised by all classes
+of the people. This evil was exhibited on a national scale by the
+establishment of the South Sea Company, which exploded in 1720, after
+creating a madness for speculation never known before or since. Even men
+who like Sir Robert Walpole kept their heads, and saw that the bubble
+would soon burst, invested in stock. Pope had his share in the
+speculation, and might, had he 'realized' in time, have been the 'lord
+of thousands;' in the end, however, he was a gainer, though not to a
+large extent. His friend Gay was less fortunate. He won £20,000, kept
+the stock too long and was reduced to beggary. The South Sea Bubble and
+the Mississippi scheme of Law which burst in the same year and ruined
+tens of thousands of French families, afford illustrations on a gigantic
+scale of the prevailing passion for speculation and for gambling.
+
+'The Duke of Devonshire lost an estate at a game of basset. The fine
+intellect of Chesterfield was thoroughly enslaved by the vice. At Bath,
+which was then the centre of English fashion, it reigned supreme; and
+the physicians even recommended it to their patients as a form of
+distraction. In the green-rooms of the theatres, as Mrs. Bellamy assures
+us, thousands were often lost and won in a single night. Among
+fashionable ladies the passion was quite as strong as among men, and the
+professor of whist and quadrille became a regular attendant at their
+levees. Miss Pelham, the daughter of the prime minister, was one of the
+most notorious gamblers of her time, and Lady Cowper speaks in her
+_Diary_ of sittings at Court, of which the lowest stake was 200 guineas.
+The public lotteries contributed very powerfully to diffuse the taste
+for gambling among all classes.'[9]
+
+One of the most powerful exponents of the dark side of the century is
+Hogarth, who makes some of its worst features live before our eyes. So
+also do the novels of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett. Differing as
+their works do in character, they have the common merit of presenting in
+indelible lines a picture of the time in its social aspects. It may have
+been, as Stuart Mill asserts, an age of strong men, but it was an age of
+coarse vices, an age wanting in the refinements and graces of life; an
+age of cruel punishments, cruel sports, and of a political corruption
+extending through all the departments of the State.
+
+But it would be a narrow view of the age to dwell wholly on its gloomier
+features, which are always the easiest to detect. If the period under
+consideration had prominent vices, it had also distinguished merits.
+Under Queen Anne and her immediate successors, home-keeping Englishmen
+had more space to breathe in than they have now, and trade was not
+demoralized by excessive competition. No attempt was made to separate
+class from class, and population was not large enough to make the battle
+of life almost hopeless in the lowest section of the community. If there
+was less refinement than among ourselves, there was far less of nervous
+susceptibility, and the country was free from the half-educated class of
+men and women who know enough to make them dissatisfied, without
+attaining to the larger knowledge which yields wisdom and content. To
+say that the age was better than our own would be to deny a thousand
+signs of material and intellectual progress, but it had fewer dangers to
+contend with, and if there was far less of wealth in the country the
+people were probably more satisfied with their lot.[10]
+
+To glance at the century as a whole does not fall within my province,
+but I may be permitted to observe that in the course of it science and
+invention made rapid strides; that under the inspiring sway of Handel
+the power of music was felt as it was never felt before; that in the
+latter half of the period the Novel, destined to be one of the noblest
+fruits of our imaginative literature, attained a robust life in the
+hands of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett; and that, with Reynolds and
+Gainsborough, with Romney and Wilson, a glorious school of landscape and
+portrait painters arose, which is still the pride of England. It will
+be remembered, too, that many of the great charitable institutions which
+make our own age illustrious, had their birth in the last. The military
+genius of England was displayed in Marlborough and in Clive, her mercy
+in John Howard, her spirit of enterprise in Cook, her self-sacrifice in
+Wesley and Whitefield, her statesmanship in Walpole, in Chatham, and in
+William Pitt. In oratory as everyone knows, the eighteenth century was
+surpassingly great, and never before or since has the country produced a
+political philosopher of the calibre of Burke. What England reaped in
+literature during the period of which Pope has been selected as the most
+striking figure, it will be my endeavour to show in the course of these
+pages.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] M. Sainte-Beuve, the greatest of French critics, frankly
+acknowledges his indebtedness to Boileau, whom he styles Louis the
+Fourteenth's 'Contrôleur Général du Parnasse.' 'S'il m'est permis de
+parler pour moi-même,' he writes, 'Boileau est un des hommes qui m'ont
+le plus occupé depuis que je fais de la critique, et avec qui j'ai le
+plus vécu en idée.'--_Causeries du Lundi_, tome sixième, p. 495.
+
+[2] Lecky's _England_, vol. i. p. 373.
+
+[3] The epithet is used in the Preface to the First Edition of Waller's
+_Posthumous Poems_, which Mr. Gosse believes was written by Atterbury,
+and he considers that this is the original occurrence of the
+phrase.--_From Shakespeare to Pope_, p. 248.
+
+[4] Messrs. Besant and Rice's novel, _The Chaplain of the Fleet_, gives
+a vivid picture of the life led in the Fleet, and also of the period.
+
+[5] _Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Delany_, vol. ii. p. 55.
+
+[6] Lecky's _England_, vol. i. p. 479.
+
+[7] Shaftesbury's _Characteristics_, vol. i. p. 270.
+
+[8] _Spectator_, No. 126.
+
+[9] Lecky's _England_, vol. i. p. 522.
+
+[10] According to Hallam the thirty years which followed the Treaty of
+Utrecht 'was the most prosperous season that England had ever
+experienced.'--_Const. Hist._ ii. 464.
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+THE POETS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ALEXANDER POPE.
+
+
+It is not unreasonable to call the period we are considering 'the Age of
+Pope.' He is the representative poet of his century. Its literary merits
+and defects are alike conspicuous in his verse, and he stands
+immeasurably above the numerous versifiers who may be said to belong to
+his school. Savage Landor has observed that there is no such thing as a
+school of poetry, and this is true in the sense that the essence of this
+divine art cannot be transmitted, but the form of the art may be, and
+Pope's style of workmanship made it readily imitable by accomplished
+craftsmen. Although he affected to call poetry an idle trade he devoted
+his whole life to its pursuit, and there are few instances in literature
+in which genius and unwearied labour have been so successfully united.
+It is to Pope's credit, that, with everything against him in the race of
+life, he attained the goal for which he started in his youth. The means
+he employed to reach it were frequently perverse and discreditable, but
+the courage with which he overcame the obstacles in his path commands
+our admiration.
+
+[Sidenote: Alexander Pope (1688-1744).]
+
+Alexander Pope was born in London on May 21st, 1688. He was the only son
+of his father, a merchant or tradesman, and a Roman Catholic at a time
+when the members of that church were proscribed by law. The boy was a
+cripple from his birth, and suffered from great bodily weakness both in
+youth and manhood. Looking back upon his life in after years he called
+it a 'long disease.' The elder Pope seems to have retired from business
+soon after his son's birth, and at Binfield, nine miles from Windsor,
+twenty-seven years of the poet's life were spent. As a 'papist' Pope was
+excluded from the Universities and from every public career, but even
+under happier circumstances his health would have condemned him to a
+secluded life. He gained some instruction from the family priest, and
+also went for a short time to school, but for the most part he was
+self-educated, and studied so severely that at seventeen his life was
+probably saved by the sound advice of Dr. Radcliffe to read less and to
+ride on horseback every day. The rhyming faculty was very early
+developed, and to use his own phrase he 'lisped in numbers.' As a boy he
+felt the magic of Spenser, whose enchanting sweetness and boundless
+wealth of imagination have been now for three hundred years a joy to
+every lover of poetry. Something, too, he learned from Waller and from
+Sandys, both of whom, but especially the former, had been of service in
+giving smoothness to the iambic distich, in which all of Pope's best
+poems are written. Dryden, however, whom when a little boy he saw at
+Will's coffee-house--'_Virgilium tantum vidi_' records the memorable
+day--was the poet whose influence he felt most powerfully. Like Gray
+several years later, he declared that he learnt versification wholly
+from his works. From 'knowing Walsh,' the best critic in the nation in
+Dryden's opinion, the youthful Pope received much friendly counsel; and
+he had another wise friend in Sir William Trumbull, formerly Secretary
+of State, who recognized his genius, and gave him as warm a friendship
+as an old man can offer to a young one. The dissolute Restoration
+dramatist, Wycherley, was also his temporary companion. The old man, if
+Pope's story be true, asked him to correct his poems, which are indeed
+beyond correction, as the youthful critic appears to have hinted, and
+the two parted company.
+
+The _Pastorals_, written, according to Pope's assertion, at the age of
+sixteen, were published in 1709, and won an amount of praise
+incomprehensible in the present day. Mr. Leslie Stephen has happily
+appraised their value in calling them 'mere school-boy exercises.' Not
+thus, however, were they regarded by the poet, or by the critics of his
+age, yet neither he nor they could have divined the rapid progress of
+his fame, and that in about six years' time he would be regarded as the
+greatest of living poets. The _Essay on Criticism_, written, it appears,
+in 1709, was published two years later, and received the highest honour
+a poem could then have. It was praised by Addison in the _Spectator_ as
+'a very fine poem,' and 'a masterpiece in its kind.' The 'kind,'
+suggested by the _Ars Poetica_ of Horace, and the _Art Poétique_ of
+Boileau--translated with Dryden's help by Sir William Soame--suited the
+current taste for criticism and argument in rhyme, which had led
+Roscommon to write an _Essay on Translated Verse_, and Sheffield an
+_Essay on Poetry_. The _Essay on Criticism_ is a marvellous production
+for a young man who had scarcely passed his maturity when it was
+published. To have written lines and couplets that live still in the
+language and are on everyone's lips is an achievement of which any poet
+might be proud, and there are at least twenty such lines or couplets in
+the poem.
+
+In 1713 _Windsor Forest_ appeared. Through the most susceptible years of
+life the poet had lived in the country, but Nature and Pope were not
+destined to become friends; he looked at her 'through the spectacles of
+books' and his description of natural objects is invariably of the
+conventional type. Although never a resident in London he was unable in
+the exercise of his art to breathe any atmosphere save that of the town,
+and might have said, in the words of Lessing to his friend Kleist, 'When
+you go to the country I go to the coffee-house.'[11]
+
+The use, or as it would be more correct to say the abuse, of classical
+mythology in the description of rural scenes had the sanction of great
+names, and Pope was not likely to reject what Spenser and Milton had
+sanctioned. Gods and goddesses therefore play a conspicuous part in his
+description of the Forest. The following lines afford a fair
+illustration of the style throughout, and the sole merit of the poem is
+the smoothness of versification in which Pope excelled.
+
+    'Not proud Olympus yields a nobler sight,
+    Though gods assembled grace his towering height,
+    Than what more humble mountains offer here,
+    When in their blessings all those gods appear.
+    See Pan with flocks, with fruits Pomona crowned,
+    Here blushing Flora paints th' enamelled ground,
+    Here Ceres' gifts in waving prospect stand,
+    And nodding tempt the joyful reaper's hand;
+    Rich Industry sits smiling on the plains,
+    And peace and plenty tell a Stuart reigns.
+
+Pope, who was never known to laugh, was a great wit, but his sense of
+humour was small, and the descent from these deities to Queen Anne
+savours not a little of bathos.
+
+In 1712 Pope had published _The Rape of the Lock_, which Addison justly
+praised as 'a delicious little thing.' At the same time he advised the
+poet not to attempt improving it, which he proposed to do, and Pope most
+unreasonably attributed this advice to jealousy. In 1714 the delightful
+poem appeared in its present form with the machinery of sylphs and
+gnomes adopted from the mysteries of the Rosicrucians. Pope styles it an
+heroi-comical poem, and judged in the light of a burlesque it is
+conceived and executed with an art that is beyond praise. Lord Petre, a
+Roman Catholic peer, had cut off a lock of Miss Arabella Fermor's hair,
+much to the indignation of her family and possibly of the young lady
+also. Pope wrote the poem to remove the discord caused by the fatal
+shears, but its publication, and two or three offensive allusions it
+contained, only served to add to Miss Fermor's annoyance. 'The
+celebrated lady herself,' the poet wrote, 'is offended, and which is
+stranger, not at herself but me. Is not this enough to make a writer
+never be tender of another's character or fame?' But Pope, whose praise
+of women is too often a libel upon them, was not as tender as he ought
+to have been of the lady's reputation.
+
+The offence felt by the heroine of the poem is now unheeded; the dainty
+art exhibited is a permanent delight, and our language can boast no more
+perfect specimen of the poetical burlesque than the _Rape of the Lock_.
+The machinery of the sylphs is managed with perfect skill, and nothing
+can be more admirable than the charge delivered by Ariel to the sylphs
+to guard Belinda from an apprehended but unknown danger. The concluding
+lines shall be quoted:
+
+    'Whatever spirit, careless of his charge,
+    His post neglects, or leaves the fair at large,
+    Shall feel sharp vengeance soon o'ertake his sins,
+    Be stopped in vials, or transfixed with pins;
+    Or plunged in lakes of bitter washes lie,
+    Or wedged, whole ages, in a bodkin's eye;
+    Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain,
+    While clogged he beats his silken wings in vain;
+    Or alum styptics, with contracting power,
+    Shrink his thin essence like a rivelled flower;
+    Or, as Ixion fixed, the wretch shall feel
+    The giddy motion of the whirling mill,
+    In fumes of burning chocolate shall glow,
+    And tremble at the sea that froths below!'
+
+Another striking portion of the poem is the description of the Spanish
+game of Ombre, imitated from Vida's _Scacchia Ludus_. 'Vida's poem,'
+says Mr. Elwin, 'is a triumph of ingenuity, when the intricacy of chess
+is considered, and the difficulty of expressing the moves in a dead
+language. Yet the original is eclipsed by Pope's more consummate
+copy.'[12]
+
+Many famous passages illustrative of Pope's art might be extracted from
+this poem, but it will suffice to give the portrait of Belinda:
+
+    'On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,
+    Which Jews might kiss and infidels adore;
+    Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose,
+    Quick as her eyes and as unfixed as those;
+    Favours to none, to all she smiles extends,
+    Oft she rejects, but never once offends.
+    Bright as the sun her eyes the gazers strike,
+    And, like the sun, they shine on all alike.
+    Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride,
+    Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide:
+    If to her share some female errors fall,
+    Look on her face and you'll forget them all.'
+
+The _Temple of Fame_, a liberal paraphrase of Chaucer's _House of Fame_,
+followed in 1715, and despite the praise of Steele, who declared that it
+had a thousand beauties, and of Dr. Johnson, who observes that every
+part is splendid, must be pronounced one of Pope's least attractive
+pieces. Two poems of the emotional and sentimental class, _Eloisa to
+Abelard_ and the _Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady_ (1717),
+are more worthy of attention. Nowhere, probably, in the language are
+finer specimens to be met with of rhetorical pathos, but poets like
+Burns, Cowper, Wordsworth, and Tennyson can touch the heart more deeply
+by a phrase or couplet than Pope is able to do by his elaborate
+representations of passion. The reader is not likely to be affected by
+the following response of Eloisa to an invitation from the spirit world:
+
+    'I come, I come! prepare your roseate bowers,
+    Celestial palms and ever-blooming flowers.
+    Thither, where sinners may have rest, I go,
+    Where flames refined in breasts seraphic glow;
+    Thou, Abelard! the last sad office pay,
+    And smooth my passage to the realms of day;
+    See my lips tremble and my eye-balls roll,
+    Suck my last breath and catch my flying soul!
+    Ah no--in sacred vestments may'st thou stand,
+    The hallowed taper trembling in thy hand,
+    Present the Cross before my lifted eye,
+    Teach me at once and learn of me to die.'
+
+The music or the fervour of the poem delighted Porson, famous for his
+Greek and his potations, and whether drunk or sober he would recite, or
+rather sing it, from the beginning to the end. The felicity of the
+versification is incontestable, but at the same time artifice is more
+visible than nature throughout the Epistle, and this is true also of
+_The Elegy_, a composition in which Pope's method of treating mournful
+topics is excellently displayed. The opening lines are suggested by Ben
+Jonson's _Elegy on the Marchioness of Winchester_, a lady whose death
+was also lamented by Milton. These we shall not quote, but take in
+preference a passage which is perhaps as graceful an expression of
+poetical rhetoric as can be found in Pope's verse.
+
+    'By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,
+    By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed,
+    By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned,
+    By strangers honoured, and by strangers mourned!
+    What though no friends in sable weeds appear,
+    Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year,
+    And bear about the mockery of woe,
+    To midnight dances and the public show?
+    What though no weeping Loves thy ashes grace,
+    Nor polished marble emulate thy face?
+    What though no sacred earth allow thee room,
+    Nor hallowed dirge be muttered o'er thy tomb?
+    Yet shall thy grave with rising flowers be drest,
+    And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast;
+    There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow,
+    There the first roses of the year shall blow;
+    While angels with their silver wings o'ershade
+    The ground, now sacred by thy reliques made.'
+
+For some years Pope had been brooding over and slowly labouring at a
+task which was destined to add greatly to his fame and also to his
+fortune.
+
+In 1708 his early friend, Sir William Trumbull, had advised him to
+translate the _Iliad_, and five years later the poet, following the
+custom of the age, invited subscriptions to the work, which was to
+appear in six volumes at the price of six guineas. About this time
+Swift, who by the aid of his powerful pen was assisting Harley and St.
+John to rule the country, made Pope's acquaintance, and ultimately
+became perhaps the most faithful of his friends. Swift, who was able to
+help everybody but himself, zealously promoted the poet's scheme, and
+was heard to say at the coffee-houses that 'the best poet in England Mr.
+Pope a Papist' had begun a translation of Homer which he should not
+print till he had a thousand guineas for him.
+
+He was not satisfied with this service, but introduced the poet to St.
+John, Atterbury, and Harley. The first volume of Pope's _Homer_ appeared
+in 1715, and in the same year Addison's friend Tickell published his
+version of the first book of the _Iliad_. Pope affected to believe that
+this was done at Addison's instigation.
+
+Already, as we have said, there had been a misunderstanding between the
+two famous wits, and Pope, whose irritable temperament led him into many
+quarrels and created a host of enemies, ceased from this time to regard
+Addison as a friend. Probably neither of them can be exempted from
+blame, and we can well believe that Addison, whose supremacy had
+formerly been uncontested, could not without some jealousy 'bear a
+brother near the throne,' but the chief interest of the estrangement to
+the literary student is the famous satire written at a later date, in
+which Addison appears under the character of Atticus.[13] It is
+necessary to add here that the whole story of the quarrel comes to us
+from Pope, who is never to be trusted, either in prose or verse, when he
+wishes to excuse himself at the expense of a rival.
+
+Pope had no cause for discontent at his position; not even the strife of
+parties stood in the way of his _Homer_, which was praised alike by Whig
+and Tory, and brought the translator a fortune. It has been calculated
+that the entire version of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, the payments for
+which covered eleven years, yielded Pope a clear profit of about £9,000,
+and it is said to have made at the same time the fortune of his
+publisher. Pope, I believe, was the first poet who, without the aid of
+patronage or of the stage, was able to live in comfort from the sale of
+his works.
+
+He knew how to value money, but fame was dearer to him than wealth, and
+of both he had now enough to satisfy his ambition. Posterity has not
+endorsed the general verdict of his contemporaries on his famous
+translation. He had to encounter indeed some severe comments, and
+Richard Bentley, the greatest classical scholar then living, must have
+vexed the sensitive poet when he told him that his version was a pretty
+poem but he must not call it Homer. By this criticism, however, as
+Matthew Arnold has observed, the work is judged in spite of all its
+power and attractiveness. Pope wants Homer's simplicity and directness,
+and his artifices of style are utterly alien to the Homeric spirit. Dr.
+Johnson quotes the judgment of critics who say that Pope's _Homer_
+'exhibits no resemblance of the original and characteristic manner of
+the Father of Poetry, as it wants his awful simplicity, his artless
+grandeur, his unaffected majesty,' and observes that this cannot be
+totally denied. He argues, however, that even in Virgil's time the
+demand for elegance had been so much increased that mere nature could be
+endured no longer, that every age improves in elegance, that if some
+Ovidian graces are, alas! not to be found in the English _Iliad_ 'to
+have added can be no great crime if nothing be taken away.' Johnson was
+not aware that to add 'poetical elegances' to the words and thoughts of
+a great poet is to destroy much of the beauty of his verse and many of
+its most striking characteristics. As well might he say that the beauty
+of a lovely woman can be enhanced by a profusion of trinkets, or that a
+Greek statue would be more worthy of admiration if it were elegantly
+dressed. Dr. Johnson says, with perfect truth, that Pope wrote for his
+own age, and it may be added that he exhibits extraordinary art in
+ministering to the taste of the age; yet it is hardly too much to affirm
+that in the exercise of his craft as a translator he is continually
+false to nature and therefore false to Homer.
+
+On the other hand his _Iliad_ if read as a story runs so smoothly, that
+the reader, and especially the young reader, is carried through the
+narrative without any sense of fatigue. It is not a little praise to say
+that it is a poem which every school-boy will read with pleasure, and in
+which every critical reader who is content to surrender his judgment for
+awhile, will find pleasure also. Mr. Courthope in his elaborate and
+masterly _Life of Pope_, which gives the coping stone to an exhaustive
+edition of the poet's works, praises a fine passage from the _Iliad_,
+which in his judgment attains perhaps the highest level of which the
+heroic couplet is capable, and 'I do not believe,' he adds, 'that any
+Englishman of taste and imagination can read the lines without feeling
+that if Pope had produced nothing but his translation of Homer, he would
+be entitled to the praise of a great original poet.'
+
+Pope's editor could not perhaps have selected a better illustration of
+his best manner than this speech of Sarpedon to Glaucus, which is
+parodied in the _Rape of the Lock_. The concluding lines shall be
+quoted.
+
+    'Could all our care elude the gloomy grave,
+    Which claims no less the fearful than the brave,
+    For lust of fame I should not vainly dare
+    In fighting fields, nor urge the soul to war,
+    But since, alas! ignoble age must come,
+    Disease, and death's inexorable doom;
+    The life which others pay let us bestow,
+    And give to fame what we to nature owe;
+    Brave though we fall, and honoured if we live,
+    Or let us glory gain, or glory give.'
+
+We may add that neither its false glitter nor Pope's inability--shared
+in great measure with every translator--to catch the spirit of the
+original, can conceal the sustained power of this brilliant work. Its
+merit is the more wonderful since the poet's knowledge of Greek was
+extremely meagre, and he is said to have been constantly indebted to
+earlier translations. Gibbon said that his _Homer_ had every merit
+except that of faithfulness to the original; and Pope, could he have
+heard it, might well have been satisfied with the verdict of Gray, a
+great scholar as well as a great poet, that no other version would ever
+equal his.
+
+All that has been hitherto said with regard to Pope and Homer relates to
+his version of the _Iliad_. On that he expended his best powers, and on
+that it is evident he bestowed infinite pains. The _Odyssey_, one of the
+most beautiful stories in the world, appears to have been taken up with
+a weary pen, and in putting it into English he sought the assistance of
+Broome and Fenton, two minor poets and Cambridge scholars. They
+translated twelve books out of the twenty-four, and so skilfully did
+they catch Pope's style that it is almost impossible to discern any
+difference between his work and theirs. The literary partnership led to
+one of Pope's discreditable manoeuvres, in which, strange to say, he
+was assisted by Broome, whom he induced to set his name to a falsehood.
+Pope as we have said, translated twelve books, while eight were allotted
+to Broome and four to Fenton. Yet he led Broome, unknown to his
+colleague, to ascribe only three books to himself and two to Fenton, and
+at the same time the poet, who confessed that he could 'equivocate
+pretty genteely,' stated the amount he had paid for Broome's eight books
+as if it had been paid for three. The story is disgraceful both to Pope
+and Broome, and why the latter should have practised such a deception is
+unaccountable. He was a beneficed clergyman and a man of wealth, so that
+he could not have lied for money even if Pope had been willing to bribe
+him. Fenton was indignant, as he well might be, but he was too lazy or
+too good-natured to expose the fraud. Broome had his deserts later on,
+but Pope, who ridiculed him in the _Dunciad_, and in his _Treatise on
+the Bathos_, was the last man in the world entitled to render them.
+
+The partnership in poetry which produced the _Odyssey_ was not a great
+literary success, and most readers will prefer the version of Cowper,
+whose blank verse, though out of harmony with the rapid movement of the
+_Iliad_ is not unfitted for the quieter beauties of the _Odyssey_.
+
+In 1721, prior to the publication of his version, the poet had agreed to
+edit an edition of Shakespeare, a task as difficult as any which a man
+of letters can undertake. Pope was not qualified to achieve it. He was
+comparatively ignorant of Elizabethan literature, the dry labours of an
+editor were not to his taste, and he lacked true sympathy with the
+genius of the poet. Failure was therefore inevitable, and Theobald, who
+has some solid merits as a commentator, found it easy to discern and to
+expose the errors of Pope. For doing so he was afterwards 'hitched' into
+the _Dunciad_, and made in the first instance its hero. The
+"Shakespeare" was published in 1725 in six volumes quarto. 'Its chief
+claim,' Mr. Courthope writes, 'to interest at the present day, is that
+it forms the immediate starting-point for the long succession of Pope's
+satires.... The vexation caused to the poet by the undoubted justice of
+many of Theobald's strictures procured for the latter the unwelcome
+honour of being recognized as the King of the Dunces, and coupled with
+Bentley's disparaging mention of the Translation of the _Iliad_ provoked
+the many contemptuous allusions to verbal criticism in Pope's later
+satires.'[14]
+
+A striking peculiarity of Pope's art may be mentioned here. He was able
+only to play on one instrument, the heroic couplet. When he attempted
+any other form of verse the result, if not total failure, was
+mediocrity. It was a daring act of Pope to suggest by his _Ode on St.
+Cecilia's Day_, a comparison with the _Alexander's Feast_ of Dryden. The
+performance is perfunctory rather than spontaneous, and the few lyrical
+efforts he attempted in addition, show no ear for music. The voice of
+song with which even the minor poets of the Elizabethan age were gifted
+was silent in England, though not in Scotland, during the first half of
+the eighteenth century, or if a faint note is occasionally heard, as in
+the lyrics of Gay, it is without the grace and joyous freedom of the
+earlier singers. Not that the lyrical form was wanting; many minor
+versifiers, like Hughes, Sheffield, Granville, and Somerville, wrote
+what they called songs, but unfortunately without an ear for singing.
+
+In this short summary and criticism of a poet's literary life it would
+be out of place to insert many biographical details, were it not that,
+in the case of Pope, the student who knows little or nothing of the man
+will fail to understand his poetry. A distinguished critic has said that
+the more we know of Pope's age the better shall we understand Pope. With
+equal truth it may be said that a familiarity with the poet's personal
+character is essential to an adequate appreciation of his genius. His
+friendships, his enmities, his mode of life at Twickenham, the entangled
+tale of his correspondence, his intrigues in the pursuit of fame, his
+constitutional infirmities, the personal character of his satires, these
+are a few of the prominent topics with which a student of the poet must
+make himself conversant. It may be well, therefore, to give the history
+in brief outline, and we have now reached the crisis in his fortunes
+which will conveniently enable us to do so.
+
+In 1716 Pope's family had removed from Binfield to Chiswick. A year
+later he lost his father, to whose memory he has left a filial tribute,
+and shortly afterwards he bought the small estate of five acres at
+Twickenham with which his name is so intimately associated. Before
+reaching the age of thirty Pope was regarded as the first of living
+poets. His income more than sufficed for all his wants. At Twickenham
+the great in intellect, and the great by birth, met around his table; he
+was welcomed by the highest society in the land, and although proud of
+his intimacy with the nobility, 'unplaced, unpensioned,' he was 'no
+man's heir or slave,' and jealously preserved his independence. 'Pope,'
+says Johnson, 'never set genius to sale, he never flattered those whom
+he did not love, or praised those whom he did not esteem,' and he was,
+we may add, in this respect a striking contrast to Dryden, who lavished
+his flatteries wholesale.
+
+With a mother to whom he was tenderly attached, with troops of friends,
+with an undisputed supremacy in the world of letters, and with a
+vocation that was the joy of his heart,--if possessions like these can
+confer happiness, Pope should have been a happy man.
+
+But his 'crazy carcass,' as the painter Jervas called it, was united to
+the most suspicious and irritable of temperaments, and the fine wine of
+his poetry was rarely free from bitterness in the cup. Pope could be a
+warm friend, but was not always a faithful one, and even women whose
+friendship he had enjoyed suffered from the venom of his satire. He was
+not a man to rise above his age, and it would be charitable to ascribe a
+portion of his grossness to it. Voltaire is said by his loose talk to
+have driven Pope's good old mother from the table at Twickenham;
+Walpole's language not only in his home at Houghton, but at Court, was
+insufferably coarse; and Pope wrote to ladies in language that must
+have disgusted modest women even in his free-speaking day. His foul
+lines on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, to whom he had formerly written in a
+most ridiculous strain of gallantry, and to whom he is said to have made
+love,[15] cannot easily be characterized in moderate language. Lady Mary
+had little delicacy herself, but the poet, who thought himself a
+gentleman, had no excuse for abusing her. Excuses indeed are not easily
+to be offered for Pope's moral defalcations. His life was a series of
+petty intrigues, trickeries, and deceptions. He could not, it has been
+said,--the conceit is borrowed from Young's _Satires_--'take his tea
+without a stratagem,' and knew how to utter the loftiest sentiments
+while acting the most contemptible of parts.
+
+The long and intricate deceptions which he practised to secure the
+publication of his letters, while so manipulating them as to enhance his
+credit, were suspected to some extent in his own age, and have been
+painfully laid bare in ours. It is an amazing story, which may be read
+at large in Mr. Dilke's _Papers of a Critic_, or in the elaborate
+narrative of Mr. Elwin in the first volume of his edition of _Pope_. It
+will be there seen how the poet compiled fictitious letters, suppressed
+passages, altered dates, manufactured letters out of other letters, and
+secretly enabled the infamous bookseller Curll to publish his
+correspondence surreptitiously in order that he might have the excuse
+for printing it himself in a more carefully prepared form. The worst
+feature of the miserable story is the poet's conduct with regard to
+Swift, his oldest and most faithful friend. On this subject the writer
+may be allowed to quote what he has said elsewhere.
+
+'Years before, Swift, who cared little for literary reputation, and
+never resorted to any artifice to promote it, had suspected Pope of a
+desire to make literary capital out of their correspondence, and the
+poet had excused himself according to his wonted fashion. After the
+publication by Curll, he begged Swift to return him his letters lest
+they should fall into the bookseller's hands. The Dean replied, no doubt
+to Pope's infinite chagrin, that they were safe in his keeping, as he
+had given strict orders in his will that his executors should burn every
+letter he might leave behind him. Afterwards he promised that Pope
+should eventually have them but declined giving them up during his
+lifetime. Hereupon Pope changed his tactics and begged that he might
+have the letters to print. The publication by Curll of two letters
+(probably another _ruse_ of Pope's) formed an additional ground for
+urging his request. All his efforts were unavailing until he obtained
+the assistance of Lord Orrery, to whom Swift was at length induced to
+deliver up the letters. There was a hiatus in the correspondence and
+Pope took advantage of this and of a blunder made by Swift, whose memory
+at the time was not to be trusted, to hint, what he dared not directly
+assert, that the bulk of the collection remained with the Dean, and that
+Swift's own letters had been returned to him. We have now irresistible
+proof that the Dublin edition of the letters was taken from an
+impression sent from England and sent by Pope. Nor was this all. The
+poet acted with still greater meanness, for he had the audacity to
+deplore the sad vanity of Swift in permitting the publication of his
+correspondence, and to declare that "no decay of body is half so
+miserable."'[16]
+
+That he had many fine qualities in spite of the littlenesses which mar
+his character one would be loath to doubt. Among his nobler traits was
+an ardent passion for literature, a courage which enabled him to face
+innumerable obstacles--'Pope,' says Mr. Swinburne, 'was as bold as a
+lion'--and a constant devotion to his parents, especially to his mother,
+who lived to a great age. There are no sincerer words in his letters
+than those which relate to Mrs. Pope. 'It is my mother only,' he once
+wrote, regretting his inability to leave home, 'that robs me of half the
+pleasure of my life, and that gives me the greatest at the same time,'
+and the lines expressing his affection for her are familiar to most
+readers. Truly does Johnson say that 'life has among its soothing and
+quiet comforts few things better to give than such a son.'
+
+Among his lady friends the dearest was Martha Blount, the younger of two
+beautiful sisters, of whom Gay sang as 'the fair-haired Martha and
+Teresa brown.' They came of an old Roman Catholic family residing at
+Mapledurham, and were little more than girls when Pope first knew them.
+With the elder sister he quarrelled, but Martha was faithful to him for
+life, and when he was dying it is said that her coming in 'gave a new
+turn of spirits or a temporary strength to him.' Swift, as we have said,
+was one of the warmest of Pope's friends, and his letters to the poet
+are by far the most attractive portion of the published correspondence.
+He visited him at Twickenham more than once, and on one occasion spent
+some months under his roof. Bolingbroke, his 'guide, philosopher, and
+friend,' who for a time lived near to him at Dawley, was a frequent
+guest, so also, in the days of their intimacy, was Lady Mary, who had a
+house at Twickenham. Thomson the poet, too, lived not far off, and was
+visited by his brother bard, whom Thomson's barber describes as 'a
+strange, ill-formed, little figure of a man,' but he adds, 'I have
+heard him and Quin and Patterson[17] talk so together that I could have
+listened to them for ever.' Arbuthnot, one of the finest wits and best
+men of his time, who, as Swift said, could do everything but walk, was
+also a faithful friend of Pope; so was Gay, and so was Bishop Atterbury,
+who, as the poet said, first taught him to think "as becomes a
+reasonable creature."
+
+James Craggs, who had been formerly Secretary of State, and was on the
+warmest terms of intimacy with the poet, resided for some time near his
+friend in order to enjoy the pleasure of his society. When in office he
+proposed to pay him a pension of £300 a year out of the secret service
+money, but Pope declined the offer. Statesmen and men of active pursuits
+cultivated the society of the poetical recluse, and Pope, whose
+compliments are monuments more enduring than marble, has recorded their
+visits to Twickenham:
+
+    'There, my retreat the best companions grace,
+    Chiefs out of war, and statesmen out of place,
+    There St. John mingles with my friendly bowl,
+    The feast of reason and the flow of soul,
+    And he whose lightning pierced the Iberian lines[18]
+    Now forms my quincunx and now ranks my vines.'
+
+Among Pope's associates was the 'blameless Bethel,'
+
+           '---- who always speaks his thought,
+    And always thinks the very thing he ought,'
+
+and Berkeley who had 'every virtue under heaven,' and Lord Bathurst who
+was unspoiled by wealth and joined
+
+    'With splendour, charity; with plenty, health;'
+
+and 'humble Allen' who
+
+    'Did good by stealth and blushed to find it fame;'
+
+and many another friend who lives in his verse and is secure of the
+immortality a poet can confer.
+
+The five volumes which contain the letters between Pope and his friends
+exhibit an interesting picture of the times and of the writers. The
+poet's own letters, as may be supposed from the thought he bestowed on
+them, are full of artifice, and composed with the most elaborate care.
+Every sentence is elaborately turned, and the ease and naturalness which
+give a charm to the letters of Cowper and of Southey are not to be found
+in Pope. His epistles are weighted with compliments and with professions
+of the most exalted morality. 'He laboured them,' says Horace Walpole,
+'as much as the _Essay on Man_, and as they were written to everybody
+they do not look as if they had been written to anybody.' Pope said
+once, what he did not mean, that he could not write agreeable letters.
+This was true; his letters are, as Charles Fox said, 'very bad,' but
+some of Pope's friends write admirably, and if there is much that can be
+skipped without loss in the correspondence, there is much which no
+student of the period can afford to neglect. 'There has accumulated,'
+says Mark Pattison, 'round Pope's poems a mass of biographical anecdote
+such as surrounds the writings of no other English author,' and not a
+little knowledge of this kind is to be gleaned from his correspondence.
+
+In the years spent at Twickenham Pope produced his most characteristic
+work. It is as a satirist that he, with one exception, excels all
+English poets, and Pope's careful workmanship often makes his satirical
+touches more attractive than Dryden's.
+
+'To attack vices in the abstract,' he said to Arbuthnot, 'without
+touching persons, may be safe fighting indeed, but it is fighting with
+shadows;' and Pope, under the plea of a detestation of vice, generally
+betrayed his contempt or hatred of the men whom he assailed. No doubt
+the critics and Grub Street hacks of the day gave him provocation. Pope,
+however, was frequently the first to take the field, and so eager was he
+to meet his foes that it would seem as if he enjoyed the conflict. Yet
+there were times when he felt acutely the assaults made upon him. 'These
+things are my diversion,' he once said, with a ghastly smile, and it was
+observed that he writhed in agony like a man undergoing an operation.
+The attacks made with these paper bullets, not only on the side of Grub
+Street but on his own, show very vividly the coarseness of London
+society. Courtesy was disregarded by men who claimed to be wits and
+scholars. Pope held, perhaps, a higher place in literature in his own
+day than Lord Tennyson has held in ours, for the best beloved of
+Laureates had noble rivals and friends who came near to him in fame,
+while Pope, until the publication of Thomson's _Seasons_, in 1730, stood
+alone in poetical reputation. Yet he was reviled in the language of
+Billingsgate, and had no scruple in using that language himself. Late in
+life Pope collected the libels made upon him and bound them in four
+volumes, but he omitted to mention the provocation which gave rise to
+many of them. Eusden, Colley Cibber, Dennis, Theobald, Blackmore, Smyth,
+and Lord Hervey are among the prominent criminals placed in Pope's
+pillory, and the student of the age may find an idle entertainment in
+tracking the poet's thorny course, while he gives an unenviable
+notoriety to names of which the larger number were 'born to be forgot.'
+
+In 1725 Swift had written to Pope advising him not to immortalize the
+names of bad poets by putting them in his verse, and Pope replied to
+this advice by saying, 'I am much the happier for finding (a better
+thing than our wits) our judgments jump in the notion that all
+scribblers should be passed by in silence.' How entirely his inclination
+got the better of his judgment was seen three years later in the
+_Dunciad_. The first three books of this famous satire were published in
+1728. It is generally regarded as Pope's masterpiece, but the accuracy
+of such an estimate is doubtful. So heavily weighted is the poem with
+notes, prefaces, and introductions that the text appears to be smothered
+by them. It was Pope's aim to mystify his readers, and in this he has
+succeeded, for the mystifications of the poem even confound the
+commentators. The personalities of the satire excited a keen interest,
+and much amusement to readers who were not included in Pope's black list
+of dunces. At the same time it roused a number of authors to fury, as it
+well might. His satire is often unjust, and he includes among the dunces
+men wholly undeserving of the name, who had had the misfortune to offend
+him. To place a great scholar like Bentley, an eloquent and earnest
+preacher like Whitefield, and a man of genius like Defoe among the
+dunces was to stultify himself, and if Pope in his spite against
+Theobald found some justification for giving the commentator
+pre-eminence for dulness in three books of the _Dunciad_, his anger got
+the better of his wit when in Book IV. he dethroned Theobald to exalt
+Colley Cibber. For Cibber, with a thousand faults, so far from being
+dull had a buoyancy of heart and a sprightliness of intellect wholly out
+of harmony with the character he is made to assume.
+
+That he might have some excuse for his dashing assaults in the
+_Dunciad_, Pope had published in the third volume of the _Miscellanies_,
+of which he and Swift, Arbuthnot and Gay were the joint authors, an
+_Essay on Bathos_ in which several writers of the day were sneered at.
+The assault provoked the counter-attack for which Pope was looking, and
+he then produced the satire which was already prepared for the press. In
+its publication the poet, as usual, made use of trickery and deception.
+At first he issued an imperfect edition with initial letters instead of
+names, but on seeing his way to act more openly, the poem appeared in a
+large edition with names and notes.
+
+'In order to lessen the danger of prosecution for libel,' Mr. Courthope
+writes, 'he prevailed on three peers, with whom he was on the most
+intimate terms, the good-natured Lord Bathurst, the easy-going Earl of
+Oxford, and the magnificent Earl of Burlington, to act as his nominal
+publishers; and it was through them that copies of the enlarged edition
+were at first distributed, the booksellers not being allowed to sell any
+in their shops. The King and Queen were each presented with a copy by
+the hands of Sir R. Walpole. In this manner, as the report quickly
+spread that the poem was the property of rich and powerful noblemen,
+there was a natural disinclination on the part of the dunces to take
+legal proceedings, and the prestige of the _Dunciad_ being thus fairly
+established, the booksellers were allowed to proceed with the sale in
+regular course.'[19]
+
+The _Dunciad_ owes its merit to the literary felicities with which its
+pages abound. The theme is a mean one. Pope, from his social eminence at
+Twickenham, looks with scorn on the authors who write for bread, and
+with malignity on the authors whom he regarded as his enemies. There
+is, for the most part, little elevation in his method of treatment, and
+we can almost fancy that we see a cruel joy in the poet's face as he
+impales the victims of his wrath. Some portions of the _Dunciad_ are
+tainted with the imagery which, to quote the strong phrase of Mr.
+Churton Collins, often makes Swift as offensive as a polecat,[20] and
+there is no part of it which can be read with unmixed pleasure, if we
+except the noble lines which conclude the satire. Those lines may be
+almost said to redeem the faults of the poem, and they prove
+incontestably, if such proof be needed, Pope's claim to a place among
+the poets.
+
+    'In vain, in vain,--the all-composing Hour
+    Resistless falls; the Muse obeys the Power.
+    She comes! she comes! the sable Throne behold,
+    Of Night primæval and of Chaos old!
+    Before her Fancy's gilded clouds decay,
+    And all its varying rainbows die away.
+    Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,
+    The meteor drops, and in a flash expires,
+    As one by one at dread Medea's strain,
+    The sickening stars fade off the etherial plain;
+    As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand opprest,
+    Closed one by one to everlasting rest;
+    Thus at her felt approach and secret might,
+    Art after Art goes out, and all is Night.
+    See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,
+    Mountains of Casuistry heaped o'er her head!
+    Philosophy that leaned on Heaven before,
+    Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more;
+    Physic of Metaphysic begs defence,
+    And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense!
+    See Mystery to Mathematics fly!
+    In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.
+    Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,
+    And unawares Morality expires.
+    Nor public Flame, nor private, dares to shine;
+    Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!
+    Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos! is restored;
+    Light dies before thy uncreating word;
+    Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
+    And universal Darkness buries All.'
+
+The publication of the _Dunciad_ showed Pope where his main strength as
+a poet lay. That the writers he had attacked, in many instances without
+provocation, should resent the ungrateful notoriety conferred upon them
+was inevitable. In self-defence, and to add to the provocation already
+given, he started a paper called the _Grub Street Journal_, which
+existed for eight years--Pope, who had no scruple in 'hazarding a lie,'
+denying all the time that he had any connection with it.
+
+His next work of significance, _The Essay on Man_, a professedly
+philosophical poem by an author who knew little of philosophy, was
+published in four epistles, in 1733-4. Bolingbroke's brilliant,
+versatile, and shallow intellect had strongly impressed Swift, and had
+also fascinated Pope. It has been commonly supposed that the _Essay_
+owes its existence to his suggestion and guidance. The poet believed in
+his philosophy, and had the loftiest estimate of his genius. In the last
+and perhaps finest passage of the poem he calls Bolingbroke the 'master
+of the poet and the song,' and draws a picture of the ambitious
+statesman as beautiful as it is false. In Mark Pattison's Introduction
+to _The Essay on Man_,[21] which every student of Pope will read, he
+objects to the notion that the poet took the scheme of his work from
+Bolingbroke, observing that both derived their views from a common
+source.
+
+'Everywhere, in the pulpit, in the coffee-houses, in every pamphlet,
+argument on the origin of evil, on the goodness of God, and the
+constitution of the world was rife. Into the prevailing topic of polite
+conversation Bolingbroke, who returned from exile in 1723, was drawn by
+the bent of his native genius. Pope followed the example and impulse of
+his friend's more powerful mind. Thus much there was of special
+suggestion. But the arguments or topics of the poem are to be traced to
+books in much vogue at the time; to Shaftesbury's _Characteristics_
+(1711), King on the _Origin of Evil_ (1702), and particularly to
+Leibnitz, _Essais de Théodicée_ (1710).'
+
+In admitting that Pope followed the impulse of a more powerful mind, Mr.
+Pattison asserts as much perhaps as can be known with certainty as to
+Bolingbroke's influence, but it is reasonable to believe that the close
+intercourse of the two men did immensely sway the more impressionable,
+and, so far as philosophy is concerned, the more ignorant of the two.
+Mr. Pattison also overlooks the fact that Pope confessed to Warburton
+that he had never read a line of Leibnitz in his life. That the poet
+acknowledges his large debt to Bolingbroke, and that Bolingbroke
+confesses it was due, is all that can be declared with certainty. That
+which makes the _Essay_ worthy the reading is the fruit, not of the
+argument but of the poetry, and for that Pope trusted to his own genius.
+
+His attempt to 'vindicate the ways of God to man' is confused and
+contradictory, and no modern reader, perplexed with the mystery of
+existence, is likely to gain aid from Pope. Nominally a Roman Catholic,
+and in reality a deist, apart from poetry he does not seem to have had
+strong convictions on any subject, and was content to be swayed by the
+opinions current in society. In undertaking to write an ethical work
+like the _Essay_ his ambition was greater than his strength, yet if
+Pope's philosophy does not 'find' us, to use Coleridge's phrase, it did
+appeal to a large number of minds in his own day, and had not lost its
+popularity at a later period. The poem has been frequently translated
+into French, into Italian, and into German; it was pronounced by
+Voltaire to be the most useful and sublime didactic poem ever written in
+any language; it was admired by Kant and quoted in his lectures; and it
+received high praise from the Scotch philosopher, Dugald Stewart. The
+charm of poetical expression is lost or nearly lost in translations, and
+while the sense may be retained the aroma of the verse is gone. The
+popularity of the _Essay_ abroad is therefore not easily to be accounted
+for, unless we accept the theory that the shallow creed on which it is
+based suited an age less earnest than our own.[22]
+
+Pope has no strong convictions in this poem, but he has many moods. On
+one page he is a pantheist, on another he says what he probably did not
+mean, that God inspires men to do evil, and on a third that 'all our
+knowledge is ourselves to know.' Nowhere in the argument does Pope seem
+to have a firm standing, and De Quincey is not far wrong in saying that
+it is 'the realization of anarchy.'
+
+Read the poem for its poetical merits and you will forget its defects.
+Pope was a superficial teacher, but direct teaching is not the end of
+poetry. _The Essay on Man_ is not a poem which can be read and re-read
+with ever-growing delight, but there are passages in it of as fine an
+order as any that he has composed on more familiar subjects. Pope was,
+as Sir William Hamilton said, a curious reader, and the ideas versified
+in the poem may be traced to a variety of sources. Students who wish to
+follow this track will find all the help they need in Mr. Pattison's
+instructive notes, and in the comments attached to the poem in Elwin and
+Courthope's edition. In his Introduction Mr. Pattison observes that 'the
+subject of the _Essay on Man_ is not, considered in itself, one unfit
+for poetry. Had Pope had a genius for philosophy there was no reason why
+he should not have selected a philosophical subject. Didactic poetry is
+a mistake if not a contradiction in terms. But poetry is not necessarily
+didactic because its subject is philosophical.'
+
+It is always difficult to define the themes suitable for poetry. Many
+theories have been formed as to the scope of the art, and poets have
+been amply instructed by critics as to what they ought to do, and what
+they should avoid doing. The theories may appear sound, the arguments
+convincing, until a great poet arises and knocks them on the head. In a
+sense every poet of the highest order is also a philosopher and a
+prophet who sees into 'the life of things.' Whether a philosophical
+subject can be fitly represented in the imaginative light of poetry is a
+matter for discussion rather than for decision. In the case of Pope,
+however, it will be evident to all studious readers that he was
+incapable of the continuous thought needed for the argument of the
+_Essay_.
+
+'Anything like sustained reasoning,' says Mr. Leslie Stephen,' was
+beyond his reach. Pope felt and thought by shocks and electric
+flashes.... The defect was aggravated or caused by the physical
+infirmities which put sustained intellectual labour out of the
+question.'[23]
+
+Crousaz, a Swiss pastor and professor, who appears to have competed with
+Berkeley for a prize and won it, attacked Pope's _Essay_ for its want of
+orthodoxy, and his work was translated into English. The poet became
+alarmed, but had the good fortune to find a champion in Warburton, who
+for the rest of his life did Pope much service, not always of a
+reputable kind. We shall have more to say of him later on, and it will
+suffice to observe here that Warburton, who through Pope's friendship
+obtained a good wife, a fortune, and a bishopric, was not a man of high
+character. His sole object was to advance in life, and he succeeded.
+
+The _Moral Essays_ as they are called, and the _Imitations from Horace_
+are the final and crowning efforts of the poet's genius. They contain
+his finest workmanship as a satirist, and will be read, I think, with
+more pleasure than the _Dunciad_, despite Mr. Ruskin's judgment of that
+poem as 'the most absolutely chiselled and monumental work "exacted" in
+our country.'[24] It is impossible to concur in this estimate. The
+imagery of the poem serves only to disgust, and the spiteful attacks
+made in it on forgotten men want the largeness of purpose that lifts
+satire above what is of temporary interest, making it a lesson for all
+time.
+
+Pope's venom, and the personal animosities which give the sharpest
+sting, and in some instances a zest, to his verse, are also amply
+displayed in the _Moral Essays_ and in the _Imitations_, but the scope
+is wider in these poems, and the subjects allow of more versatile
+treatment. They should be read with the help of notes, a help generally
+needed for satirical poetry, but it should be remembered always that
+editorial judgments are to be received with discretion and not servilely
+followed. There is perhaps no danger more carefully to be shunned by the
+student of literature than the habit of resting satisfied with opinions
+at second-hand. Better a wrong estimate formed after due reading and
+thought, than a right estimate gleaned from critics, without any thought
+at all.
+
+According to Warburton, who is as tricky as Pope himself when it suits
+his purpose to be so, the _Essay on Man_ was intended to form four
+books, in which, as part of the general design, the _Moral Essays_ would
+have been included, as well as Book IV. of the _Dunciad_, but to have
+welded these _Essays_, which were published separately, into one
+continuous poem would neither have suited Pope's genius nor the
+character of the poems; and how the last book of the _Dunciad_ could
+have been included in such an _olla podrida_ it is difficult to
+conceive. The poet was fond of projects, and this, happily for his
+readers, remained one. The dates of the four _Essays_, which are really
+Epistles, and appeared in folio pamphlets, run over several years, but
+were afterwards re-arranged by Pope. That to Lord Burlington, _Of the
+Use of Riches_ (Epistle IV.), was published in 1731, under the title,
+_Of False Taste_; that to Lord Bathurst, _Of the Use of Riches_ (Epistle
+III), in 1732; the epistle to Lord Cobham (Epistle I.), _Of the
+Knowledge and Characters of Men_, bears the date of 1733; and that To a
+Lady (Epistle II.), _Of the Characters of Women_, in 1735. Pope wrote
+other Epistles, some at a much earlier period of his career, which
+follow the _Moral Essays_ but are not connected with them. Of these one
+is addressed to Addison, two are to Martha Blount, for whom the second
+of the _Moral Essays_ was written; one to the painter Jervas, originally
+printed in 1717; while another, a few lines only in length, was
+addressed to Craggs when Secretary of State. Space will not allow of
+examining each of the _Essays_ minutely, but there are portions of them
+which call for comment.
+
+The first _Moral Essay_, _Of the Knowledge and Characters of Men_, in
+which Pope enlarges on his theory of a ruling passion, affords a
+significant example of his incapacity for sustaining an argument, since
+Warburton, to use his own words, entirely changed and reversed the order
+and disposition of the several parts to make the composition more
+coherent. That he has succeeded is doubtful, that he should have
+ventured upon such a task shows where Pope's weakness lay as a
+philosophical poet. It is the least interesting of the _Essays_, but is
+not without lines that none but Pope could have written. _The Characters
+of Women_, the subject of the second _Essay_, was not one which the
+satirist could treat with justice. He saw little in the sex save their
+foibles, and the lines with which it opens show the spirit that animates
+the poem:
+
+    'Nothing so true as what you once let fall;
+    "Most women have no character at all,"
+    Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,
+    And best distinguished by black, brown, or fair.'
+
+The satire contains one of Pope's offensive allusions to Lady Mary, and
+the celebrated portrait drawn from two notable women, the Duchess of
+Buckingham and Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, from the latter of whom
+the poet, at one time, despite his unquestionable love of independence,
+received £1,000. The story, like many another in the career of Pope, is
+wrapt in mystery.
+
+Pope took great pains with the Epistle _Of the Use of Riches_. It was
+altered from the original conception by the advice of Warburton, who
+cared more for the argument of a poem than for its poetry. The thought
+and purpose of the _Essay_ are defective, notwithstanding Warburton's
+effort to clear them, but these defects are of slight moment when
+compared with the brilliant passages with which the poem is studded.
+Among them is the famous description of the Duke of Buckingham's
+death-bed which should be compared with Dryden's equally famous lines
+on the same nobleman's character.
+
+    'In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung,
+    The floors of plaster, and the walls of dung,
+    On once a flock-heel, but repaired with straw,
+    With tape-tied curtains never meant to draw,
+    The George and Garter dangling from that bed
+    Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,
+    Great Villiers lies--alas! how changed from him,
+    That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim!
+    Gallant and gay, in Cliveden's proud alcove,
+    The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love;
+    Or just as gay at council, in a ring
+    Of mimic statesmen and their merry King.
+    No wit to flatter left of all his store!
+    No fool to laugh at, which he valued more.
+    There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends,
+    And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends.'
+
+There is also a covert attack in this Epistle upon the moneyed interest
+represented by Walpole, and on the political corruption which he
+sanctioned and promoted. Yet Pope knew how to praise the great Whig
+statesman for his social qualities:
+
+    'Seen him I have, but in his happier hour
+    Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power;
+    Seen him uncumbered with the venal tribe,
+    Smile without art and win without a bribe.'
+
+Epistle IV. pursues the same subject as the third, and deals mainly with
+false taste in the expenditure of wealth, and with the necessity of
+following 'sense, of every art the soul.' In this poem there is the
+far-famed description of Timon's Villa, and by Timon Pope was accused of
+representing the Duke of Chandos, whose estate at Canons he is supposed
+to have held in scorn after having been, as he acknowledges,
+'distinguished' by its master. That would not have deterred Pope from
+producing a brilliant picture, and his equivocations did but serve to
+increase suspicion. Probably he found it convenient to use some features
+of what he may have seen at Canons while composing a general sketch with
+no special application. The _Moral Essays_, it may be added, are not
+especially moral, but they are full of fine things, and form a portion
+of Pope's verse second only to the _Imitations from Horace_.
+
+These _Imitations_ are introduced by the Prologue addressed to Dr.
+Arbuthnot, a poem of more than common brilliancy, and also more than
+commonly venomous. Nowhere, perhaps, is there in Pope's works so
+powerful and bitter an attack as the twenty-five lines in the Prologue
+devoted to the vivisection of Lord Hervey, which we are forced to admire
+while feeling their malevolence; nowhere is there a more consummate
+piece of satire than the twenty-two lines that contain the poet's
+masterpiece, the character of Atticus; and nowhere, I may add, are there
+lines more personally interesting. Portions of the poem were written
+long before the date of publication, and this is Pope's excuse, a rather
+lame one perhaps, for printing the character of Atticus and the lines on
+his mother after the death of Addison and of Mrs. Pope.
+
+'When I had a fever one winter in town,' Pope said to his friend Spence,
+'that confined me to my room for some days, Lord Bolingbroke came to see
+me, happened to take up a Horace that lay on the table, and in turning
+it over dipt on the first satire of the second book. He observed how
+well that would hit my case if I were to imitate it in English. After he
+was gone I read it over, translated it in a morning or two, and sent it
+to press in a week or fortnight after. And this was the occasion of my
+imitating some other of the satires and epistles afterwards.'
+
+Bolingbroke did his friend a better service in giving this advice than
+he had done with regard to the _Essay on Man_; and the six _Imitations_,
+with the Prologue and Epilogue, which are among the latest fruits of
+Pope's genius as a satirist, are also the ripest.
+
+Warburton, writing of the _Imitations of Horace_, says: 'Whoever expects
+a paraphrase of Horace or a faithful copy of his genius or his manner of
+writing in these _Imitations_ will be much disappointed. Our author uses
+the Roman poet for little more than his canvas; and if the old design or
+colouring chance to suit his purpose, it is well; if not, he employs his
+own without scruple or ceremony.'
+
+This is true. Pope makes use of Horace when it suits his convenience,
+but never follows him servilely, and quits him altogether when his
+design carries him another way.
+
+It was inevitable that he should exercise this freedom, since, as
+Johnson has pointed out, there will always be an irreconcilable
+dissimilitude between Roman images and English manners. Moreover, the
+aim of the two poets was different, Pope's main object being to express
+personal enmities and to give an exalted notion of his own virtue.
+
+In the opening lines of his First Satire Pope follows Horace pretty
+closely. Both poets complain that some persons think them too severe,
+and others too complaisant; both take the advice of a lawyer, Horace of
+C. Trebatius Testa, who gives him the pithiest replies; and Pope of
+Fortescue. Both complain that they cannot sleep, the prescription of a
+wife and cowslip wine being given by the English adviser, while Testa
+advises Horace to swim thrice across the Tiber and moisten his lips with
+wine. Throughout the rest of the satire Pope takes only casual glances
+at the Roman original, and if in the Second Satire the English poet
+follows Horace in the first few verses in recommending frugality, and in
+the advice to keep the middle state, and neither to lean on this side or
+on that, the resemblance between the poets is seldom striking, and the
+spirit which animates them is different,--Horace being classical, and
+therefore open to the apprehension of all educated readers, while Pope
+is in a sense provincial, and, as I have already said with reference to
+the _Dunciad_, cannot be fully enjoyed or even understood without some
+knowledge of the time and of the men whom he lashes in his satire. The
+Sixth Epistle of the First Book of Horace, which Pope attempts to
+imitate, is, as Mr. Courthope observes, 'incapable of imitation. Its
+humour, no less than its philosophy, belongs entirely to the Pagan
+World.' In a general sense it is also true that Horace's style, whether
+of language or of thought, will not bear transplanting. Indeed, whatever
+is most characteristic and most exquisite in a poet's work is precisely
+the portion which cannot be clothed in a foreign dress.
+
+'Life,' said Pope, 'when the first heats are over is all down hill,' and
+with him the downward progress began at a time when most men are still
+standing on the summit. Never was there a more fiery spirit in so weak a
+body. He suffered frequently from headaches, which he relieved by
+inhaling the steam of coffee. Unfortunately he pampered his appetite and
+paid a heavy penalty for doing so. Every change of weather affected him;
+and at the time when most people indulge in company, he tells Swift that
+he hid himself in bed. Although he sneers at Lord Hervey for taking
+asses' milk he tried that remedy himself, and he frequently needed
+medical aid. In his early days he was strong enough to ride on
+horseback, but in later life his weakness was so great that he was in
+constant need of help. M. Taine, whose criticism of Pope needs to be
+read with caution, indulges in an exaggerated description of his bodily
+condition, observing that when arrived at maturity he appeared no longer
+capable of existing, and styling him 'a nervous abortion.' The poet's
+condition was sad enough as told by Dr. Johnson, without amplifying it
+as M. Taine has done. 'One side was contracted. His legs were so slender
+that he enlarged their bulk with three pairs of stockings, which were
+drawn on and off by the maid; for he was not able to dress or undress
+himself, and neither went to bed nor rose without help. His weakness
+made it very difficult for him to be clean.' After this forlorn
+description of the poet's state it is a little grotesque to read that
+his dress of ceremony was black, with a tie-wig and a little sword. A
+distorted body often holds a generous and untainted soul. This was not
+the case with Pope, and the sympathy he stood in so large a need of
+himself, was seldom given to others.
+
+In the spring of 1744 it became evident that the end was approaching.
+Three weeks before his death he distributed the _Moral Epistles_ among
+his friends, saying: 'Here I am, like Socrates, dispensing my morality
+amongst my friends just as I am dying.' He died peacefully on May 30th,
+1744, and was buried in Twickenham Church near the monument erected to
+his parents.
+
+Pope's standing among his country's poets has been the source of much
+controversy. There have been critics who deny to him the name of a poet,
+while others place him in the first rank. In his own century there was
+comparatively little difference of opinion with regard to his merits.
+Chesterfield gave him the warmest praise; Swift, Addison, and Warburton
+ranked him with the peers of song; Johnson, whose discriminative
+criticism reaches perhaps its highest level in his _Life of Pope_, in
+reply to the question which had been asked, even in his day, whether
+Pope was a poet? asks in return, 'If Pope be not a poet, where is poetry
+to be found?' and adds that 'to circumscribe poetry by a definition will
+only show the narrowness of the definer, though a definition which shall
+exclude Pope will not readily be made.' Joseph Warton, too, Johnson's
+contemporary and friend, while preferring the Romantic School to the
+Classical, allows that in that species of poetry wherein Pope excelled
+he is superior to all mankind.
+
+In our century Bowles, whose edition of his works provoked prolonged
+discussion, in which Campbell, Byron, and the _Quarterly Review_ took
+part, places Pope above Dryden. Byron, with more enthusiasm than
+judgment, regarded him as the greatest name in our poetry; Scott, with
+generous appreciation of a genius so alien to his own, called him a
+'true Deacon of the craft,' and at one time proposed editing his works,
+a task projected also by Mr. Ruskin, who, putting Shakespeare aside as
+rather the world's than ours, holds Pope 'to be the most perfect
+representative we have since Chaucer of the true English mind.' 'Matched
+on his own ground,' says Mr. Swinburne, 'he never has been nor can be.'
+And Mr. Lowell in the same strain observes that 'in his own province he
+still stands unapproachably alone.'
+
+What then is Pope's ground? What is this province of which he is the
+sole ruler? To a considerable extent the question has been answered in
+these pages, but it may be well to sum up with more definiteness what
+has been already stated.
+
+In poetry Pope takes a first place in the second order of poets. The
+deficiencies which forbid his entrance into the first rank are obvious.
+He cannot sing, he has no ear for the subtlest melodies of verse, he is
+not a creative poet, and has few of the spirit-stirring thoughts which
+the noblest poets scatter through their pages with apparent
+unconsciousness. There are no depths in Pope and there are no heights;
+he has neither eye for the beauties of Nature, nor ear for her
+harmonies, and a primrose was no more to him than it was to Peter Bell.
+
+These are defects indeed, but nothing is more unfair says a great French
+critic than to judge notable minds solely by their defects, and in spite
+of them Pope's position is so unassailable that the critic must take a
+contracted view of the poet's art who questions his right to the title.
+
+His merits are of a kind not likely to be affected by time; a lively
+fancy, a power of satire almost unrivalled, and a skill in using words
+so consummate that there is no poet, excepting Shakespeare, who has left
+his mark upon the language so strongly. The loss to us if Pope's verse
+were to become extinct cannot readily be measured. He has said in the
+best words what we all know and feel, but cannot express, and has made
+that classical which in weaker hands would be commonplace. His
+sensibility to the claims of his art is exquisite, the adaptation of his
+style to his subject shows the hand of a master, and if these are not
+the highest gifts of a poet, they are gifts to which none but a poet can
+lay claim.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[11] Some qualification may be made to these statements. Pope took
+pleasure in landscape gardening on the English plan, as opposed to the
+formality of the French and Dutch systems, and the design of the Prince
+of Wales's garden is said to have been copied from the poet's at
+Twickenham.
+
+[12] Elwin and Courthope's _Pope_, vol. ii. p. 160.
+
+[13] See the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.
+
+[14] Elwin and Courthope's _Pope_, vol. v., p. 195.
+
+[15] 'Lady Mary,' says Byron, 'was greatly to blame in that quarrel for
+having encouraged Pope.... She should have remembered her own line,
+
+    '"He comes too near who comes to be denied."'
+
+
+[16] _Studies in English Literature_, p. 47.--_Stanford._
+
+[17] Quin (1693-1766) was the famous actor, and Patterson was Thomson's
+deputy in the surveyor-generalship of the Leeward Isles, and ultimately
+his successor.
+
+[18] The Earl of Peterborough, the meteor-like brilliancy of whose
+actions forms one of the most striking chapters in the history of his
+time.
+
+[19] _Life of Pope_, p. 216.
+
+[20] 'Pope and Swift,' says Dr. Johnson, 'had an unnatural delight in
+ideas physically impure, such as every other tongue utters with
+unwillingness, and of which every ear shrinks from the mention.'
+
+[21] Clarendon Press, Oxford.
+
+[22] No doubt many distinguished foreigners who appreciated the beauty
+of the poem had read it in the original.
+
+[23] Stephen's _Pope_, p. 163.
+
+[24] _Lectures on Art_, p. 70, Oxford.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+PRIOR, GAY, YOUNG, BLAIR, THOMSON.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Matthew Prior (1664-1721).]
+
+The ease with which the Queen Anne wits obtained office and rose to
+posts of high trust through the pleasant art of verse-making, is
+conspicuous in the career of Prior. His parents are unknown, the place
+of his birth is somewhat doubtful, although he is claimed by
+Wimborne-Minster, in Dorsetshire, and the first trustworthy facts
+recorded of his early career are that he was a Westminster scholar when
+the famous Dr. Busby, whose discipline was physical as well as mental,
+presided over the school. His father died, and his mother being no
+longer able to pay the school fees, Prior was placed with an uncle who
+kept the Rhenish Wine Tavern in Westminster. His seat was in the bar,
+and there the Earl of Dorset (1637-1705-6), a small poet, but a generous
+patron of poets, found the youth reading Horace, and, pleased with his
+'parts,' sent him back to Westminster, whence he went up to Cambridge as
+a scholar at St. John's, the college destined a century later to receive
+one of the greatest of English poets.
+
+Charles Montague, afterwards Earl of Halifax (1661-1715), the son of a
+younger son of a nobleman, was also a Westminster scholar. He entered
+Trinity College in 1679, and like Prior appears to have owed his good
+fortune to the rhymer's craft. 'At thirty,' writes Lord Macaulay, 'he
+would gladly have given all his chances in life for a comfortable
+vicarage and a chaplain's scarf. At thirty-seven he was First Lord of
+the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a Regent of the Kingdom.'
+The literary history of the Queen Anne age has many associations with
+his name. He proved a liberal patron of the wits, and of Pope among
+them, by subscribing largely to his _Homer_; but the poet's memory was
+stronger for imaginary injuries than for real benefits, and because
+Halifax had patronized Tickell, he figures in the Prologue to the
+Satires as 'full-blown Bufo, puffed by every quill.'
+
+Prior and Montague began their rhyming career early, and a partnership
+production, entitled the _Hind and Panther, transversed to the story of
+the Country Mouse and the City Mouse_ (1687), a parody of Dryden's
+famous poem published in the same year, brought both authors into
+notice. At the age of twenty-six Prior, who had previously obtained a
+fellowship, was appointed Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague. After
+that he rose steadily to eminence, became Secretary of State in Ireland,
+and was finally appointed Ambassador at the French Court. High office
+brings its troubles, and in those days was not without its perils. In
+1711 Prior was sent secretly to Paris to negotiate a peace, for which,
+when the Whigs came again into power, he was imprisoned and expected to
+lose his head. While in prison, where he remained for two years
+(1715-1717), the poet wrote _Alma_, a humorous and speculative poem on
+the relations of the soul and body, and when released published his
+_Poems_ by subscription in a noble folio, said to be the largest-sized
+volume in the whole range of English poetry. He gained 4,000 guineas by
+the publication, and with that sum and an estate purchased for him by
+Lord Harley, Prior was able to live in comfort. He died in September,
+1721, in his fifty-eighth year, and was buried in Westminster Abbey,
+under a monument for which he had had the vanity to pay five hundred
+pounds.
+
+The peculiar merit of Prior is better understood in our day than it was
+in his own. We read his poems solely for the sake of the 'lighter
+pieces,' which Johnson despised. The poet thought _Solomon_ his best
+work, but no one who toils through the three books which form that poem
+is likely to agree with this estimate. Dulness pervades the work like an
+atmosphere, but it had its admirers in the last century, and among them
+was John Wesley, who, in reply to Johnson's complaint of its
+tediousness, said he should as soon think of calling the Second or Sixth
+Æneid tedious. In the preface to the poem Prior declares that he "had
+rather be thought a good Englishman than the best poet or greatest
+scholar that ever wrote," a passage which does more honour to the poet
+than any in the text. A far more popular piece was _Henry and Emma_,
+which even so fine a judge of poetry as Cowper called 'inimitable.'
+Tastes change, let us hope for the better, and possibly none but the
+greatest poets remain unaffected by time. Assuredly Prior does not, and
+_Henry and Emma_ affords a striking illustration of the contrast between
+the poetical spirit of Prior's age and that which influences ours. The
+poem is founded on the fine ballad of the _Nut-Browne Maide_. The story,
+as originally told, is homely and quaint, written without apparent
+effort and told in 360 lines. Prior requires considerably more than
+twice that number, and his maid and her lover, instead of using the
+simple language befitting the theme, employ the conventional machinery
+of the age, and bring Jove and Mars, Cupid and Venus upon the scene,
+with allusions to Marlborough's victories and to 'Anna's wondrous
+reign.'
+
+_Alma_, a poem written in Hudibrastic verse, which shows that Prior had
+in a measure caught the vein of Butler, has some couplets familiar in
+quotations. He won, too, not a little contemporary reputation for his
+tales in verse, which are singularly coarse; but an age that tolerated
+Mrs. Manley and read the plays and novels of Aphra Behn was not likely
+to object to the grossness of Prior. Dr. Johnson would not admit that
+his poems were unfit for a lady's table, and Wesley, who appears to have
+been strangely oblivious to Prior's moral delinquencies, observes that
+his tales are the best told of any in the English tongue. Cowper praised
+him for his 'charming ease,' and this gift enabled him to write some of
+the most delightful occasional verses produced in the century. There is
+nothing more exquisite of its kind than his address, _To a Child of
+Quality_, written when the child was five years old and the poet forty,
+and one is not surprised to learn that Prior was admired by Thomas
+Moore, who more than once caught his note. A reader familiar with Moore
+and ignorant of Prior would without hesitation attribute the following
+stanzas, from the _Answer to Chloe Jealous_, to the Irish poet:
+
+    'The god of us versemen (you know, Child), the sun,
+      How after his journeys he sets up his rest;
+    If at morning o'er earth 'tis his fancy to run,
+      At night he declines on his Thetis's breast.
+
+    'So when I am wearied with wandering all day,
+      To thee, my delight, in the evening I come;
+    No matter what beauties I saw in my way;
+      They were but my visits, but thou art my home.
+
+    'Then finish, dear Cloe, this pastoral war,
+      And let us, like Horace and Lydia, agree;
+    For thou art a girl as much brighter than her
+      As he was a poet sublimer than me.'
+
+"The grammatical lapse in these last two lines," says Mr. Austin Dobson,
+"perhaps calls for correction, but many readers will probably agree with
+Moore (_Diary_, November, 1818), 'that it is far prettier as it is.'
+'Nothing,' he says truly, 'can be more gracefully light and gallant than
+this little poem.'"
+
+It was fancy and not imagination which conceived the following lines,
+but how charming is the fancy! The poem, which is given in a slightly
+abridged form, is addressed
+
+'TO A LADY: SHE REFUSING TO CONTINUE A DISPUTE WITH ME, AND LEAVING ME
+IN THE ARGUMENT.
+
+    'In the dispute whate'er I said,
+      My heart was by my tongue belied;
+    And in my looks you might have read
+      How much I argued on your side.
+
+    'You, far from danger as from fear,
+      Might have sustained an open fight;
+    For seldom your opinions err;
+      Your eyes are always in the right.
+
+    'Alas! not hoping to subdue,
+      I only to the fight aspired;
+    To keep the beauteous foe in view
+      Was all the glory I desired.
+
+    'But she, howe'er of victory sure,
+      Contemns the wreath too long delayed;
+    And, armed with more immediate power,
+      Calls cruel silence to her aid.
+
+    'Deeper to wound, she shuns the fight:
+      She drops her arms, to gain the field;
+    Secures her conquest by her flight;
+      And triumphs, when she seems to yield.
+
+    'So when the Parthian turned his steed,
+      And from the hostile camp withdrew;
+    With cruel skill the backward reed
+      He sent; and as he fled, he slew.'
+
+Wit and a ready command of verse are the characteristics of Prior's
+poetry. Both of these gifts are to be seen in his lively _English
+ballad on the Taking of Namur by the King of Great Britain_, in which he
+travesties Boileau's _Ode sur la prise de Namur_. As an epigrammatist he
+reaped his advantage from a study of Martial, and in this department of
+verse Prior is often successful. If brevity be a prominent merit in an
+epigram, he sometimes excels his master, as, for example, in this
+stanza:
+
+    'To John I owed great obligation;
+      But John unhappily thought fit
+    To publish it to all the nation;
+      Sure John and I are more than quit.'[25]
+
+This is half the length of the original Latin, and what it loses in
+elegance it gains in point.
+
+It may be hoped that the next quotation is a libel on Bishop Atterbury;
+if so, the lines have every merit but truth. The epigram is on the
+funeral of the Duke of Buckingham, who died in 1721.
+
+    'I have no hopes,' the duke he says, and dies;
+    'In sure and certain hopes,' the prelate cries:
+    Of these two learned peers, I prithee say, man,
+    Who is the lying knave, the priest or layman?
+    The duke he stands an infidel confest;
+    'He's our dear brother,' quoth the lordly priest.
+    The duke, though knave, still 'brother dear,' he cries;
+    And who can say the reverend prelate lies?
+
+Prior, it may be observed here, could say pointed things in prose as
+well as in verse, and nothing can be happier than his reply to the
+Frenchman's inquiry whether the King of England had anything to show in
+his palace equal to the paintings at Versailles illustrating the
+victories of Louis XIV: 'The monuments of my master's actions,' said the
+poet, 'are to be seen everywhere except in his own house.'
+
+It is always interesting to link poet with poet, and in relation to
+Prior many readers will recall the pathetic incident related of Sir
+Walter Scott when the wonderful intellect which had entranced the world
+was giving indications of decay. Lockhart relates how, as they were
+travelling together, a quotation from Prior led Scott to make another,
+slightly altered for the occasion, and he adds:
+
+'This seemed to put him into the train of Prior, and he repeated several
+striking passages both of the _Alma_ and the _Solomon_. He was still at
+this when we reached a longish hill, and he got out to walk a little. As
+we climbed the ascent, he leaning heavily on my shoulder, we were met by
+a couple of beggars, who were, or professed to be, old soldiers both of
+Egypt and the Peninsula. One of them wanted a leg, which circumstance
+alone would have opened Scott's purse-strings, though, _ex facie_, a sad
+old blackguard; but the fellow had recognized his person as it happened,
+and in asking an alms bade God bless him fervently by his name. The
+mendicants went on their way, and we stood breathing on the knoll. Sir
+Walter followed them with his eye, and planting his stick firmly on the
+sod, repeated, without break or hesitation Prior's verses to the
+historian Mezeray. That he applied them to himself was touchingly
+obvious, and therefore I must quote them.
+
+    '"Whate'er thy countrymen have done,
+    By law and wit, by sword and gun,
+      In thee is faithfully recited;
+    And all the living world that view
+    Thy work, give thee the praises due,
+      At once instructed and delighted.
+
+    '"Yet for the fame of all these deeds,
+    What beggar in the _Invalides_,
+      With lameness broke, with blindness smitten,
+    Wished ever decently to die,
+    To have been either Mezeray,
+      Or any monarch he has written?
+
+    '"It strange, dear author, yet it true is,
+    That down from Pharamond to Louis
+      All covet life, yet call it pain:
+    All feel the ill, yet shun the cure;
+    Can sense this paradox endure?
+      Resolve me Cambray[26] or Fontaine.
+
+    '"The man in graver tragic known
+    (Though his best part long since was done),
+      Still on the stage desires to tarry;
+    And he who played the Harlequin,
+    After the jest still loads the scene,
+      Unwilling to retire, though weary."'
+
+[Sidenote: John Gay (1685-1732).]
+
+Gay, who enjoyed an unbroken friendship with the brotherhood of wits,
+and was treated by them like a spoilt child, was born at Barnstaple in
+1685, and left an orphan at the age of ten. He was educated at the free
+grammar school in the town, and was afterwards, to his discontent,
+apprenticed to a mercer in London. He escaped from this uncongenial
+employment to be dependent on an uncle, and thus early exhibited his
+life-long disposition to rely upon others for support. 'Providence,'
+Swift writes, 'never designed Gay to be above two-and-twenty by his
+thoughtlessness and gullibility. He has as little foresight of age,
+sickness, poverty, or loss of admirers as a girl of fifteen.' His
+weakness, it has been said, appealed to Swift's strength, and Swift,
+Pope, and Arbuthnot were Gay's most faithful friends. They found
+something in him to laugh at and to love. Ladies, too, treated him with
+the kind of friendliness which has a touch of commiseration. In 1714 Gay
+was appointed secretary to Lord Clarendon, a post which he owed to
+Swift, but the death of Queen Anne in that year brought the Whigs into
+office, and destroyed the poet's prospects. Prior to this he had been
+secretary to the imperious Duchess of Monmouth. He was now left without
+money or employment, and owed much to the generosity of Pope. It was
+Gay's lot 'in suing long to bide,' to be always hoping, and nearly
+always disappointed. 'He seems,' says his latest biographer, 'to have
+begun his career under the impression that it was somebody's duty to
+provide for him in the world, and this impression clung to him through
+nearly the whole of a lifetime.'[27] Ten years before his death he was
+eagerly looking to others for support. Writing to Swift, he says: 'I
+lodge at present in Burlington House, and have received many civilities
+from many great men, but very few real benefits. They wonder at each
+other for not providing for me, and I wonder at them all.'
+
+Gay's first poem of any mark was _The Shepherd's Week_ (1714), six
+burlesque pastorals, a subject proposed to him by Pope, who was then
+smarting from the praise Philips had received in _The Guardian_. But if
+Pope meant Gay to poke his fun at Philips in _The Shepherd's Week_, he
+must have been disappointed, for the poems were accepted as genuine
+bucolics, and although humorously absurd, are, to say the least, more
+true to rustic life than the pastorals either of Philips or of Pope.
+_The Shepherd's Week_ was followed by _Trivia_ (1715), a piece suggested
+by Swift's _City Shower_. It is one of Gay's most notable productions,
+not as a poem, but as a vivid description of the streets of London
+nearly two hundred years ago. The great reputation he obtained as the
+author of _The Fables_ (1727), and still more of _The Beggar's Opera_
+(1728), the idea of which was suggested to Gay by Swift, survived him
+for some years. _The Fables_ were written for and dedicated to the
+youthful Duke of Cumberland, who is asked to "accept the moral lay, and
+in these tales mankind survey." There is skill and ingenuity in the
+poems, but higher merit they cannot boast, and young readers are likely
+to prefer the illustrations which generally accompany _The Fables_ to
+the letterpress. Many of Gay's allusions are beyond the apprehension of
+the young, and have a political flavour. _The Beggar's Opera_ was
+intended as a burlesque of the Italian opera, which had been long the
+laughing-stock of men of letters, and as the play was thought to have
+political significance, and the character of Macheath to be a portrait
+of Walpole, it was received with enthusiasm, and acted in London for
+about sixty nights. So popular did the opera become, that ladies carried
+about the songs on their fans.
+
+Eight years before, Gay had published his poems by subscription, and in
+those happy days for versemen had gained £1,000 by the venture. He put
+the money into South Sea stock, and lost it all. For _The Beggar's
+Opera_ he received about £800. It was followed by _Polly_, a play of the
+same coarse character, which, for political reasons, was not allowed to
+be acted. The result was that it had a large sale, and put money in
+Gay's purse. Ten thousand five hundred copies are said to have been
+printed in one year, and the £1,200 realized by the sale were very
+wisely retained for the poet's use by the Duke of Queensberry, under
+whose roof he had at length found a warm nest. To the student Gay is
+chiefly interesting as the only noteworthy poet of the period, south of
+the Tweed, gifted with a lyrical capacity. Two or three of his songs and
+ballads, and especially _Black-Eyed Susan_, have a charm beyond the
+reach of the mechanical versifier. But the art of song is at a low level
+even in the hands of Gay. The lyric which the Elizabethan and Jacobean
+poets loved so well, and of which the present century has produced
+specimens to be matched only by Shakespeare, may be said to have been
+lost to English poetry for the first half of the last century, since
+neither Prior's verse, delightful though it be, nor the songs of Gay,
+have enough of the poetical element to form exceptions to this
+statement.
+
+In his _Tales_ he follows Prior in grossness, while inferior to him in
+art. Like the greater number of the Queen Anne poets, Gay flatters with
+a free hand. In an epistle addressed to Lintot, the bookseller, he
+declares that Anacreon lives once more in Sheffield, and Waller in
+Granville, that Buckingham's verse will last to distant time; while Ovid
+sings again in Addison, and 'Homer's _Iliad_ shines in his _Campaign_.'
+
+One of the liveliest and most graceful of Gay's poems is addressed to
+Pope 'On his having finished his translation of Homer's _Iliad_.' It is
+called _A Welcome from Greece_, and describes the friends who assembled
+to greet the poet on his return to England.
+
+Three stanzas from the Epistle shall be quoted:
+
+    'Oh, what a concourse swarms on yonder quay!
+      The sky re-echoes with new shouts of joy;
+    By all this show, I ween 'tis Lord Mayor's day;
+      I hear the voice of trumpet and hautboy--
+    No, now I see them near.--Oh, these are they
+      Who come in crowds to welcome thee from Troy.
+    Hail to the bard, whom long as lost we mourned
+    From siege, from battle, and from storm returned!
+
+    'What lady's that to whom he gently bends?
+      Who knows not her? Ah! those are Wortley's eyes:
+    How art thou honoured, numbered with her friends!
+      For she distinguishes the good and wise.
+    The sweet-tongued Murray near her side attends;
+      Now to my heart the glance of Howard flies;
+    Now Hervey, fair of face, I mark full well,
+    With thee Youth's youngest daughter, sweet Lepell.
+
+    'I see two lovely sisters hand in hand,
+      The fair-haired Martha and Teresa brown;
+    Madge Bellenden, the tallest of the land;
+      And smiling Mary, soft and fair as down.
+    Yonder I see the cheerful Duchess stand,
+      For friendship, zeal, and blithesome humours known;
+    Whence that loud shout in such a hearty strain?
+    Why, all the Hamiltons are in her train!'
+
+Gay's love of good living was known to all his friends. 'As the French
+philosopher,' Congreve wrote, 'used to prove his existence by _cogito
+ergo sum_, the greatest proof of Gay's existence is _edit ergo est_.'
+For a long time his health compelled him to give up wine, and he tells
+Swift that he had also left off verse-making, 'for I really think that
+man must be a bold writer who trusts to wit without it.' He was
+dispirited, he told Swift not long before his death, for want of a
+pursuit, and found 'indolence and idleness the most tiresome things in
+the world.'
+
+Gay died in 1732 at the Duke of Queensberry's house, and Pope grieved
+that one of his nearest and longest ties was broken. He was interred, to
+quote Arbuthnot's words, 'as a peer of the realm,' in Westminster Abbey.
+The superficial character of the poet may be seen in his couplet
+transcribed upon the monument:
+
+    'Life is a jest, and all things show it;
+    I thought so once, and now I know it.'
+
+[Sidenote: Edward Young (1684-1765).]
+
+Gay's moderate gift of song was withheld from the famous author of the
+_Night Thoughts_. Yet Young was vain enough to think that he possessed
+it, and wrote a patriotic ode called _Ocean_, preceded by an elaborate
+essay on lyric poetry. He also produced _Imperium Pelagi_ (1729), _A
+Naval Lyric written in Imitation of Pindar's spirit_. The lyric, which
+was travestied by Fielding in his _Tom Thumb_,[28] reads like a
+burlesque, and badly treated though Pindar was by the versemen of the
+last century, there is perhaps not one of them who mocks him more
+outrageously than Young. He says that this ode is an original, and no
+critic is likely to dispute the assertion.
+
+Young was born in 1684 at Upham, near Winchester, his father, who was
+afterwards Dean of Sarum, being at that time the rector of the village.
+Edward was placed upon the foundation at Winchester College, and
+remained there until he was eighteen. He was then sent up to New
+College, and afterwards removed to Corpus. At the age of twenty-seven he
+was nominated to a law fellowship at All Souls, and took his degree of
+B.C.L. and his doctor's degree some years later. Characteristically
+enough he began his poetical career by _An Epistle to Lord Lansdowne_
+(1712), who is praised for his heavenly numbers, and is said to have
+been born "to make the muse immortal." His next poem of any consequence,
+_The Last Day_, written in heroic couplets, and filling three books, is
+correct, or fairly so, in versification, and execrable in taste. Young,
+it may be supposed, wished to produce a sense of solemnity in the
+treatment of his theme, and he does so by lamenting that the very land
+'where the Stuarts filled an awful throne' will in that day be
+forgotten. The want of taste which so often deforms Young's verse is
+also seen in the imagery he employs to illustrate the fear which even
+good men may have on appearing before that 'dread tribunal.'
+
+    'Thus the chaste bridegroom, when the priest draws nigh,
+    Beholds his blessing with a trembling eye;
+    Feels doubtful passions throb in every vein,
+    And in his cheeks are mingled joy and pain,
+    Lest still some intervening chance should rise,
+    Leap forth at once, and snatch the golden prize,
+    Inflame his woe, by bringing it so late,
+    And stab him in the crisis of his fate.'
+
+His next poem, _The Force of Religion, or Vanquished Love_, was
+suggested by the execution of Lady Jane Grey and Lord Guildford, a
+subject chosen for a tragedy by John Banks (1694), by Rowe in 1715, and
+treated with considerable dramatic power in our own day by Ross Neil. In
+Young's hands this fine theme becomes a rhetorical exercise without
+poetry and without pathos. A few lines will suffice to show the style of
+the poem. Jane and Dudley, it must be premised, are imprisoned in a
+gloomy hall:
+
+    'What can they do? They fix their mournful eyes--
+    Then Guildford, thus abruptly: "I despise
+    An empire lost; I fling away the crown;
+    Numbers have laid that bright delusion down;
+    But where's the Charles, or Dioclesian, where,
+    Could quit the blooming, wedded, weeping fair?
+    Oh! to dwell ever on thy lip! to stand
+    In full possession of thy snowy hand!
+    And thro' the unclouded crystal of thine eye
+    The heavenly treasures of thy mind to spy!
+    Till rapture reason happily destroys,
+    And my soul wanders through immortal joys!
+    Give me the world, and ask me, where's my bliss?
+    I clasp thee to my breast and answer, this."'
+
+Verse of this quality, which might be amply quoted, is of interest to
+the student of literature, since in Young's day it passed current for
+poetry. But in accepting his claims as a poet the faith of the age must
+have been often strained.
+
+Walpole, who despised the whole tribe of poets, and cared nothing for
+literature, had by some strange chance awarded to Young a pension of
+£200 a-year, whereupon in a piece called _The Instalment_, addressed to
+Sir Robert, Britain is called upon to behold
+
+    'His azure ribbon and his radiant star,'
+
+and the poet's breast 'glows with grateful fire' as he exclaims:
+
+    'The streams of royal bounty turned by thee
+    Refresh the dry domains of poesy.
+    My fortune shows, when arts are Walpole's care,
+    What slender worth forbids us to despair:
+    Be this thy partial smile from censure free,
+    'Twas meant for merit, though it fell on me.'
+
+Following in the steps of George Sandys, but with inferior power, and in
+a less racy diction, Young performed the vain task of paraphrasing part
+of the Book of Job, one of the noblest poems the world possesses, and
+translated in our authorized version in language not to be surpassed for
+dignity and simplicity.
+
+In 1719 his _Busiris_ was performed. _The Revenge_, a better known
+tragedy, written on the French model, followed in 1721, and kept the
+stage for some time. Seven years later _The Brothers_, his third and
+last tragedy, was in rehearsal, but the poet, who had lately taken holy
+orders, withdrew it at the last moment. These tragedies, which are full
+of sound and fury, are destitute of tragic power. _The Revenge_, in
+which Zanga acts the part of an Iago, has some forcible scenes, and so,
+despite much rant and fustian, has _Busiris_. Plenty of blood is shed,
+of course, and the heroines of the plays die by their own hands. Tragedy
+is supposed to exercise an elevating influence, but to counteract this
+happy result, _Busiris_ and _The Revenge_ are followed by indecent
+epilogues, in which the speakers jest at the feelings which the plays
+may have excited. For _The Brothers_ Young wrote his own epilogue. It is
+decent and dull. His genius was better fitted for satire than for the
+drama, and _The Universal Passion_, which consists of seven satires
+published in a collected form in 1728, brought him reputation and money.
+The poet Crabbe was never more surprised in his life than when John
+Murray (the famous 'My Murray' of Byron) gave him £3,000 for the
+copyright of his poems; Young received the same sum for work
+immeasurably inferior in value, and in a less legitimate way. Two
+thousand pounds, it is stated, was a gift from the Duke of Grafton, who
+said it was the best bargain he ever made, as the satires were worth
+£4,000. Young, it will be seen, preceded Pope as a satirist. He is more
+generous and humane, and has none of the venomous attacks on living
+persons by which Pope added piquancy to his verse. But he is a careless
+writer, and for the most part lacks the exquisite precision, the subtle
+wit, the rhythmical felicity, which make the couplets of Pope so
+memorable. _The Dunciad_, the _Moral Essays_, and the _Imitations_ are
+read by all lovers of literature, but _The Universal Passion_ is
+forgotten. Of the six satires, the two on women are the most spirited,
+and may be compared with Pope's on the same subject. The different
+foibles, and faults worse than foibles of the women of that day are
+exhibited with a satirist's licence, and occasionally with a Pope-like
+terseness. Take the following, for example:
+
+    'There is no woman where there's no reserve,
+    And 'tis on plenty your poor lovers starve.'
+
+    'Few to good breeding make a just pretence;
+    Good breeding is the blossom of good sense.'
+
+    'A shameless woman is the worst of men.'
+
+    'Naked in nothing should a woman be,
+    But veil her very wit with modesty.'
+
+It was not until he was nearly fifty that Young, disappointed of the
+preferment he sought, took holy orders, and in 1730 accepted the college
+living of Welwyn, in Herts, which he held till his death.
+
+In the following year the poet married Lady Elizabeth Lee, a daughter of
+the Earl of Lichfield, a union that lasted ten years. One son was the
+offspring of this marriage. Lady Elizabeth had a daughter by a former
+marriage, who was married to Mr. Temple, a son of Lord Palmerston, and
+shortly before her own death she lost both daughter and son-in-law, who,
+there can be little doubt, are the Philander and Narcissa of the _Night
+Thoughts_, the earlier books of which were published in 1742. This once
+celebrated poem, written in his old age, is the one effort of Young's
+genius that has enjoyed a great popularity. It suited well an age which,
+while far from moral, delighted in moral treatises and in didactic
+verse. In the _Night Thoughts_ Young remembers that he is a clergyman,
+and puts on his gown and bands. He puts on also his singing robes, and
+shows the reader what none of his earlier poems prove, that he is in the
+presence of a poet.
+
+The _Night Thoughts_ is remarkable in its finest passages for a strong,
+but sombre imagination, and for a command of his instrument that puts
+Young at times nearly on a level with the greatest masters of blank
+verse. On this height, however, he does not stay long. He is rich in
+great thoughts, but they do not fall unconsciously, as it were, while
+the poet pursues his argument. They are aphorisms uttered generally in
+single lines which are apt to break the continuity of the poem and to
+injure the harmony of its versification. The theme of Life, Death, and
+Immortality is not a narrow one, and affords ample space for imaginative
+treatment. Young's treatment of it is too often declamatory; he drops
+the poet in the rhetorician and the wit. There is much of the false
+sublime in the poem, and much that reveals the hollow character of the
+writer. The first book is the finest, sparkling with felicitous
+expressions and rising frequently to true poetry. The poetical quality
+of that book, however, is lessened by the author's passion for
+antithesis. The merit of the following passage, for example, is not due
+to poetical inspiration:
+
+    'How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
+    How complicate, how wonderful is man!
+    How passing wonder He, who made him such!
+    Who centered in our make such strange extremes
+    From different natures, marvellously mixed,
+    Connexion exquisite of distant worlds!
+    Distinguished link in being's endless chain!
+    Midway from nothing to the Deity;
+    A beam etherial, sullied, and absorbt!
+    Though sullied and dishonoured still divine!
+    Dim miniature of greatness absolute!
+    An heir of glory! a frail child of dust!
+    Helpless immortal! insect infinite!
+    A worm! a god!--I tremble at myself,
+    And in myself am lost. At home a stranger,
+    Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast,
+    And wondering at her own: How reason reels!
+    O what a miracle to man is man!
+    Triumphantly distressed! what joy! what dread!
+    Alternately transported and alarmed!
+    What can preserve my life? or what destroy?
+    An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave:
+    Legions of angels can't confine me there.'
+
+The opening of the ninth and last book will give a more favourable
+illustration of Young's style:
+
+    'As when a traveller, a long day past
+    In painful search of what he cannot find,
+    At night's approach, content with the next cot,
+    There ruminates awhile, his labour lost;
+    Then cheers his heart with what his fate affords,
+    And chants his sonnet to deceive the time,
+    Till the due season calls him to repose;
+    Thus I, long-travelled in the ways of men,
+    And dancing with the rest the giddy maze
+    Where Disappointment smiles at Hope's career;
+    Warned by the languor of life's evening ray,
+    At length have housed me in an humble shed,
+    Where, future wandering banished from my thought,
+    And waiting, patient, the sweet hour of rest,
+    I chase the moments with a serious song.
+    Song soothes our pains, and age has pains to soothe.'
+
+While moralizing on man's mortality Young is seldom a cheerful monitor,
+he dwells with too great persistence on the incidents of death and of
+bodily corruption, too little on life with which we have more to do than
+with death. Thus with a strange perversion he exclaims:
+
+    'This is the desart, this the solitude,
+    How populous, how vital, is the grave!
+    This is creation's melancholy vault,
+    The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom,
+    The land of apparitions, empty shades!
+    All, all on earth is shadow, all beyond
+    Is substance; the reverse is folly's creed.'
+
+and harping on the same theme in the ninth book, says:
+
+    'What is the world itself? Thy world--a grave.
+    Where is the dust that has not been alive?
+    The spade, the plough, disturb our ancestors;
+    From human mould we reap our daily bread;
+    The globe around earth's hollow surface shakes,
+    And is the ceiling of her sleeping sons.
+    O'er devastation we blind revels keep;
+    Whole buried towns support the dancer's heel.'
+
+[Sidenote: Robert Blair (1699-1746).]
+
+On laying down the _Night Thoughts_ the student may be advised to read
+Blair's _Grave_, a poem in less than 800 lines of blank verse, composed
+in a fresher and more rigorous style than the far larger work of Young,
+and rather moulded, as Mr. Saintsbury has observed, 'upon dramatic than
+upon purely poetical models.' _The Grave_, which was written before the
+publication of the _Night Thoughts_,[29] abounds with poetical
+felicities, and is pregnant with suggestions that seize the imagination,
+and appeal alike to the intellect and the heart. The brevity of the
+piece is in its favour; there is not a line that flags.
+
+    'Tell us, ye dead! will none of you, in pity
+    To those you left behind, disclose the secret?
+    Oh! that some courteous ghost would blab it out,--
+    What 'tis you are and we must shortly be.
+    I've heard that souls departed have sometimes
+    Forewarned men of their death. 'Twas kindly done
+    To knock and give the alarm. But what means
+    This stinted charity? 'Tis but lame kindness
+    That does its work by halves. Why might you not
+    Tell us what 'tis to die? Do the strict laws
+    Of your society forbid your speaking
+    Upon a point so nice?--I'll ask no more:
+    Sullen, like lamps in sepulchres, your shine
+    Enlightens but yourselves. Well, 'tis no matter;
+    A very little time will clear up all,
+    And make us learn'd as you are, and as close.'
+
+
+Blair, who was a Scotch clergyman, wrote also an _Elegy in Memory of
+William Law_, a Professor of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh, whose
+daughter he married. He writes in a masculine and homely style. His
+imagery is often more powerful than pleasing, but some of his similes
+win attention by their beauty. For example:
+
+    "Look how the fair one weeps! the conscious tears
+    Stand thick as dewdrops on the bells of flowers."
+
+Among the victims claimed by the grave is
+
+        'The long demurring maid,
+    Whose lonely unappropriated sweets
+    Smiled, like yon knot of cowslips on the cliff,
+    Not to be come at by the willing hand.'
+
+And the death of a good man is pictured in this musical couplet:
+
+    'Night dews fall not more gently to the ground
+    Nor weary worn out winds expire so soft.'
+
+Cowper, referring to the poets of his century, said that every warbler
+had Pope's tune by heart. But if they had the tune by heart, many of
+them did not make it a vehicle for their verse, and among these are
+poets of the weight and worth of Thomson and Young, of Gray and Collins.
+Poets of a minor order, too, such as Somerville, Armstrong, Glover,
+Shenstone, Akenside, and John Dyer, either did not use the heroic
+distich which Pope crowned with such honour, or used it in their least
+significant poems.
+
+[Sidenote: James Thomson (1700-1748).]
+
+Thomson's influence, though less visible than Pope's, was probably as
+great. It was felt by the poets who loved Nature, and had no turn for
+satire. To pass to him from Prior, Gay, and Young is to leave the town
+for the country. English poetry owes much to the author of _The
+Seasons_, who was the first among the poets of his century to bring men
+back to 'Nature, the Vicar of the Almighty Lord.' He could not, indeed,
+shake off altogether the fetters of the conventional diction current in
+his day, and his style is often turgid and verbose. But Thomson had, to
+use a phrase of his own, 'a fine flame of imagination,' and when brought
+face to face with Nature he has the inspiration of a poet who discerns
+the lessons which Nature is ready to teach.
+
+James Thomson was born at Ednam, on the banks of the Tweed, on September
+11th, 1700, but his father removed to Jedburgh shortly afterwards, and
+there the future poet gained his first impression of rural scenes. He
+began to rhyme in boyhood, but, unlike most young poets, had the good
+sense to make an annual bonfire of his youthful effusions. At the early
+age of fifteen he was sent to the university at Edinburgh, his father,
+who was a Presbyterian minister, wishing that his son should follow the
+same vocation. But Thomson was not destined to 'wag his head in a
+pulpit.' He had a friend at this time in David Mallet, a minor poet of
+more prudence than principle, and when Mallet had the good fortune to
+gain a tutorship in London, his companion also started for the
+metropolis in search of money and fame. It was a desperate venture, and
+the young poet's difficulties were increased by the loss of his letters
+of introduction. Scotchmen however have always countrymen willing to
+help them, and Thomson whose pedigree on the mother's side connected him
+with the famous house of Home, found temporary employment as tutor to a
+child of Lord Binning who belonged by marriage to the same family.
+Afterwards he resided with Millan, a bookseller at Charing Cross, and
+then having finished _Winter_ (1726), on which he had been at work for
+some time, he sold it to the publisher for three guineas. Before long
+it was read and warmly praised by Aaron Hill, then a man of mark in the
+world of letters. Sir Spencer Compton, the Speaker, to whom the poem was
+dedicated, gave the poet twenty guineas for the compliment; Rundle, the
+Bishop of Derry, and several ladies of rank cheered him with their
+praise, and Thomson's success was assured. It was the age of patrons,
+and he practised without shame and without discrimination the art of
+flattery. Each book of _The Seasons_ had a dedication, and the honour
+was one for which some kind of payment was expected. _Summer_ appeared
+in 1727 and _Spring_ in the year following. In 1729 the appearance of
+_Britannia_ showed the popularity of the poet and of his theme, for
+three editions were sold. It is a distinctly party poem, and contains an
+attack upon Walpole--whom he had previously praised as the 'most
+illustrious of patriots'--for submitting to indignities from Spain. The
+British Lion roars loudly in it, but there is more of fustian in the
+piece than of true patriotism. 'How dares,' the poet exclaims, 'the
+proud Iberian rouse to wrath the masters of the main:'
+
+    'Who told him that the big incumbent war
+    Would not ere this have rolled his trembling ports
+    In smoky ruin? and his guilty stores,
+    Won by the ravage of a butchered world,
+    Yet unatoned, sunk in the swallowing deep,
+    Or led the glittering prize into the Thames?'
+
+In February, 1729-30, Thomson's tragedy of _Sophonisba_, a subject
+previously chosen by Marston (1606), and by Lee (1676), was acted at
+Drury Lane. The play was dedicated to the queen, and on the opening
+night the house was crowded, but the success of the piece was slight.
+Thomson's genius was not dramatic, and while his characters declaim,
+they do not act. His next play, _Agamemnon_ (1738), was not lost for
+want of labour or of friends. Pope appeared in the theatre on the first
+night, and was greeted with applause. The Prince and Princess of Wales
+were present on another occasion, but the play did not live long. His
+third attempt, _Edward and Eleanora_, was prohibited by the Lord
+Chamberlain, since it was supposed to praise the Prince of Wales at the
+expense of the Court. In 1740 the _Masque of Alfred_, by Thomson and
+Mallet, was performed. _Tancred and Sigismunda_ followed in 1745, and
+this tragedy, in which Garrick played the leading part, had at the time
+a considerable measure of success. The plot is more interesting than
+that of _Sophonisba_, and the characters are more life-like. Despite its
+effusive sentiment, Garrick's splendid acting would, no doubt, make the
+tragedy effective on the stage, but it does not add to the literary
+reputation of the poet. _Coriolanus_, Thomson's last drama, was not
+performed upon the stage until the year after his death.
+
+Voltaire, who had met Thomson and liked him--the liking, indeed, seemed
+to be universal--praised his tragedies for being 'elegantly writ.' 'It
+may be,' he says, 'that his heroes are neither moving nor busy enough,
+but taking him all in all, methinks he has the highest claim to the
+greatest esteem.' The value of Voltaire's criticism of an English
+dramatist is best appreciated by remembering his ignorant judgment of
+Shakespeare.
+
+Thomson's laurels were gained in another field of poetry. On the
+production of _Autumn_ in 1730, _The Seasons_ in its complete form was
+published by subscription in quarto. The four books, as we have already
+said, appeared at different times, _Winter_ being the first in order and
+_Autumn_ the latest. The Hymn with which the poem concludes may be
+compared, and will not greatly suffer in the comparison, with Adam's
+morning hymn in the fifth book of _Paradise Lost_, and with Coleridge's
+_Hymn in the Valley of Chamouni_. Like them it is raised, to use the
+poet's own words, to an 'Almighty Father.' A brief extract shall be
+given:
+
+    'His praise, ye brooks, attune, ye trembling rills;
+    And let me catch it as I muse along.
+    Ye headlong torrents, rapid, and profound;
+    Ye softer floods, that lead the humid maze
+    Along the vale; and thou, majestic main,
+    A secret world of wonders in thyself,
+    Sound His stupendous praise, whose greater voice
+    Or bids you roar, or bids your roarings fall.
+    Soft roll your incense, herbs, and fruits, and flowers,
+    In mingled clouds to Him, whose sun exalts,
+    Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil paints.
+    Ye forests bend, ye harvests wave, to Him;
+    Breathe your still song into the reaper's heart,
+    As home he goes beneath the joyous moon.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Great source of day! best image here below
+    Of thy Creator, ever pouring wide,
+    From world to world, the vital ocean round,
+    On Nature write with every beam His praise.
+    The thunder rolls: be hushed the prostrate world;
+    While cloud to cloud returns the solemn hymn.
+    Bleat out afresh, ye hills; ye mossy rocks
+    Retain the sound: the broad responsive low,
+    Ye valleys, raise; for the Great Shepherd reigns,
+    And His unsuffering kingdom yet will come.'
+
+Swift complains that the _Seasons_, being all descriptive, nothing is
+doing, a defect inseparable from the subject. But the work has a poet's
+best gift--imagination--and a poet's instinct for apprehending the charm
+of what is minute in Nature, as well as of what is grand.
+
+Thomson has been called the naturalist's poet, and Hartley Coleridge
+observes that he is 'a perfect reservoir of natural images.' In his
+account of what he had learnt only by report he depends sometimes on the
+ignorant traditions of the country people; but in describing what he
+observes with the bodily eye, and with the eye of the mind, he is
+faithful to what he sees, and to what he perceives. No Dutch painter can
+be more exact and accurate than Thomson in the delineation of familiar
+scenes, and of animal life. In illustration of this gift, which Cowper
+shares with him, a scene, not to be surpassed for truthfulness of
+description, shall be quoted from _Winter_:
+
+    'Through the hushed air the whitening shower descends,
+    At first thin-wavering; till at last the flakes
+    Fall broad and wide and fast, dimming the day
+    With a continual flow. The cherished fields
+    Put on their winter robe of purest white.
+    'Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts
+    Along the mazy current. Low the woods
+    Bow their hoar head; and ere the languid sun,
+    Faint from the west, emits his evening ray,
+    Earth's universal face, deep-hid and chill,
+    Is one wild dazzling waste, that buries wide
+    The works of man. Drooping, the labourer-ox
+    Stands covered o'er with snow, and then demands
+    The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven,
+    Tamed by the cruel season, crowd around
+    The winnowing store, and claim the little boon
+    Which Providence assigns them. One alone,
+    The redbreast, sacred to the household gods,
+    Wisely regardful of th' embroiling sky,
+    In joyless fields and thorny thickets, leaves
+    His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man
+    His annual visit. Half afraid, he first
+    Against the window beats; then brisk, alights
+    On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor,
+    Eyes all the smiling family askance,
+    And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is--
+    Till more familiar grown, the table-crumbs
+    Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds
+    Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare,
+    Though timorous of heart and hard beset
+    By death in various forms, dark snares, and dogs,
+    And more unpitying men, the garden seeks
+    Urged on by fearless want. The bleating kind
+    Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth,
+    With looks of dumb despair; then, sad-dispersed
+    Dig for the withered herb through heaps of snow.'
+
+Thomson loves also to paint the landscape on a broad scale, and though
+his diction is sometimes too florid, he generally satisfies the
+imagination, as, for instance, in the splendid description in _Summer_
+of a sand-storm in the desert.
+
+                                    'Breathed hot
+    From all the boundless furnace of the sky,
+    And the wide, glittering waste of burning sand,
+    A suffocating wind the pilgrim smites
+    With instant death. Patient of thirst and toil,
+    Son of the desert! even the camel feels,
+    Shot through his withered heart, the fiery blast.
+    Or from the black-red ether, bursting broad,
+    Sallies the sudden whirlwind. Straight the sands,
+    Commoved around, in gathering eddies play;
+    Nearer and nearer still they darkening come;
+    Till with the general all-involving storm
+    Swept up, the whole continuous wilds arise;
+    And by their noonday fount dejected thrown,
+    Or sunk at night in sad disastrous sleep,
+    Beneath descending hills, the caravan
+    Is buried deep. In Cairo's crowded streets
+    The impatient merchant, wondering, waits in vain,
+    And Mecca saddens at the long delay.'
+
+The _Seasons_ was at one time, and for many years the most popular
+volume of poetry in the country. It was to be found in every cottage,
+and passages from the poem were familiar to every school-boy. The
+appreciation of the work was more affectionate than critical, and
+Thomson's faults were sometimes mistaken for beauties; but the
+popularity of the _Seasons_ was a healthy sign, and the poem, a
+forerunner of Cowper's _Task_, brought into vigorous life, feelings and
+sympathies that had been long dormant.
+
+Pope, who is twice mentioned in the poem, took a great interest in its
+progress through the press. Thomson consulted him frequently, and
+accepted many of his suggestions, while apparently retaining at all
+times an independent judgment. To the familiar episode of 'the lovely
+young Lavinia' the following graceful passage is said, but on very
+doubtful authority to have been added by Pope.[30] The first line, given
+for the sake of the context, is from Thomson's pen:
+
+    'Thoughtless of beauty, she was Beauty's self,
+    Recluse amid the close-embowering woods;
+    As in the hollow breast of Apennine,
+    Beneath the shelter of encircling hills,
+    A myrtle rises, far from human eye,
+    And breathes its balmy fragrance o'er the wild;
+    So flourished, blooming and unseen by all,
+    The sweet Lavinia; till, at length, compelled
+    By strong necessity's supreme command
+    With smiling patience in her looks she went
+    To glean Palemon's fields.'
+
+Thomson had now gained the highest mark of his fame, and, like Pope, had
+won it in a few years. Nearly two years of foreign travel followed, the
+poet having obtained the post of governor to a son of the
+Solicitor-General. The fruit of this tour was a long poem in blank verse
+on _Liberty_, which probably gave him infinite labour, but his ascent
+upon this occasion of what he calls 'the barren, but delightful mountain
+of Parnassus,' was labour lost. It is enough to say of _Liberty_, that
+it contains more than three thousand lines of unreadable blank verse.
+Sinecures were the rewards of genius in Thomson's day, and he was made
+Secretary of Briefs in the Court of Chancery. He took a cottage at
+Richmond, within an easy walk of Pope, and the two poets met often and
+lived amicably.
+
+Thomson did not enjoy his official fortune long, for his patron died,
+and though he might have kept his post had he applied to the Lord
+Chancellor, in whose gift it was, he appears to have been too lazy to do
+so. His friend Lyttelton in this emergency introduced him to the Prince
+of Wales, who, on learning that his affairs 'were in a more poetical
+posture than formerly,' gave him a pension of £100 a year. There was no
+certainty in a gift of this nature, and in about ten years it was
+withdrawn.
+
+_The Castle of Indolence_ (1748) was the latest labour of Thomson's
+life, and in the judgment of many critics takes precedence of _The
+Seasons_ in poetical merit. This verdict may be questioned, but the
+poem, written in the Spenserian stanza, has a soothing beauty and an
+enchanting felicity of expression which show the poet's genius in a new
+light. It is unlike any poetry of that age, and when compared with _The
+Seasons_, the verse, as Wordsworth justly says, 'is more harmonious and
+the diction more pure.' All the imagery of the poem is adopted to the
+vague and sleepy action of the characters represented in it. It is a
+veritable poet's dream, which carries the reader in its earliest stanzas
+into 'a pleasing land of drowsy-head:'
+
+      'In lowly dale, fast by a river's side,
+      With woody hill o'er hill encompassed round,
+      A most enchanting wizard did abide,
+      Than whom a fiend more fell is nowhere found.
+      It was, I ween, a lovely spot of ground;
+      And there a season atween June and May
+      Half prankt with Spring, with Summer half embrowned,
+      A listless climate made, where, sooth to say,
+    No living wight could work, ne carèd even for play.'
+
+There are verbal inspirations in a great poet which satisfy the ear,
+capture the imagination, and live in the memory for ever. Milton's pages
+are studded with them like stars; Gray has a few, Wordsworth many, and
+Keats some not to be surpassed for witchery. Of such poetically
+suggestive lines Thomson has his share, and although it seems unfair to
+remove them from their context, the excision may be made in a few cases,
+since they show not only that a new poet had appeared in an age of
+prose, but a poet of a new order, whose inspiration was felt by his
+successors. How poetically imaginative is Thomson's imagery of the
+'meek-eyed morn, mother of dews;' of
+
+    'Ships dim discovered dropping from the clouds;'
+
+of
+
+    'Autumn nodding o'er the yellow plain;'
+
+of the summer wind
+
+    'Sweeping with shadowy gust the fields of corn;'
+
+and of the Hebrid-Isles
+
+    'Placed far amid the melancholy main,'
+
+a line which may have suggested the lovelier verse of Wordsworth
+descriptive of the cuckoo:
+
+    'Breaking the silence of the seas
+    Among the farthest Hebrides.'
+
+Thomson did not live long after the publication of _The Castle of
+Indolence_. A cold caught upon the river led to a fever, which ended
+fatally on August 27th, 1748. He had for some years been in love with a
+Miss Young, the 'Amanda' of his very feeble love lyrics, and her
+marriage is said to have hastened his death. Men, however, do not die
+for love at the mature age of forty-nine, and as Thomson was 'more fat
+than bard beseems,' and was not always temperate in his habits,
+constitutional causes are more likely to have led to the poet's death
+than Amanda's cruelty.
+
+Dr. Johnson says somewhere that the further authors keep apart from each
+other the better, and the literary squabbles of the last century
+afforded him good ground for the remark. It is to Thomson's credit that,
+like Goldsmith twenty-six years later, he died, leaving behind him many
+friends and not a single enemy. His fame rests upon two poems, _The
+Seasons_ and _The Castle of Indolence_, and on a song which has gained a
+national reputation. Apart from _Rule Britannia_, which appeared
+originally in the _Masque of Alfred_ and is spirited rather than
+poetical, his attempts to write lyrical poetry resulted in failure; but
+from his own niche in the Temple of Fame time is not likely to dislodge
+Thomson.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[25] See _Martialis Epigrammata_, book v. lii.
+
+[26] Fénelon was Archbishop of Cambray.
+
+[27] _The Poetical Works of Gay_, edited, with Life and Notes, by John
+Underhill, 2 vols.
+
+[28]
+
+    'I'll swim through seas; I'll ride upon the clouds;
+    I'll dig the earth; I'll blow out every fire;
+    I'll rave; I'll rant; I'll rise; I'll rush; I'll war;
+    Fierce as the man whom smiling dolphins bore
+    From the prosaic to poetic shore.
+    I'll tear the scoundrel into twenty pieces.'
+
+'The reader,' Fielding adds in a note, 'may see all the beauties of this
+speech in a late ode called a _Naval Lyric_.'
+
+[29] Written but not published. The earlier books of the _Night
+Thoughts_ appeared in 1742, the _Grave_ in 1743, but in a letter dated
+Feb. 25th, 1741-2, Blair in transmitting the MS. of the poem to a friend
+states that the greater portion of it was composed several years before
+his ordination ten years previously. Southey states that Blair's _Grave_
+is the only poem he could call to mind composed in imitation of the
+_Night Thoughts_, but the style as well as the date contradicts this
+judgment.
+
+[30] The tradition is founded on a volume in the British Museum
+containing MS. corrections supposed to be in Pope's handwriting. It is
+now, however, the opinion of experts that the writing is not Pope's. If
+he be the author, it is the only example of blank verse which we have
+from his pen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+MINOR POETS.
+
+Sir Samuel Garth--Ambrose Philips--John Philips--Nicholas
+    Rowe--Aaron Hill--Thomas Parnell--Thomas Tickell--William
+    Somerville--John Dyer--William Shenstone--Mark Akenside--David
+    Mallet--Scottish Song-Writers.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Sir Samuel Garth (1660-1717-18).]
+
+In Pope's day even the medical profession was influenced by party
+feeling, and Samuel Garth became known as the most famous Whig
+physician, but his friendships were not confined to one side, and he
+appears to have been universally beloved.
+
+Garth came of a Yorkshire family, and was born in 1660. He was admitted
+a Fellow of the College of Physicians in 1693, gained a large practice,
+and is said to have been very benevolent to the poor. The _Dispensary_
+(1699) is a satire called forth by the opposition of the Society of
+Apothecaries, to an edict of the College, and is a mock-heroic poem,
+which the quarrel made so effective at the time that it passed through
+several editions. The merit of achieving what the satirist intended may
+therefore be granted to the _Dispensary_. Few modern readers, however,
+will appreciate the welcome it received, and it is ludicrous to read in
+Anderson's edition of the poet that the poem 'is only inferior in
+humour, discrimination of character, and poetical ardour to the _Rape of
+the Lock_.' It would be far more accurate to say that the _Dispensary_
+has not a single merit in common with that poem, and but slight merit of
+any kind.
+
+The following passage upon death is the most vigorous, and is
+interesting as having supplied Cowper with a line in the poem on his
+Mother's Picture:[31]
+
+    ''Tis to the vulgar Death too harsh appears,
+    The ill we feel is only in our fears;
+    To die is landing on some silent shore
+    Where billows never break, nor tempests roar;
+    Ere well we feel th' friendly stroke 'tis o'er.
+    The wise through thought th' insults of death defy,
+    The fools through blest insensibility.
+    'Tis what the guilty fear, the pious crave;
+    Sought by the wretch and vanquished by the brave.
+    It eases lovers, sets the captive free,
+    And though a tyrant, offers liberty.'
+
+Addison in defending Garth in the _Whig-Examiner_ from the criticisms of
+Prior in the _Examiner_, the organ of the Tory party, says he does not
+question but the author 'who has endeavoured to prove that he who wrote
+the _Dispensary_ was no poet, will very suddenly undertake to show that
+he who gained the battle of _Blenheim_ is no general.' The comparison
+was an unfortunate one. Marlborough's military reputation has grown
+brighter with time, Garth's fame as a poet has long ago ceased to exist.
+
+A literary although not a poetical interest is associated with the name
+of "well-natured Garth," who, as Pope acknowledges, was one of his
+earliest friends; like Arbuthnot, he lived among the wits, and as a
+member of the famous Kit-cat Club he wrote verses upon the Whig beauties
+toasted by its members. His name is linked with Dryden's as well as with
+that of his illustrious successor. It will be remembered how, on the
+death of Dryden, the poet's body lay in state in the College of
+Physicians, and how, before the great procession started for
+Westminster Abbey, Sir Samuel, who was then President, delivered a Latin
+oration.
+
+Garth died in January, 1717-18, and, according to Pope, was a good
+Christian without knowing it. Addison, however, who visited Garth in his
+last illness, told Dr. Berkeley that he rejected Christianity on the
+assurance of his friend Halley that its doctrines were incomprehensible,
+and the religion itself an imposture. According to another report which
+comes through Pope, he actually 'died a papist.'
+
+[Sidenote: Ambrose Philips (1671-1749).]
+
+Ambrose Philips, who belonged, like Tickell, to Addison's 'little
+senate,' was born in 1671, and educated at St. John's, Cambridge. His
+_Pastorals_ were published in Tonson's _Miscellany_ (1709), and the same
+volume contained the _Pastorals_ of Pope. Log-rolling was understood in
+those days, and Philips's verses received warm praise in more than one
+number of the _Guardian_, the writer in one place declaring that there
+have been only four masters of the art in above two thousand years:
+'Theocritus, who left his dominions to Virgil; Virgil, who left his to
+his son Spenser; and Spenser, who was succeeded by his eldest born,
+Philips.'
+
+Pope's _Pastorals_ were not mentioned, and in revenge he devised the
+consummate artifice of sending an anonymous paper to the _Guardian_, in
+which, while appearing to praise Philips, he exalted himself. Steele
+took the bait, and considering that the essay depreciated Pope would not
+publish it without his permission, which was of course readily granted.
+'From that time,' says Johnson, 'Pope and Philips lived in a perpetual
+reciprocation of malevolence.'
+
+Philips's tragedy, _The Distrest Mother_ (1712), a translation, or
+nearly so, of Racine's _Andromaque_, was puffed in the _Spectator_. It
+is the play to which Sir Roger de Coverley was taken by his friends, and
+the representation supplied the good knight with an opportunity for
+much humorous comment.
+
+'When Sir Roger saw Andromache's obstinate refusal to her lover's
+importunities, he whispered me in the ear that he was sure she would
+never have him; to which he added with a more than ordinary vehemence,
+"You cannot imagine, sir, what it is to have to do with a widow." Upon
+Pyrrhus his threatening afterwards to leave her, the knight shook his
+head, and muttered to himself, "Ay, do if you can." This part dwelt so
+much upon my friend's imagination that at the close of the third Act, as
+I was thinking of something else, he whispered in my ear, "These widows,
+sir, are the most perverse creatures in the world. But pray," says he,
+"you that are a critic, is this play according to your dramatic rules,
+as you call them? Should your people in tragedy always talk to be
+understood? Why, there is not a single sentence in this play that I do
+not know the meaning of."'[32] Addison also inserted and praised in the
+_Spectator_ Philips's translations from Sappho (Nos. 223, 229).
+
+His odes to babes and children earned for him the _sobriquet_ of 'Namby
+Pamby,' 'a term which has been incorporated into the English language to
+designate mawkish sentiment. Namby was the infantine pronunciation of
+Ambrose, and Pamby was formed by the first letter of Philips's surname
+and that reduplication of sound which is natural to lisping
+children.'[33]
+
+Between simplicity and absurdity the line is a narrow one, and Philips
+stepped over it when he wrote to a child in the nursery--
+
+    'Dimply damsel, sweetly smiling,
+    All caressing, none beguiling;
+    Bud of beauty, fairly blowing,
+    Every charm to nature owing.'
+
+The longest of his baby songs is addressed to the Hon. Miss Carteret, in
+which he pictures the child's progress to womanhood, and anticipates her
+future loveliness and maiden reign:
+
+    'Then the taper-moulded waist
+    With a span of ribbon braced;
+    And the swell of either breast,
+    And the wide high-vaulted chest;
+    And the neck so white and round,
+    Little neck with brilliants bound;
+    And the store of charms which shine
+    Above, in lineaments divine,
+    Crowded in a narrow space
+    To complete the desperate face;
+    These alluring powers, and more,
+    Shall enamoured youths adore;
+    These and more in courtly lays
+    Many an aching heart shall praise.'
+
+The inventory of the maiden's physical charms which follows includes
+veiny temples, sloping shoulders, a hazely lucid eye, and cheek of
+health; but in the category the only allusion to the attractions of
+intellect and heart is in a couplet foretelling her
+
+                              'Gentleness of mind,
+    Gentle from a gentle kind.'
+
+That Philips translated _The Persian Tales_ is indelibly recorded by
+Pope:
+
+    'The bard whom pilfered Pastorals renown,
+    Who turns a Persian tale for half-a-crown,
+    Just writes to make his barrenness appear,
+    And strains from hard-bound brains eight lines a year.'
+
+But even Pope could award praise to Philips. In a letter to Henry
+Cromwell, in 1710, he observes that he was capable of writing very
+nobly, 'as I guess by a small copy of his, published in the _Tatler_, on
+the Danish winter;' and two years later he says to his friend Caryll:
+'Mr. Philips has two lines which seem to me what the French call very
+_picturesque_, that I cannot omit to you:
+
+    'All hid in snow in bright confusion lie,
+    And with one dazzling waste fatigue the eye!'
+
+The lines, not quite accurately quoted by Pope, are from an epistle,
+addressed to Lord Dorset from Copenhagen, which contains a few striking
+couplets, two of which may be transcribed before bidding adieu to
+Ambrose Philips:
+
+    'The vast leviathan wants room to play,
+    And spout his waters in the face of day.
+    The starving wolves along the main sea prowl,
+    And to the moon in icy valleys howl.'
+
+[Sidenote: John Philips (1676-1708).]
+
+Ambrose Philips must not be confounded with his namesake John, the
+author of a clever burlesque of Milton, called _The Splendid Shilling_
+(1705); of _Blenheim_ (1705), a poem which he was urged to write by the
+Tories in opposition to Addison's _Campaign_; and of a poem upon _Cider_
+(1706), in 'Miltonian verse,' which seems to have afforded several
+suggestions to Pope in his _Windsor Forest_. It is said to display a
+considerable knowledge of the subject, and in that its principal merit
+consists. From _The Splendid Shilling_ a brief extract may be given:
+
+    'So pass my days. But when nocturnal shades
+    This world envelop, and th' inclement air
+    Persuades men to repel benumbing frosts
+    With pleasant wines, and crackling blaze of wood;
+    Me, lonely sitting, nor the glimmering light
+    Of make-weight candle, nor the joyous talk
+    Of loving friend delights; distressed, forlorn,
+    Amidst the horrors of the tedious night,
+    Darkling I sigh, and feed with dismal thoughts
+    My anxious mind; or sometimes mournful verse
+    Indite, and sing of groves and myrtle shades,
+    Or desperate lady near a purling stream,
+    Or lover pendent on a willow tree.
+    Meanwhile I labour with eternal drought
+    And restless wish, and rave; my parched throat
+    Finds no relief, nor heavy eyes repose.
+    But if a slumber haply does invade
+    My weary limbs, my fancy still awake,
+    Thoughtful of drink, and eager, in a dream
+    Tipples imaginary pots of ale
+    In vain; awake I find the settled thirst
+    Still gnawing, and the pleasant phantom curse.'
+
+'Philips,' says the poet Campbell, 'had the merit of studying and
+admiring Milton, but he never could imitate him without ludicrous
+effect, either in jest or earnest. His _Splendid Shilling_ is the
+earliest and one of the best of our parodies; but _Blenheim_ is as
+completely a burlesque upon Milton as _The Splendid Shilling_, though it
+was written and read with gravity, ... yet such are the fluctuations of
+taste that contemporary criticism bowed with solemn admiration over his
+Miltonic cadences.'
+
+[Sidenote: Nicholas Rowe (1673-1718).]
+
+Nicholas Rowe had the honour, if it was one in those days, of being made
+Laureate on the accession of George I. His odes, epistles, and songs are
+without merit, but he gained reputation as the translator of Lucan's
+_Pharsalia_, of which Sir Arthur Gorges had produced a version in 1614,
+and his plays entitle him to a place, though not a high one, in our
+dramatic literature.
+
+Rowe edited an edition of Shakespeare, and should have known his author,
+yet in a prologue he declares that he could not draw women--an amazing
+assertion echoed by Collins, who praises Fletcher for his knowledge of
+the 'female mind,' and adds that 'stronger Shakespeare felt for man
+alone.'
+
+The chronological list of Rowe's dramas runs as follows: _The Ambitious
+Step-mother_ (1700); _Tamerlane_ (1702); _The Fair Penitent_ (1703);
+_Ulysses_ (1705); _The Royal Convert_ (1707); the _Tragedy of Jane
+Shore_ (1714); and the _Tragedy of Lady Jane Grey_ (1715). Measured by
+his contemporary dramatists he is a distinguished playwright. His
+characters do not live, but he could invent effective scenes, though in
+some cases the poet's taste may be questioned.
+
+For many years _Tamerlane_ was acted at Drury Lane on the anniversary of
+King William's landing in England, and under the names of Tamerlane and
+Bajazet the king is belauded at the expense of Louis XIV. _The Fair
+Penitent_, a piece even more successful upon the stage, will still
+please the reader, though he may question the high eulogium of Johnson,
+that "scarcely any work of any poet is at once so interesting by the
+fable, and so delightful by the language." Rowe has not the tragic power
+which can express passion without rant, and pathos without extravagance.
+In _The Fair Penitent_ Calista gives utterance to her feelings by piling
+up expletives. Thus, when her husband attacks the lover who has ruined
+her, she exclaims, 'Destruction! fury! sorrow! shame! and death!' and,
+on another occasion, she cries out, 'Madness! confusion!' words which
+give a sense of the ludicrous rather than of the tragic; and so also
+does Calista's last utterance when, addressing Altamont, she says:
+
+                    'Had I but early known
+    Thy wondrous worth, thou excellent young man
+    We had been happier both--now 'tis too late!'
+
+Rowe may be regarded as the principal representative of tragedy in the
+'age of Pope,' but his respectable work shows a fatal degeneration from
+the 'gorgeous tragedy' of the Elizabethans.
+
+[Sidenote: Aaron Hill (1684-1749).]
+
+Aaron Hill, unlike Rowe, was not distinguished as a dramatist, and
+succeeded only in two or three adaptations from the French. His claims
+as a poet are also insignificant. He was born in London in 1684, with
+expectations that were not destined to be realized, but Fortune was not
+unkind to him. His uncle, Lord Paget, Ambassador at Constantinople, gave
+the youth a warm welcome, supplied him with a tutor, and sent him to
+travel in the East. On Lord Paget's return to England, Hill accompanied
+him, and together they are said to have visited a great part of Europe.
+Some time later Hill went abroad again, and was absent two or three
+years. For awhile--it could not have been long--he was secretary to the
+Earl of Peterborough, and at the age of twenty-six, his good star being
+still in the ascendant, he married a young lady 'of great merit and
+beauty, with whom he had a very handsome fortune.' Hill was then
+appointed manager of Drury Lane, and he wrote a number of plays, the
+very names of which are now forgotten. Few men indeed so well known in
+his own day have sunk into such insignificance in ours. He wrote eight
+books of a long and unfinished epic called _Gideon_, which I suppose no
+one in the present century has had the hardihood to read; like Young he
+wrote a poem on _The Judgment Day_, a theme attempted also, shortly
+before his death, by John Philips, and that, after his kind, he produced
+a Pindaric ode goes without saying. A long poem called _The Northern
+Star_, a panegyric on Peter the Great, is said to have passed through
+several editions. The poem does not prove Hill to be a poet, but it
+shows his command of the heroic couplet. The style of the poem, which
+is an indiscriminate panegyric, may be judged from the following lines:
+
+    'Transcendent prince! how happy must thou be!
+    What can'st thou look upon unblessed by thee?
+    What inward peace must that calm bosom know,
+    Whence conscious virtue does so strongly flow!
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Such are the kings who make God's image shine,
+    Nor blush to dare assert their right divine!
+    No earth-born bias warps their climbing will,
+    No pride their power, no avarice whets their skill.
+    They poise each hope which bids the wise obey,
+    And shed broad blessings from their widening sway;
+    To raise the afflicted, stretch the healing hand,
+    Drive crushed oppression from each rescued land,
+    Bold in alternate right, or sheath or draw
+    The sword of conquest, or the sword of law;
+    Spare what resists not, what opposes bend,
+    And govern cool, what they with warmth defend.'
+
+Hill has the merit of having turned the tables upon Pope, who had put
+him into the treatise on the _Bathos_, and then into the _Dunciad_,
+where, however, the lines have more of compliment than censure, since he
+is made to mount 'far off among the swans of Thames.' Irritated by a
+note in the _Dunciad_, Hill replied in a long poem entitled _The
+Progress of Wit, a Caveat_, which opens with the following pointed
+lines:
+
+    'Tuneful Alexis, on the Thames' fair side,
+    The ladies' plaything, and the Muses' pride;
+    With merit popular, with wit polite,
+    Easy though vain, and elegant though light;
+    Desiring, and deserving others' praise,
+    Poorly accepts a fame he ne'er repays;
+    Unborn to cherish, sneakingly approves,
+    And wants the soul to spread the worth he loves.'
+
+In a letter to Hill Pope complained of these lines, and had the
+hypocrisy to say that he never thought any great matters of his poetical
+capacity, but prided himself on the superiority of his moral life. Hill
+returned a masterly and incisive reproof to this ridiculous statement,
+in the course of which he says:
+
+    'I am sorry to hear you say you never thought any great matters
+    of your poetry. It is in my opinion the characteristic you are
+    to hope your distinction from. To be honest is the duty of every
+    plain man. Nor, since the soul of poetry is sentiment, can a
+    great poet want morality. But your honesty you possess in common
+    with a million who will never be remembered; whereas your poetry
+    is a peculiar, that will make it impossible that you should be
+    forgotten.'
+
+He adds that if Pope had not been in the spleen when he wrote, he would
+have remembered that humility is a moral virtue; and how, asks the
+writer, can you know that your moral life is above that of most of the
+wits 'since you tell me in the same letter that many of their names were
+unknown to you?'
+
+Aaron Hill, though he could write a sensible letter, was not a wise man.
+He was 'everything by turns and nothing long.' Poetry was but one of his
+accomplishments, and we are told that he cultivated it 'as a relaxation
+from the study of history, criticism, geography, physic, commerce,
+agriculture, war, law, chemistry, and natural philosophy, to which he
+devoted the greatest part of his time.'
+
+As a poet Hill has the facility in composition exhibited by so many of
+his contemporaries, and he has occasionally a pretty turn of fancy. His
+last labour was the successful adaptation of Voltaire's _Merope_ to the
+English stage (1749); sixteen years before he had adapted _Zara_ with
+equal success.
+
+[Sidenote: Thomas Parnell (1679-1718).]
+
+Among the minor poets of the period an honourable place must be given to
+Parnell, who possessed the soul of a poet, but gave limited expression
+to it, for it was only during the later years of a short life that he
+discovered where his genius lay. The friend of Pope, Arbuthnot, and
+Swift, his biography has been written by Johnson, and more discursively
+by his countryman Goldsmith.
+
+Thomas Parnell was born in Dublin, 1679, entered Trinity College at the
+early age of thirteen, and in 1700 obtained the degree of Master of
+Arts. Having taken orders he gained preferment in the Church, became, in
+1706, Archdeacon of Clogher, and through the recommendation of Swift
+obtained also a good living. Parnell was fond of society, and was
+accustomed as often as possible to join the wits in London. He was a
+member of the Scriblerus Club, wrote for the _Spectator_, preached
+eloquent sermons, and had the ambition of a poet. But the loss of his
+wife preyed upon his mind, and he is said, though I believe chiefly on
+Pope's authority, to have given way to intemperance. He died suddenly at
+Chester at the age of thirty-nine in 1718.
+
+Parnell was one of the poets whose fortunes Swift did his best to
+promote. Writing in 1712, he says, 'I gave Lord Bolingbroke a poem of
+Parnell's. I made Parnell insert some compliments in it to his lordship.
+He is extremely pleased with it, and read some parts of it to-day to
+Lord Treasurer, who liked it as much. And indeed he outdoes all our
+poets here a bar's length.' And a month later he writes, 'Lord
+Bolingbroke likes Parnell mightily, and it is pleasant to see that one
+who hardly passed for anything in Ireland, makes his way here with a
+little friendly forwarding.'
+
+_The Hermit_, the _Hymn to Contentment_, an _Allegory on Man_, and a
+_Night Piece on Death_, give Parnell his title to a place among the
+poets. _The Rise of Woman_, and _Health, an Eclogue_, have also much
+merit, and were praised by Pope (but this was to their author) as 'two
+of the most beautiful things he ever read.' The story of _The Hermit_,
+written originally in Spanish, is given in _Howell's Letters_
+(1645-1655), and is admirably told by Parnell, but much that he wrote,
+including a series of long poems on Scripture characters, is poetically
+worthless. His poems, published five years after his death, were edited
+by Pope, who wisely suppressed some pieces unworthy of the poet. Then,
+as now, literary scavengers were at work. In 1758 the suppressed poems
+were published, and called forth the comment from Gray, 'Parnell is the
+dunghill of Irish Grub Street.' To Parnell Pope was indebted for the
+_Essay on Homer_ prefixed to the translation, with which he does not
+seem to have been well pleased. He complained of the stiffness of the
+style, and said it had cost him more pains in the correcting than the
+writing of it would have done.
+
+If Parnell's prose has the defect of stiffness, his lines glide with a
+smoothness that must have satisfied the ear of Pope. The higher
+harmonies of verse were unknown to him, but ease is not without a charm,
+and in illustration of Parnell's gift the final lines of _A Night Piece
+on Death_ shall be quoted:
+
+    'When men my scythe and darts supply,
+    How great a king of fears am I!
+    They view me like the last of things,
+    They make and then they draw my stings.
+    Fools! if you less provoked your fears,
+    No more my spectre form appears.
+    Death's but a path that must be trod,
+    If man would ever pass to God;
+    A port of calms, a state to ease
+    From the rough rage of swelling seas.
+    Why then thy flowing sable stoles,
+    Deep pendent cypress, mourning poles,
+    Loose scarfs to fall athwart thy weeds,
+    Long palls, drawn hearses, covered steeds,
+    And plumes of black that as they tread,
+    Nod o'er the scutcheons of the dead?
+    Nor can the parted body know,
+    Nor wants the soul these forms of woe;
+    As men who long in prison dwell,
+    With lamps that glimmer round the cell,
+    Whene'er their suffering years are run,
+    Spring forth to greet the glittering sun;
+    Such joy, though far transcending sense,
+    Have pious souls at parting hence.
+    On earth and in the body placed,
+    A few and evil years they waste;
+    But when their chains are cast aside,
+    See the glad scene unfolding wide,
+    Clap the glad wing, and tower away,
+    And mingle with the blaze of day.'
+
+[Sidenote: Thomas Tickell (1686-1740).]
+
+Tickell wished to be remembered as the friend of Addison, and with
+Addison his name is indissolubly associated. The poem dedicated to the
+essayist's memory is perhaps over-praised by Macaulay when he says that
+it would do honour to the greatest name in our literature, but it proved
+incontestibly that Tickell, as a poet, was superior to the master whom
+he so loved and honoured. His reputation hangs upon this elegy, which
+Fox pronounced perfect.[34] The _Prospect of Peace_, which passed
+through several editions, had at one time a considerable reputation, not
+assuredly for its poetry, but because it appealed to the spirit of the
+time The style of the poem may be judged from these lines:--
+
+    'Accept, great Anne, the tears their memory draws,
+    Who nobly perished in their sovereign's cause;
+    For thou in pity bidd'st the war give o'er,
+    Mourn'st thy slain heroes, nor wilt venture more.
+    Vast price of blood on each victorious day!
+    (But Europe's freedom doth that price repay.)
+    Lamented triumphs! when one breath must tell
+    That Marlborough conquered and that Dormer fell.'
+
+His _Colin and Lucy_ called forth high praise from Goldsmith as one of
+the best ballads in our language, and Gray terms it the prettiest ballad
+in the world. Three stanzas from this once famous poem shall be
+quoted:--
+
+    '"I hear a voice you cannot hear,
+      Which says I must not stay;
+    I see a hand you cannot see,
+      Which beckons me away.
+    By a false heart and broken vows,
+      In early youth I die;
+    Was I to blame because his bride
+      Was thrice as rich as I?
+
+    '"Ah, Colin, give not her thy vows,
+      Vows due to me alone;
+    Nor thou, fond maid, receive his kiss,
+      Nor think him all thy own.
+    To-morrow in the church to wed,
+      Impatient, both prepare!
+    But know, fond maid, and know, false man,
+      That Lucy will be there!
+
+    '"Then bear my corse, my comrades, bear,
+      This bridegroom blithe to meet,
+    He in his wedding trim so gay,
+      I in my winding-sheet."
+    She spoke, she died; her corse was borne
+      The bridegroom blithe to meet,
+    He in his wedding trim so gay,
+      She in her winding-sheet.'
+
+There is some fancy but no imagination in the machinery of Tickell's
+long poem on _Kensington Gardens_, a title which recalls Matthew
+Arnold's exquisite stanzas. But the pathetic beauty of Arnold's lines
+belongs to a world of poetry wholly unlike that in which even the best
+of the Queen Anne poets lived and moved.
+
+Tickell's translation of the first book of the _Iliad_ led to the
+quarrel already mentioned in the account of Pope. He wrote, also, a
+rather lengthy poem on Oxford, in which there is some absurd criticism
+of insignificant poetasters, and, as a matter of course, an extravagant
+eulogium of Addison.
+
+The few facts recorded of Tickell's life may be summed up in a
+paragraph. He was born in 1686 at Bridekirk, in Cumberland, and entered
+Queen's College, Oxford, in 1701. In 1708 he obtained his M.A. degree,
+and two years later was chosen Fellow. For sixteen years Tickell held
+his fellowship, but resigned it on his marriage in 1726. In a poem
+addressed to the lady before marriage, he asks whether
+
+    'By thousands sought, Clotilda, canst thou free
+    Thy crowd of captives and descend to me?'
+
+Praise which in those days would be regarded as fulsome secured the
+friendship and patronage of Addison, who employed him in public affairs,
+and when he became Secretary of State made Tickell Under-Secretary. To
+him Addison left the charge of editing his works, which were published
+by subscription, and appeared in four quarto volumes in 1721. In 1725 he
+was made secretary to the Lord Justices of Ireland, 'a place of great
+honour,' which he held until his death in 1740. The praise of
+Wordsworth, a poet always chary of expressing approbation, has been
+bestowed upon Tickell. 'I think him,' he said, 'one of the very best
+writers of occasional verses.'
+
+[Sidenote: William Somerville (1692-1742).]
+
+Tickell had written some lines on hunting, which he published as a
+fragment. His contemporary Somerville, selecting the same subject, wrote
+_The Chase_ (1735), a poem in blank verse. He was born at Edston, in
+Warwickshire, and was said, Dr. Johnson writes, 'to be of the first
+family in his county.' He was educated at Winchester and Oxford, and had
+the tastes of a scholar as well as of a country gentleman, which, among
+other accomplishments, included that of hard drinking. We know little
+about him, and what we do know is deplorable, for his friend Shenstone
+writes that he was plagued and threatened by low wretches, and 'forced
+to drink himself into pains of the body in order to get rid of the pains
+of the mind.' He died in 1742, the owner of a good estate, which, owing
+to a contempt for economy, he was never able to enjoy. 'I loved him for
+nothing so much,' said Shenstone, 'as for his
+flocci-nauci-nihili-pili-fication of money.'
+
+In _The Chase_ Somerville had the advantage of knowing his subject, but
+knowledge is not poetry, and the interest of the poem is not due to its
+poetical qualities. He deserves some credit for his skill in handling a
+variety of metres as well as blank verse, in which his principal poem is
+written. In an address _To Mr. Addison_, the couplet,
+
+    'When panting Virtue her last efforts made,
+    You brought your Clio to the virgin's aid,'
+
+is praised by Johnson as one of those happy strokes which are seldom
+attained. In the same poem Shakespeare and Addison are brought together
+in a way that is far from happy:
+
+    'In heaven he sings; on earth your muse supplies
+    Th' important loss, and heals our weeping eyes,
+    Correctly great, she melts each flinty heart
+    With equal genius, but superior art.'
+
+Praise can be too strong even for a poet's digestion, and Somerville,
+who writes a great deal more nonsense in the same strain, should have
+remembered that he was not addressing a fool. If the poetical adulation
+of the time is to be excused, it must be on the ground that a poet had
+to live by patronage and not by the public. In a pecuniary point of view
+his subservience to men in high position was often successful. An almost
+universal custom, it was not regarded as degrading; but the poet must
+have been peculiarly constituted who was not degraded by it.
+
+[Sidenote: John Dyer (1698(?)-1758).]
+
+In the last century any subject was deemed suitable for poetry, and the
+Welsh poet, John Dyer, who was born about 1698, found in his later life
+poetical materials in _The Fleece_ (1757), a poem in four books of blank
+verse. His genius for descriptive poetry and his passionate and
+intelligent delight in natural objects are seen more pleasantly in
+_Grongar Hill_ (published in the same year as Thomson's _Winter_), a
+poem not without grammatical inaccuracies, one of which deforms the
+first couplet, but full of poetical feeling. In an ease of composition
+which runs into laxity he reminds us occasionally of George Wither. His
+chief merit is, that while independent of Thomson, he was inspired by
+the same love, and wrote with the same aim. Dyer is not content with
+bare description, but likes to moralize on the landscape he surveys.
+Thus, when looking on a ruined tower, the poet exclaims:
+
+    'Yet time has seen, that lifts the low,
+    And level lays the lofty brow,
+    Has seen this broken pile compleat,
+    Big with the vanity of state;
+    But transient is the smile of fate!
+    A little rule, a little sway,
+    A sunbeam in a winter's day,'
+    Is all the proud and mighty have
+    Between the cradle and the grave.'
+
+Dyer who is best seen in the octosyllabic metre, chose it also for _The
+Country Walk_, a poem in which, notwithstanding an occasional lapse into
+the conventional diction of the period, the rural pictures are drawn
+from life. He takes the reader into the farm-yard and fields as he
+writes:
+
+    'I am resolved this charming day
+    In the open field to stray,
+    And have no roof above my head
+    But that whereon the gods do tread.
+    Before the yellow barn I see
+    A beautiful variety
+    Of strutting cocks, advancing stout,
+    And flirting empty chaff about;
+    Hens, ducks, and geese, and all their brood,
+    And turkeys gobbling for their food;
+    While rustics thrash the wealthy floor,
+    And tempt all to crowd the door.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    And now into the fields I go,
+    Where thousand flaming flowers glow,
+    And every neighbouring hedge I greet
+    With honey-suckles smelling sweet;
+    Now o'er the daisy meads I stray
+    And meet with, as I pace my way,
+    Sweetly shining on the eye
+    A rivulet gliding smoothly by,
+    Which shows with what an easy tide
+    The moments of the happy glide.'
+
+_An Epistle to a Friend in Town_, records his satisfaction with the
+country retirement in which his days are passed. In a rather awkward
+stanza he says that he is more than content, and is indeed charmed with
+everything, and the lines close with the moralizing that was dear to
+Dyer's heart:
+
+    'Alas! what a folly that wealth and domain
+      We heap up in sin and in sorrow!
+    Immense is the toil, yet the labour how vain!
+      Is not life to be over to-morrow?
+    Then glide on my moments, the few that I have,
+      Smooth-shaded and quiet and even;
+    While gently the body descends to the grave,
+      And the spirit arises to heaven.'
+
+Dyer was an artist as well as a poet, and visited Italy, which suggested
+a poem in blank verse, _The Ruins of Rome_ (1740). After his return to
+England he entered into holy orders, took a wife, who is said to have
+been a descendant of Shakespeare, and settled at Calthorp in
+Leicestershire, which he afterwards exchanged for a living in
+Lincolnshire. There is much to like in Dyer, and he has had the good
+fortune to win the applause of two great poets. Gray says, in a letter
+to Horace Walpole, that he had 'more of poetry in his imagination than
+almost any of our number,' and Wordsworth in a sonnet, _To the Poet,
+John Dyer_, writes:
+
+    'Though hasty Fame hath many a chaplet culled
+    For worthless brows, while in the pensive shade
+    Of cold neglect she leaves thy head ungraced,
+    Yet pure and powerful minds, hearts meek and still,
+    A grateful few, shall love thy modest Lay,
+    Long as the shepherd's bleating flock shall stray
+    O'er naked Snowdon's wide aerial waste;
+    Long as the thrush shall pipe on Grongar Hill!'
+
+[Sidenote: William Shenstone (1714-1764).]
+
+'The true rustic style,' Charles Lamb writes, 'I think is to be found in
+Shenstone,' and he calls his _Schoolmistress_ the 'prettiest of poems.'
+
+William Shenstone was born in 1714 at the Leasowes in Hales-Owen, a spot
+upon which he afterwards expended his skill as a landscape gardener. In
+1732 he went up to Pembroke College, Oxford, and remained there for some
+years without taking a degree. Those years appear to have been devoted
+to poetry. In 1737 Shenstone published a small volume anonymously. This
+was followed by the _Judgment of Hercules_ (1741), and by the
+_Schoolmistress_ (1742). In 1745 he undertook the management of his
+estate, and began, to quote Dr. Johnson's quaint description, 'to point
+his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his walks, and to
+wind his waters; which he did with such judgment and such fancy, as made
+his little domain the envy of the great and the admiration of the
+skilful; a place to be visited by travellers and copied by designers.'
+On this estate, with its lakes and cascades, its urns and poetical
+inscriptions, its hanging woods, and 'wild shaggy precipice,' Shenstone
+appears to have spent all his fortune. He led the life of a dilettante,
+and died unmarried at the age of fifty. His elegies and songs are dead,
+and whatever vitality remains in his verse will be found in the
+_Pastoral Ballad_ and the _Schoolmistress_.
+
+The ballad written in anapæstic verse has an Arcadian grace, against
+which even Johnson's robust intellect was not proof. For the following
+lines he says, 'if any mind denies its sympathy it has no acquaintance
+with love or nature':
+
+    'When forced the fair nymph to forego,
+      What anguish I felt in my heart!
+    Yet I thought--but it might not be so--
+      'Twas with pain that she saw me depart.
+    She gazed as I slowly withdrew,
+      My path I could hardly discern;
+    So sweetly she bade me adieu,
+      I thought that she bade me return.
+
+The _Schoolmistress_, written in imitation of Spenser, has the merits of
+simplicity and homely humour. The village dame is a life-like character,
+and the urchins whom she is supposed to teach, and does sometimes teach
+by chastisement, are cunningly portrayed.
+
+From the verses _Written at an Inn in Henley_ three stanzas may be
+quoted. The last will be already known to readers familiar with their
+Boswell:
+
+    'I fly from pomp, I fly from plate,
+      I fly from falsehood's specious grin!
+    Freedom I love, and form I hate,
+      And choose my lodgings at an inn.
+
+    'Here, waiter! take my sordid ore,
+      Which lacqueys else might hope to win;
+    It buys what courts have not in store,
+      It buys me freedom at an inn!
+
+    'Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round,
+      Where'er his stages may have been,
+    May sigh to think he still has found
+      The warmest welcome at an inn.'
+
+Unhappily this final verse, which Johnson is said to have repeated 'with
+great emotion,' has lost its application. The modern traveller, instead
+of being warmly welcomed at an inn, loses his identity and becomes a
+number.
+
+[Sidenote: Mark Akenside (1721-1770).]
+
+Akenside, who was born at Newcastle, 1721, received his education in
+Edinburgh, where he was sent to prepare for the ministry among the
+Dissenters. He, however, changed his mind, became a medical student, and
+finally, though much disliked for his manners, gained reputation as a
+physician in London. He is stated to have been excessively stiff and
+formal, and a frigid stiffness marks the _Pleasures of Imagination_
+(1744), a remarkable work considering the writer's age, since it is
+without the faults of youth. The poem is founded on Addison's _Essays_
+on the subject in the _Spectator_, and the poet also owes a considerable
+debt to Shaftesbury. Akenside's blank verse has the merits of dignity
+and strength. But the work is as cold as the author's manners were said
+to be, and in spite of what may be called poetical power, as distinct
+from a high order of inspiration, the poem leaves the reader unmoved.
+Pope, who saw it in MS., said that Akenside was 'no everyday writer,'
+which is a just criticism. The _Pleasures of Imagination_ has the merits
+of careful workmanship and of some originality, but the interest which
+it at one time excited is not likely to be revived. In 1757 Akenside
+re-wrote the poem, and I believe that no critic, with the exception of
+Hazlitt, regards the second attempt as an improvement on the first. His
+skill in the use of classical imagery is seen to advantage in the _Hymn
+to the Naiads_ (1746), and he deserves praise, too, for his
+inscriptions, which are distinguished for conciseness and vigour of
+style. The poet, it may be added, wrote a great number of odes that lack
+all, or nearly all, the qualities which should distinguish lyrical
+poetry. Not a spark of the divine fire warms or illuminates these
+reputable verses, but the author states that his chief aim was to be
+correct, and in that he has succeeded.
+
+[Sidenote: David Mallet (1700-1765).]
+
+David Mallet, a friend or acquaintance of Thomson, was contemptible as a
+man and comparatively insignificant as a poet. He did a large amount of
+dirty work, and appears to have made a good income by it. The base
+character of the man was known to Bolingbroke, of whose basest purpose
+he made him the instrument (see c. vii.). Mallet's ballad of _William
+and Margaret_ (1724) is known to many readers, and so is the inferior
+ballad _Edwin and Emma_, which was written many years afterwards. In
+1728 he published _The Excursion_, a poem not sufficiently significant
+to prevent Wordsworth from selecting the same title. In Mallet's poem on
+_Verbal Criticism_ (1733), Johnson states that he paid court to Pope,
+and was rewarded by a travelling tutorship gained through the poet's
+influence. In 1731 his tragedy, _Eurydice_, was acted at Drury Lane. He
+joined Thomson, as we have said elsewhere, in the composition of the
+masque of _Alfred_, and 'almost wholly changed' the piece after
+Thomson's death. _Amyntor and Theodora_, a long poem in blank verse,
+appeared in 1747; _Britannia_, a masque, in 1753, and _Elvira_, a
+tragedy, in 1763. Mallet, who was without qualifications for the task,
+wrote a life of Lord Bacon. He is said to have obtained a pension for
+inflaming the mind of the public against Admiral Byng, and thereby
+hastening his execution.
+
+In Anderson's edition of the poets, Mallet's biography is related with
+more fulness than by Dr. Johnson, and, after frankly recording acts
+which fully justify Macaulay's statement that Mallet's character was
+infamous, the writer adds, 'his integrity in business and in life is
+unimpeached.'
+
+
+SCOTTISH SONG-WRITERS.
+
+When the poets of England were writing satires, moral essays, and
+elaborate didactic treatises, the poets of Scotland were singing, in
+bird-like notes, songs of humour and of love. It is remarkable that the
+Scotch, the shrewdest, hardest, and most business-like people in these
+islands, should be so richly endowed with a gift shared and enjoyed by
+rich and poor alike. The most exquisite of English lyrics fall, where
+culture is wanting, on regardless ears; the songs of Ramsay and of
+Burns, of Lady Anne Lindsay and Jane Elliot, of Hogg and Lady Nairne, of
+Tannahill and Macneil, are household words in Scotland to gentle and
+simple. A few of the choicest songs of Scotland are due to ladies of
+rank, but the larger number have sprung from 'the huts where poor men
+lie.' Ramsay was a barber and wig-maker; Burns, as all the world knows,
+followed the plough; Tannahill was a weaver; Hogg a shepherd; and Robert
+Nicoll the son of a small farmer, 'ruined out of house and hold.'
+
+[Sidenote: Allan Ramsay (1686-1758).]
+
+Allan Ramsay was, born at Leadhills, in Lanarkshire, in 1686, and was
+therefore Pope's senior by two years. He has been called 'the restorer
+of Scottish poetry,' and by his compilation of _The Evergreen_ (1724),
+and of _The Tea-Table Miscellany_, published in the same year, he
+gathered up the wealth of song scattered through the country. _The
+Miscellany_ extended to four volumes, and before the poet's death had
+reached twelve editions. An undying interest belongs to both
+anthologies. _The Evergreen_ was the first poetry Walter Scott perused,
+and in a marginal note on his copy of _The Tea-Table Miscellany_ he
+writes: 'This book belonged to my grandfather, Robert Scott, and out of
+it I was taught _Hardiknute_ by heart before I could read the ballad
+myself. It was the first poem I ever learnt, the last I shall ever
+forget.' The ballad Scott loved so well, I may say in passing, was
+written as a whole or in part by Lady Wardlaw (1677-1727),[35] and
+belongs therefore either to our period or to the later years of the
+seventeenth century.
+
+In 1725 Ramsay published _The Gentle Shepherd_, a pastoral that puts to
+shame the numerous semi-classical and mythological poems which appeared
+under that name in England. It is essentially a rural poem, in which the
+action and language harmonize with what we know, or think we know, of
+country manners and life. There is neither striking invention in the
+plot nor much individuality in the characters, but there is poetical
+harmony throughout, many pretty rustic scenes, and sufficient interest
+to carry the reader pleasantly over the ground. _The Gentle Shepherd_ is
+the work of a poet, and gives a higher impression of Ramsay's power than
+his songs alone would warrant. His lyrical pieces, though not wholly
+without the lilt and charm such verse exacts, are perhaps mainly of
+service in showing the immeasurable superiority of Burns. Ramsay was a
+successful poet, and not too much of a poet to be also a successful man
+of business. He exchanged wig-making for bookselling, kept a shop in the
+High Street of Edinburgh, and finally retired to a villa which he had
+built for himself on the Castle Hill. A good-humoured, care-defying man,
+he enjoyed life in an easy way, and was not disposed to repine when his
+road lay down the hill. In an epistle to a friend he writes:
+
+    'And now in years and sense grown auld,
+    In ease I like my limbs to fauld,
+    Debts I abhor, and plan to be
+    From shackling trade and dangers free;
+    That I may, loosed frae care and strife,
+    With calmness view the edge of life;
+    And when a full ripe age shall crave,
+    Slide easily into my grave.'
+
+Among the Scottish song-writers of the period may be mentioned Robert
+Crawford (1695?-1732), whose love verses, written in a conventional
+strain, are not without music; Lord Binning (1696-1732), the author of a
+pretty song called _Ungrateful Nanny_; and William Hamilton of Bangour
+(1704-1754), who wrote the well-known _Braes of Yarrow_. The most
+charming of Scottish lyrics belong, however, to a later period of the
+century than the age of Pope.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The student who reads the minor poets who figured, in some cases with
+much applause, during the years of Pope's ascendency, will be struck by
+the almost total absence from their works of creative power. These
+rhymers wrote for the age, and illustrate it, but they did not write for
+all time, and a small volume would suffice to hold all their verse which
+is of permanent value. Too often they imagined that by the composition
+of flowing couplets they proved their title to rank with inspired poets.
+They confounded the art of verse-making with the divine art of poetry,
+and were not aware that the substance of their work is prose. Now and
+then the digger in this mine will discover a small nugget of gold, but
+for the most part the interest called forth by the poets mentioned in
+the present chapter, is more historical than poetical, and the reader in
+passing to the great prose writers of the age will be conscious of gain
+rather than of loss.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[31] Cowper's line,
+
+    'Where tempests never beat nor billows roar,'
+
+is not an improvement upon Garth's. Tempests, it has been justly said,
+do not beat.
+
+[32] The _Spectator_, No. 335.
+
+[33] Elwin and Courthope's _Pope_, vol. vii., p. 62.
+
+[34] Edward Young tried his skill on the same theme in a poetical
+epistle to Tickell, but his lines are leaden and his praise absurd.
+Addison's glory was so great, he says, as a statesman and a patriot,
+that
+
+          'It borders on disgrace
+    To say he sung the best of human race.'
+
+
+[35] To Lady Wardlaw Dr. Robert Chambers attributed twenty-five ballads,
+and among them several of the finest we possess, which are regarded as
+ancient by every other authority. If the assumption were proved, this
+lady would hold a distinguished and unique position among the poets of
+the Pope period, but there is absolutely no ground for the theory so
+zealously advocated by Chambers.
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+THE PROSE WRITERS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+JOSEPH ADDISON--SIR RICHARD STEELE.
+
+
+As essayists, the writings of Addison and of Steele are familiar to all
+readers of eighteenth-century literature. Their work in other
+departments may be neglected without much loss; but the student who
+disregards the _Tatler_, the _Spectator_, the _Guardian_, and some of
+the essay-volumes which follow in their wake, will be blind to one of
+the most significant literary features of the period.
+
+The alliance between Addison and Steele was so intimate, that to judge
+of one apart from the other, would be fair to neither. It may be well,
+therefore, after giving the leading facts in the lives of the two
+friends, to bring them together again while considering the work they
+accomplished in their literary partnership. One point, I think, will
+come out clearly in this examination, namely, that while Steele might,
+under very inferior conditions, have produced the _Tatler_ and
+_Spectator_ without Addison, it is highly improbable that Addison, as an
+essayist, would have existed without Steele.
+
+[Sidenote: Joseph Addison (1672-1719).]
+
+Addison lives on the reputation of his prose works, but he thought that
+he was a poet, and was regarded as a poet by his contemporaries. It was
+by verse that he won his earliest reputation, and it was on his Pegasus
+that he rose to be Secretary of State. He was born on May 1st, 1672, at
+Milston, in Wiltshire, a parish of which his father was the rector, and
+was educated at the Charterhouse, where he contracted his memorable
+friendship with Steele. Thence, in 1687, at the boyish age of fifteen,
+he went up to Queen's College, Oxford, and in a few months, thanks to
+his Latin verses, gained a scholarship at Magdalen, of which college ten
+years later he became a fellow.
+
+While at Oxford he acquired, after the fashion of the day, what Johnson
+calls 'the trade of a courtier.' His Latin poem on the _Peace of
+Ryswick_ was dedicated to Montague, and two years later a pension of
+£300 a year, gained through Somers and Montague, enabled him to travel,
+in order that by gaining a knowledge of French and Italian, he might be
+fitted for the diplomatic service. Some time after his return to England
+he published his _Remarks on Several Parts of Italy_ (1705), and
+dedicated the volume to Swift, 'the most agreeable companion, the truest
+friend, and the greatest genius of his age.'
+
+Addison's patrons had now lost their power, and he was left to his own
+exertions. His difficulties did not last long. In 1704 the battle of
+Blenheim called forth several weak efforts from the poetasters, and as
+the Government required verse more worthy of the occasion, the
+Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the recommendation of Montague, now Earl
+of Halifax, applied to Addison, who, in answer to the appeal, published
+_The Campaign_, in 1705. The poem contains the well-known similitude of
+the angel, and also an apt allusion to the great storm that had lately
+destroyed fleets and devastated the country.
+
+    'So when an angel by divine command
+    With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,
+    Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past,
+    Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
+    And, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform,
+    Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.'
+
+_The Campaign_, which has no other passage worth quoting, proved a happy
+hit, and was of such service to the Ministry, that Addison found the way
+to fame and fortune. He was appointed Commissioner of Appeals, and not
+long after Under Secretary of State. In 1707 he accompanied his friend
+and patron, Halifax, on a mission to Hanover, and two years later he was
+appointed Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. In Dublin
+he gained golden opinions. 'I am convinced,' Swift writes, 'that
+whatever Government come over, you will find all marks of kindness from
+any parliament here with respect to your employment; the Tories
+contending with the Whigs which should speak best of you. In short, if
+you will come over again when you are at leisure, we will raise an army
+and make you king of Ireland.' When the Whig Ministry fell in 1710, and
+Addison lost his appointment, he must have gained a fortune, for he was
+able to purchase an estate for £10,000.
+
+In the early years of the century the Italian opera, which had been
+brought into England in the reign of William and Mary, excited the mirth
+and opposition of the wits. Lord Chesterfield, who called it 'too absurd
+and extravagant to mention,' said, 'Whenever I go to the opera I leave
+my sense and reason at the door with my half-guinea, and deliver myself
+up to my eyes and ears.' Steele, Gay, and Pope ridiculed the new-fangled
+entertainment, and Colley Cibber, too, pointed his jest at these
+'poetical drams, these gin-shops of the stage that intoxicate its
+auditors, and dishonour their understanding with a levity for which I
+want a name.' Addison, who has some lively papers on the subject in the
+_Spectator_, undertook to give a faithful account of the progress of
+the Italian opera on the English stage, 'for there is no question,' he
+writes, 'but our great grandchildren will be very curious to know why
+their forefathers used to sit together like an audience of foreigners in
+their own country; and to hear whole plays acted before them in a tongue
+which they did not understand.'
+
+Before writing thus in the _Spectator_, Addison, in order to oppose the
+Italian opera, by what he regarded as a more rational pastime, produced
+his English opera of _Rosamond_, which was acted in 1706, and proved a
+failure on the stage. The music is said to have been bad, and the poetry
+is the work of a writer destitute of lyrical genius. Lord Macaulay, who
+finds a merit in almost everything produced by Addison, praises 'the
+smoothness with which the verses glide, and the elasticity with which
+they bound,' and considers that if he 'had left heroic couplets to Pope,
+and blank verse to Rowe, and had employed himself in writing airy and
+spirited songs, his reputation as a poet would have stood far higher
+than it now does.' The gliding movement of the verse may be admitted;
+but lyric poetry demands the higher qualities of music and imaginative
+treatment, and Addison's 'smoothness,' so far from being a poetical
+gift, is a mechanical acquisition.
+
+In 1713 his _Cato_, with its stately rhetoric and cold dignity, received
+a very different reception. The prologue, written by Pope, is in
+admirable accordance with the spirit of the play. Addison's purpose is
+to exhibit a great man struggling with adversity, and Pope writes:
+
+    'He bids your breasts with ancient ardour rise,
+    And calls forth Roman drops from British eyes;
+    Virtue confessed in human shape he draws,
+    What Plato thought, and God-like Cato was:
+    No common object to your sight displays,
+    But what with pleasure Heaven itself surveys;
+    A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,
+    And greatly falling with a falling state!
+    While Cato gives his little senate laws,
+    What bosom beats not in his country's cause?'
+
+Addison has proved that he could draw a life-like character in his
+representation of Sir Roger de Coverley, but the _dramatis personæ_, who
+act a part, or are supposed to act one, in _Cato_, are mere dummies,
+made to express fine sentiments. There is no flesh and blood in them,
+and owing to the dramatist's regard for unity of place, the play is full
+of absurdities. Yet _Cato_ was received with immense applause. It was
+regarded from a political aspect, and both Whig and Tory strove to turn
+the drama to party account. 'The numerous and violent claps of the Whig
+party,' Pope writes, 'on the one side of the theatre, were echoed back
+by the Tories on the other; while the author sweated behind the scenes
+with concern to find their applause proceeding more from the hand than
+the head.'
+
+In another letter he says: 'The town is so fond of it, that the orange
+wenches and fruit women in the parks offer the books at the side of the
+coaches, and the prologue and epilogue are cried about the streets by
+the common hawkers.' It would be interesting to ascertain what there was
+in the state of public affairs in the spring of 1713, which created this
+enthusiasm. Swift, writing to Stella, alludes to a rehearsal of the
+play, but makes no criticism upon it; and Berkeley, who was in London at
+the time, and had a seat in Addison's box on the first night, is also
+silent about it. In a letter written, as it happens, by Bolingbroke, on
+the day that _Cato_ was produced, he indicates the signs of the time, as
+they appeared to a Tory statesman: 'The prospect before us,' he writes,
+'is dark and melancholy. What will happen no man is able to foretell.'
+
+It was this sense of doubt and insecurity in the nation that gave
+significance to trifles. The political atmosphere was charged with
+electricity. The Tories, though in office, were far from feeling
+themselves secure, and both Harley and Bolingbroke were in
+correspondence with the Pretender. Atterbury, who was heart and soul
+with him, had just been made a bishop, Protestant ascendancy was in
+danger, the security of the country seemed to hang on the frail life of
+the Queen, and the strong party spirit of the time was easily fanned
+into a flame. We cannot now place ourselves in the position of the
+spectators whose passions gave such popularity to _Cato_. Its mild
+platitudes and rhetorical periods, its coldness and sobriety, seem ill
+fitted to arouse the fervour of playgoers, but Addison, whose good luck
+rarely failed him, was especially fortunate in the moment chosen for the
+representation of the play. Had _Cato_ exhibited genius of the highest
+order, it could not have been more successful. Cibber writes that it was
+acted in London five times a week for a month to constantly crowded
+houses, and when the tragedy was acted at Oxford, 'Our house,' he says,
+'was in a manner invested, and entrance demanded by twelve o'clock at
+noon, and before one it was not wide enough for many who came too late
+for places.'[36]
+
+_Cato_ had the good fortune to run in London for thirty-five nights, and
+gained also some reputation on the continent. It is formed on the French
+model, and Addison was therefore praised by Voltaire as 'the first
+English writer who composed a regular tragedy.' He added that _Cato_ was
+'a masterpiece.' If so, it is one of the masterpieces that has long
+ceased to be read. Little could its author have surmised that his
+tragedy, received with universal praise, had but a brief life to live,
+while the Essays which he had already contributed to the _Tatler_ and
+_Spectator_ would make his name familiar to future generations.
+
+Addison's poetry may now be regarded as extinct, and most of the poems
+he wrote are probably unknown to the present generation of readers even
+by name. His Latin verses are pronounced excellent by all competent
+critics, but when a man writes verses in a dead language he does so
+generally to show his scholarship, and not to express his inspiration.
+Latin verse is, as M. Taine says, a faded flower. Now and then, indeed,
+a poem has been written with merits apart from its latinity--witness the
+_Epitaphium Damonis_ of Milton--but Addison, who lacked poetic fire in
+his native language, was not likely to find it in a dead tongue. His
+English poems are generally dull, and sometimes, as in his earliest
+poem, the _Account of the greatest English Poets_ (1694), the tameness
+of the verse is matched by the ignorance of the criticism. The student
+will observe how differently the theme is treated by a true poet like
+Drayton in his _Epistle to Reynolds_; or, like Ben Jonson, in the many
+allusions that he makes to his country's poets. Compare, too, Addison's
+_Letter from Italy_ (1701) with the lovely lines on a like theme in
+Goldsmith's _Traveller_, and the contrast between a verseman and a poet
+is at once apparent. Addison, it may be added, is remembered for his
+hymns, which may be found in most selections of sacred verse, and
+deserve a place in the best of them. As the forerunner of Isaac Watts
+(1674-1748) and of Charles Wesley (1708-1788), he struck upon what at
+that time might, in our country, be almost called a new department of
+literature; and it is remarkable that an age which so dreaded enthusiasm
+should have originated verse which gives utterance to the most emotional
+form of spiritual aspiration. As hymn-writers, Englishmen were more
+than a century behind the best sacred poets of Germany. Luther had
+taught the German people the power of hymnody, but it was during the
+Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), and after its conclusion, that the spirit
+of devotion found full expression in religious verse. Just before the
+engagement at Leipzic, Gustavus Adolphus wrote his well-known battle
+hymn, and the peace was celebrated in a noble hymn by Martin Rinkart. He
+was followed by a succession of sacred singers whose devout utterances
+influenced and in some degree inspired the Wesleys.
+
+    "A verse may find him whom a sermon flies,"
+
+says George Herbert, and the enormous power wielded by Methodism owes a
+large portion of its strength to song.
+
+Amidst much in their writings that is questionable in taste and weak in
+expression, both Watts and Charles Wesley have written hymns which prove
+their incontestible right to a place among the poets, and the influence
+they have exerted over the English-speaking race is beyond the power of
+the literary historian to estimate. The external divisions of the
+Christian Church are numerous; its unity is to be seen in the Hymn Book.
+'Men whose theological views contrast most strongly,' says Mr. Abbey in
+his essay on _The English Sacred Poetry of the Eighteenth Century_,
+'meet on common ground when they express in verse the deeper aspirations
+of the heart and the voice of Christian praise.'
+
+In 1714, on the death of the Queen, Addison was once more in office, and
+held his old position of Irish Secretary. In the following year he
+defended the Whig Government and Whig principles in the _Freeholder_, a
+paper published twice weekly. In it he gives no niggard praise to the
+Government of George I., and to the King himself, for his 'civil
+virtues,' and for his martial achievements. Addison's praise disagrees,
+it need scarcely be said, with the more minute and veracious description
+of the King given by Thackeray, but a party politician in those days
+could scarcely be a faithful chronicler. He could see what he wished to
+see, but found it necessary to shut his eyes when the prospect became
+unpleasant. George was a heartless libertine, but Addison observes with
+great satisfaction that the women most eminent for virtue and good sense
+are in his interest. 'It would be no small misfortune,' he says, 'to a
+sovereign, though he had all the male part of the nation on his side, if
+he did not find himself king of the most beautiful half of his subjects.
+Ladies are always of great use to the party they espouse, and never fail
+to win over numbers to it. Lovers, according to Sir William Petty's
+computation, make at least the third part of the sensible men of the
+British nation, and it has been an uncontroverted maxim in all ages,
+that though a husband is sometimes a stubborn sort of a creature, a
+lover is always at the devotion of his mistress. By this means it lies
+in the power of every fine woman to secure at least half-a-dozen
+able-bodied men to his Majesty's service. The female world are likewise
+indispensably necessary in the best causes to manage the controversial
+part of them, in which no man of tolerable breeding is ever able to
+refute them. Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.'
+
+The essayist thinks it fortunate for the Whigs 'that their very enemies
+acknowledge the finest women of Great Britain to be of that party;' and
+in an amusing but rather absurd way he discourses to maids, wives, and
+widows on the advantages of adhering to the Hanoverian Government. It is
+characteristic of Addison that a political paper like the _Freeholder_
+should be flavoured with the humour and badinage he found so effective
+in the _Spectator_. To the ladies he appeals again and again, but not to
+their reason. He gives them mirth instead of argument, and thinks it
+more likely to prevail with the 'Fair Sex.' The _Freeholder_ has several
+papers worthy of the author in his best moods, the best of them,
+perhaps, being the 'Tory Fox-hunter,' with which, to quote Johnson's
+words, 'bigotry itself must be delighted.' In the year which gave birth
+to the _Freeholder_, _The Drummer_, a comedy, was acted at Drury Lane,
+and ran three nights. The play was not acknowledged by Addison, neither
+was it printed in Tickell's edition of his works; but Steele, who
+published an edition of the play, with a dedication to Congreve, never
+doubted, and there is no reason to doubt, that Addison was the author.
+'The piece,' Mr. Courthope writes, 'is like _Cato_, a standing proof of
+Addison's deficiency in dramatic genius. The plot is poor and trivial,
+nor does the dialogue, though it shows in many passages traces of its
+author's peculiar vein of humour, make amends by its brilliancy for the
+tameness of the dramatic situation.'[37]
+
+After the _Freeholder_ Addison wrote nothing of importance, unless we
+except the essay published after his death _On the Evidences of
+Christianity_. Of this essay it will suffice to quote the judgment of
+his most distinguished eulogist. After observing that the treatise shows
+the narrow limits of Addison's classical knowledge, Lord Macaulay adds:
+'It is melancholy to see how helplessly he gropes his way from blunder
+to blunder. He assigns as grounds for his religious belief stories as
+absurd as that of the Cock Lane Ghost, and forgeries as rank as
+Ireland's Vortigern; puts faith in the lie about the Thundering Legion;
+is convinced that Tiberius moved the senate to admit Jesus among the
+gods, and pronounces the letter of Agbarus, King of Edessa, to be a
+record of great authority. Nor were these errors the effects of
+superstition, for to superstition Addison was by no means prone. The
+truth is, that he was writing about what he did not understand.'
+
+In 1716, after having been made one of the Commissioners for Trades and
+Colonies, he married the Countess Dowager of Warwick, with whom he had
+been acquainted for some years. The marriage, according to the doubtful
+authority of Pope, was not a happy one, and is said to have driven
+Addison to the consolations of the tavern. He did not need them long. In
+1717 Sunderland became Prime Minister, and made Addison a Secretary of
+State, an appointment which he resigned eleven months afterwards; and in
+1719 he died at Holland House at the age of forty-seven, leaving one
+daughter as the memorial of the union. He lies, as is fitting, in the
+great Abbey of which he has written so beautifully.
+
+Tickell's noble tribute to his friend's memory belongs to the undying
+poetry which neither age nor fresher forms of verse can render obsolete.
+It must suffice to quote here a few lines from a poem which, despite
+some conventional expressions common to the time, is worthy of its theme
+throughout:
+
+    'If pensive to the rural shades I rove,
+    His shape o'ertakes me in the lonely grove;
+    'Twas there of Just and Good he reasoned strong,
+    Cleared some great truth, or raised some serious song;
+    There patient showed us the wise course to steer,
+    A candid censor, and a friend severe;
+    There taught us how to live; and (oh! too high
+    The price for knowledge) taught us how to die.'
+
+There are few men of literary eminence in the eighteenth century of whom
+we know so little as of Addison. His own _Spectator_, who never opened
+his lips but in his club, is scarcely more silent than the essayist's
+biographers, so trifling are the details they have to record beyond the
+bare facts of his official and literary career. Steele knew him better,
+and, in spite of an unhappy estrangement at the last, probably loved him
+more than anyone else, and had he written his story, as he once proposed
+doing, the narrative might have been charming; but, alas for Steele's
+resolutions!
+
+That Addison was a shy man we know--Lord Chesterfield said he was the
+most timid man he ever knew--and it speaks well for his resolution and
+strength of purpose that he should have risen notwithstanding this
+timidity to so high a position in public affairs. His want of oratorical
+power was a drawback to his efficiency, and Sir James Macintosh was
+probably right in saying that Addison as Dean of St. Patrick's, and
+Swift as Secretary of State, would have been a happy stroke of fortune,
+putting each into the place most fitted for him. The essayist's reserve,
+while it closed his lips in general society, did not prevent him from
+being one of the most fascinating of companions in the freedom of
+conversation with a few intimate friends. Swift, Steele, and even Pope,
+testify to Addison's irresistible charm in the select society that he
+loved. Young said he could chain the attention of every hearer, and Lady
+Mary Montagu declared that he was the best company in the world.
+
+[Sidenote: Richard Steele (1672-1729).]
+
+Richard Steele was born in Dublin, 1672, of English parents, and
+educated at the Charterhouse, where, as we have said, Addison was at the
+same time a pupil. In 1690 he matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford,
+Addison being then demy at Magdalen. Steele left college without taking
+a degree, and entered the army as a cadet. After a time he obtained the
+rank of captain in Lord Lucas's fusiliers, and wrote his treatise, _The
+Christian Hero_ (1701), with the design, he says, 'principally to fix
+upon his own mind a strong impression of virtue and religion in
+opposition to a stronger propensity towards unwarrantable pleasure.'
+Steele was an honest lover of the things most worthy of love, but his
+frailty too often proved stronger than his virtue, and the purpose of
+_The Christian Hero_ was not answered.
+
+Jeremy Collier's _Short View of the Immorality and Profanity of the
+English Stage_, published in 1698, had made, as it well might, a
+powerful impression, and Steele, who was always ready to inculcate
+morality on other people, wrote four comedies with a moral purpose. _The
+Funeral; or Grief à-la-Mode_ was acted with success at Drury Lane in
+1701, and when published passed through several editions. _The Lying
+Lover_ followed two years later, and was, in the comfortable judgment of
+the author, 'damned for its piety.' This was followed, in 1705, by _The
+Tender Husband_, a play suggested by the _Sicilien_ of Molière, as _The
+Lying Lover_ had been founded on the _Menteur_ of Corneille. Many years
+later Steele's last play, _The Conscious Lovers_ (1722), completed his
+performances as a dramatist. It was dedicated to the King, who is said
+to have sent the author £500. The modern reader will find little worthy
+of attention in the dramas of Steele. His sense of humour enlivens some
+of the scenes, and is, perhaps, chiefly visible in _The Funeral_; but
+for the most part dulness is in the ascendant, and the sentiment is
+frequently mawkish. _The Conscious Lovers_, said Parson Adams, contains
+'some things almost solemn enough for a sermon.' This may be true, but
+we do not desire a sermon in a play, and Steele, who is always a lively
+essayist, loses his liveliness in writing for the stage. It has been
+observed by Mr. Ward that, taking a hint from Colley Cibber, he 'became
+the real founder of that sentimental comedy which exercised so
+pernicious an influence upon the progress of our dramatic literature.'
+'It would be unjust,' he adds, 'to hold him responsible for the
+feebleness of successors who were altogether deficient in the comic
+power which he undoubtedly even as a dramatist exhibits; but in so far
+as their aberrations were the result of his example, he must be held to
+have contributed, though with the best of motives, to the decline of the
+English drama.'[38] One of the prominent offenders who followed in
+Steele's wake was George Lillo (1693-1739), whose highly moral
+tragedies, written for the edification of playgoers, have the kind of
+tragic interest which is called forth by any commonplace tale of crime
+and misery. In Lillo's two most important dramas, _George Barnwell_
+(1731), a play founded on the old ballad, and _The Fatal Curiosity_
+(1736), there is a total absence of the elevation in character and
+language which gives dignity to tragedy. His plays are like tales of
+guilt arranged and amplified from the Newgate Calendar. The author wrote
+with a good purpose, and the public appreciated his work, but it is not
+dramatic art, and has no pretension to the name of literature.
+
+Throughout his life Steele was at war with fortune. His hopefulness was
+inexhaustible, but he learnt no lessons from experience, and escaped
+from one slough to fall into another. He was as unthrifty as Goldsmith,
+whom in many respects he resembles, and his warm, impulsive nature was
+allied to a combativeness and jealousy which sometimes led him to
+quarrel with his best friends. Of his passion for the somewhat exacting
+lady whom he married,[39] and of the 400 and odd notelets addressed by
+the lover-husband to his 'dear, dearest Prue,' and 'absolute Governess,'
+it is enough to say here, that the story told offhand in his own words,
+shows how lovable the man was in spite of the faults which he never
+attempted to conceal. Only about a week before the marriage the lady had
+fair warning of one probable drawback to her happiness as a wife.[40] On
+the morning of August 30th, 1707, Steele advised his 'fair one' to look
+up to that heaven which had made her so sweet a companion, and in the
+evening of that day he wrote:
+
+
+    'DEAR LOVELY MRS. SCURLOCK,
+
+    'I have been in very good company, where your health, under the
+    character of _the woman I loved best_, has been often drunk, so
+    that I may say I am dead drunk for your sake, which is more than
+    I _die for you_.
+
+    'RICH. STEELE.'
+
+
+
+After marriage Steele's extravagance and impecuniosity must have proved
+a severe trial to Prue. At times he would live in considerable style,
+and Berkeley, who writes, in 1713, of dining with him frequently at his
+house in Bloomsbury Square, praises his table, servants, and coach as
+'very genteel.' At other times the family were without common
+necessaries, and on one occasion there was not 'an inch of candle, a
+pound of coal, or a bit of meat in the house.'
+
+On the 12th April, 1709, Steele issued the first number of the
+_Tatler_, its supposed author being the Isaac Bickerstaff, whose name,
+thanks to Swift, had been 'rendered famous through all parts of Europe.'
+The essays appeared every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, for the
+convenience of the post, and at the outset contained political news,
+which Steele, by his government appointment of Gazetteer, was enabled to
+supply. After awhile, however, much to the advantage of the _Tatler_,
+this news was dropped. The articles are dated from White's
+Chocolate-house, from Will's Coffee-house, from the Grecian, and from
+the St. James's. It is probable that the column in Defoe's _Review_,
+containing _Advice from the Scandal Club_, suggested his 'Lucubrations'
+to Steele. If so, it does not detract from his originality of treatment,
+for Defoe's town gossip is poor stuff. Addison, who knew nothing of the
+project beforehand, came, ere long, to his friend's assistance; but it
+was not until about eighty numbers had appeared, that he became a
+frequent contributor, and before that time Steele had made his mark.
+When the essays were afterwards reprinted in four volumes, Steele, who
+was never wanting in gratitude, generously acknowledged the help he had
+received. 'I fared,' he says, 'like a distressed prince who calls in a
+powerful neighbour to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary. When I had
+once called him in, I could not subsist without dependence on him.' The
+_Tatler_ still supplies delightful entertainment, and in the almost
+total absence of amusing and wholesome reading in Steele's time, must
+have proved a welcome companion. Readers who are inundated by what is
+called 'light literature' can with difficulty imagine the dearth
+suffered in Pope's day, when the interminable romances of Calprenède, of
+Mdlle. de Scuderi and her brother, and of Madame la Fayette, were the
+liveliest books considered fit for a modest woman to read. A novel,
+however, in ten volumes, like the _Grand Cyrus_ or _Clélie_, had one
+advantage over the cheap fictions of our time, its interest was not soon
+exhausted.
+
+The _Tatler_ has claims upon the student's attention, apart from the
+entertainment it affords. Steele, who lived from hand to mouth, and
+wrote, as he lived, on the impulse of the moment, had unwittingly begun
+a work destined to form an epoch in English literature. The _Essay_, as
+we now understand the word, dates from the _Lucubrations of Isaac
+Bickerstaff_, and Steele and Addison, who may boast a numerous progeny,
+have in Charles Lamb the noblest of their sons.
+
+On the 2nd January, 1711, Steele wrote the final number of the _Tatler_,
+partly on the plea that the essays would suffice to make four volumes,
+and partly because he was known to be the author, and could not, as Mr.
+Steele, attack vices with the freedom of Mr. Bickerstaff. Addison, who
+had done so much to assist Steele in his first venture, was as ignorant
+of his intention to close the work as he was of its initiation. Two
+months later _The Spectator_ appeared, and this time the friends worked
+in concert. It proved a brilliantly successful partnership. The second
+number, in which the characters of the club are introduced, was written
+by Steele, and to him we owe the first sketch of the immortal Sir Roger
+de Coverley:
+
+'When he is in town he lives in Soho Square. It is said he keeps himself
+a bachelor by reason he was crossed in love by a perverse, beautiful
+widow of the next county to him. Before his disappointment, Sir Roger
+was what you call a fine gentleman, had often supped with my Lord
+Rochester and Sir George Etheridge, fought a duel upon his first coming
+to town, and kicked bully Dawson in a public coffee-house for calling
+him youngster. But being ill-used by the above-mentioned widow, he was
+very serious for a year and a half; and though, his temper being
+naturally jovial, he at last got over it, he grew careless of himself,
+and never dressed afterwards. He continues to wear a coat and doublet of
+the same cut that were in fashion at the time of his repulse, which, in
+his merry humours, he tells us has been in and out twelve times since he
+first wore it.... He is now in his fifty-sixth year, cheerful, gay, and
+hearty, keeps a good house both in town and country; a great lover of
+mankind; but there is such a mirthful cast in his behaviour, that he is
+rather beloved than esteemed. His tenants grow rich, his servants look
+satisfied, all the young women profess love to him, and the young men
+are glad of his company. When he comes into a house he calls the
+servants by their names, and talks all the way upstairs to a visit. I
+must not omit that Sir Roger is a justice of the quorum; that he fills
+the chair at a quarter-session with great abilities; and three months
+ago gained universal applause by explaining a passage in the Game Act.'
+
+In their daily issue, as well as afterwards in volumes, the essays had
+an extensive sale. They were to be found on every breakfast-table, and
+so popular did they prove, that when the imposition of a halfpenny tax
+destroyed a number of periodicals, Steele found it safe to double the
+price of the _Spectator_. The vivacity and humour of the paper were
+visible from the beginning. 'Mr. Steele,' Swift wrote, 'seems to have
+gathered new life, and to have a new fund of wit.' Of 555 papers,
+Addison wrote 274 and Steele 236, while the remaining forty-five were
+the work of occasional contributors. In the full tide of its success,
+and without any assigned reason, the _Spectator_ was brought to a
+conclusion in December, 1712, and in the following spring Steele started
+the _Guardian_, which might have been as fortunate as its predecessor,
+had not the editor's zeal tempted him to diverge to politics. He had
+also a disagreement with his publisher, and the _Guardian_ was allowed
+but a short life of 175 numbers. Of these about fifty were due to
+Addison, and upwards of eighty to Steele.
+
+Steele's political ardour was irrepressible, and a paper in the
+_Guardian_ (No. 128), demanding the abolition of Dunkirk, called forth a
+pamphlet from Swift, in which the weaknesses of his former friend are
+sneered at and denounced with enough of truthfulness to enhance their
+malice. After allowing that Steele has humour, and is no disagreeable
+companion 'after the first bottle,' Swift adds, 'Being the most
+imprudent man alive, he never follows the advice of his friends, but is
+wholly at the mercy of fools and knaves, or hurried away by his own
+caprice, by which he has committed more absurdities in economy,
+friendship, love, duty, good manners, politics, religion, and writing
+than ever fell to one man's share.' A little later, in anticipation of
+the Queen's death, Steele published _The Crisis_ (1714), a political
+pamphlet, which led to his expulsion from the House of Commons. It was
+answered by one of the most masterly of Swift's pamphlets, _The Public
+Spirit of the Whigs_, in which it is suggested that Steele might be
+superior to other writers on the Whig side 'provided he would a little
+regard the propriety and disposition of his words, consult the
+grammatical part, and get some information in the subject he intends to
+handle.'
+
+The reader is chiefly concerned with Steele as an essayist, and it is
+unnecessary to follow his career in the House of Commons and out of it.
+Yet there is one anecdote too characteristic to be omitted in the
+briefest notice of his life. Lady Charlotte Finch had been attacked in
+the _Examiner_ 'for knotting in St. James's Chapel during divine
+service, in the immediate presence both of God and her Majesty, who were
+affronted together.' Steele denounced the calumny in the _Guardian_.
+Upon taking his seat as member for Stockbridge, he was attacked by the
+Tories on account of _The Crisis_, which they deemed an inflammatory
+libel, and defended himself in a speech which occupied three hours. When
+he left the House, Lord Finch, who, like Steele, was a new member, rose
+to make his maiden speech in defence of the man who had defended his
+sister; a nervous feeling caused him to hesitate, and he sat down,
+exclaiming, 'It is strange I cannot speak for this man, though I could
+readily fight for him.' The House cheered these generous words, and Lord
+Finch rising again, made an able speech. The effort was a vain one, and
+Steele lost his seat. A few months later, after the death of Queen Anne,
+he entered the House again as member for Boroughbridge, and having been
+placed in the commission of peace for Middlesex, on presenting an
+address from the county, he received the honour of knighthood.
+
+Meanwhile he had not renounced his vocation of essayist. The _Guardian_
+was followed by the _Englishman_ (1713), the _Englishman_ by the _Lover_
+(1714), and the _Lover_ by the _Reader_ (1714), a journal strongly
+political in character. Of this only nine numbers were issued. Then came
+_Town Talk_, the _Tea Table_, _Chit-chat_, and the _Theatre_. Sir
+Richard appears to have been always in a hurry to break new ground, a
+foible not confined to literature. He was continually starting new
+projects, and never doubted, in spite of numberless failures, that his
+latest effort to make a fortune would be successful.
+
+Notwithstanding his appointments as manager of Drury Lane and as a
+Commissioner in Scotland to inquire into the Estates of Traitors,
+Steele's money difficulties did not lessen as he advanced in life; worse
+still, he had the misfortune to quarrel with his oldest and dearest
+friend. For this he and Addison were alike to blame, and Addison dying a
+few months later, there was no time for reconciliation. In 1718 Steele
+had lost his wife, and some years afterwards his only remaining son.
+Ultimately, broken in health and fortune, Sir Richard retired to
+Carmarthen, and there, in 1729, he died.
+
+'I was told,' says Victor, 'he retained his cheerful sweetness of temper
+to the last; and would often be carried out in a summer's evening, when
+the country lads and lasses were assembled at their rural sports, and
+with his pencil give an order on his agent, the mercer, for a new gown
+to the best dancer.'[41]
+
+All literature worthy of the name is the expression of the writer's
+life, of his aspirations, and of his ultimate aims; and since man is a
+moral being, it cannot be severed from morality. To point a moral, if it
+be within the scope of imaginative art, is subordinate to its main
+purpose. To delight by stimulating the imagination, to give a new beauty
+to existence by widening the realm of thought,--these are some of the
+noblest purposes of literature; and while men and women of creative
+genius are among our wisest teachers, the wisdom we gain from them comes
+to us without direct enforcement. In the last century, however, authors
+of good character, and authors who had no character to boast of, were
+equally impressed with the necessity of adorning their pages with moral
+maxims, and if this moral was not inserted in the body of the work, it
+was inevitable that it should be tacked on to the end of it like a tail
+to a kite. Steele in his artless way had a moral end in view, though his
+method of reaching it was not always wise or even discreet. Addison had
+his moral also. It pervades everything he wrote, but so artfully does
+he make use of it, that the reader is not unpleasantly conscious of a
+purpose. His allegories belong to an obsolete form of literature, but
+one of them at least _The Vision of Mirza_, may be still read with
+pleasure. His Saturday essays, which are nearly always serious in
+character, are the sermons of a layman, expressed in the most lucid
+style and in the purest English. His tales, like his allegories, have
+lost much of their flavour, but the humorous essays, in which he depicts
+the manners of the time, as well as the numbers devoted to the Spectator
+Club and to Addison's beloved Sir Roger, have a perennial charm. There
+is a felicity in the essayist's touch which is beyond imitation,
+although a reader might give, as Johnson suggested, days and nights to
+the study. The style is the man, and to write as Addison wrote it would
+be necessary to reach his moral and intellectual level, to see with his
+shrewd but kindly eyes, and to have his fine sense of humour. His
+faults, too, must be shared by his imitator--the somewhat too delicate
+refinement of a nature that never yields to impulse--the feminine
+sensitiveness that is allied to jealousy. Addison, in the judgment of
+his admirers, comes very near to perfection, and that is an irritating
+quality in a fellow mortal. It is, if it be not paradoxical to say so,
+the defect of his essays. There is nothing definite to find fault with
+in them, but we feel that strength is wanting. The clear and silent
+stream is a beautiful object, but after awhile it becomes monotonous,
+and we long for the swift and impetuous movement of a mountain torrent.
+It would be a thankless task, however, to dwell insistently on the
+deficiencies of a writer who has done so much for literature, and so
+much, too, for what is better than literature. We may wish that he had
+more warmth in him, somewhat more of energy and passion, yet such merits
+would be scarcely consonant with the graceful charm which gives to the
+prose writings of Addison an unrivalled position in Pope's age, and, it
+might be added, in the eighteenth century, were it not for the priceless
+literary gift bestowed upon Oliver Goldsmith.
+
+Steele's fame as a writer has been overshadowed by the more exquisite
+genius of Addison, and his reputation has suffered partly from his own
+frailties and partly from the contemptuous way in which he has been
+treated by the panegyrists and critics of Addison. Pity is closely
+allied to contempt, and Sir Richard has come to be regarded as a
+scapegrace whose chief honour in life was the friendship of the
+accomplished essayist. Yet it was Steele who created the form of
+literature in which Addison earned his laurels, and without which he
+would in the present day be utterly forgotten. Steele was the discoverer
+of a new country, and if Addison took possession of its fairest portion,
+it was after his friend had pointed out the path and made the way easy.
+It would be very unjust, however, to treat of Steele solely as a
+pioneer. His own work, though less perfect than that of Addison, a
+consummate master of composition, is rich in variety and spirit, in
+pathos and in knowledge of the world. Steele is often careless, but he
+is never dull, and writes with a glow of enthusiasm that excites the
+reader's sympathy. Truly does Mr. Dobson say that while Addison's essays
+are faultless in their art and beyond the range of his friend's more
+impulsive nature, 'for words which the heart finds when the head is
+seeking; for phrases glowing with the white heat of a generous emotion;
+for sentences which throb and tingle with manly pity or courageous
+indignation, we must go to the essays of Steele.'[42]
+
+Sir Richard's pathetic touches and artless turns of expression come
+from the heart. He is the most natural of writers, but does not seem to
+be aware that nature, in order to be converted into good literature,
+needs a little clothing. His essays have often a looseness or negligence
+of aim unpardonable in a man who can write so well. A conspicuous
+illustration of this defect may be seen in No. 181 of the _Tatler_, one
+of the most beautiful pieces from Steele's pen.
+
+'The first sense of sorrow,' he writes, 'I ever knew was upon the death
+of my father, at which time I was not quite five years of age; but was
+rather amazed at what all the house meant, than possessed with a real
+understanding why nobody was willing to play with me. I remember I went
+into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping alone by it.
+I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a-beating the coffin and
+calling "Papa," for, I know not how, I had some slight idea that he was
+locked up there. My mother catched me in her arms, and transported
+beyond all patience of the silent grief she was before in, she almost
+smothered me in her embraces; and told me in a flood of tears, "Papa
+could not hear me, and would play with me no more, for they were going
+to put him under ground, whence he could never come to us again." She
+was a very beautiful woman of a noble spirit, and there was a dignity in
+her grief amidst all the wildness of her transport, which, methought,
+struck me with an instinct of sorrow, that before I was sensible of what
+it was to grieve, seized my very soul, and has made pity the weakness of
+my heart ever since.'
+
+Later on in the essay, and still looking back on the past, Steele
+recalls the untimely death of the first object his eyes ever beheld with
+love, and then abruptly dismissing his regrets he carelessly finishes
+the paper with this characteristic passage: 'A large train of disasters
+were coming on to my memory when my servant knocked at my closet door,
+and interrupted me with a letter, attended with a hamper of wine of the
+same sort with that which is to be put to sale on Thursday next at
+Garraway's Coffee-house. Upon the receipt of it I sent for three of my
+friends. We are so intimate that we can be company in whatever state of
+mind we meet, and can entertain each other without expecting always to
+rejoice. The wine we found to be generous and warming, but with such a
+heat as moved us rather to be cheerful than frolicsome. It revived the
+spirits, without firing the blood. We commended it until two of the
+clock this morning, and having to-day met a little before dinner, we
+found that though we drank two bottles a man, we had much more reason to
+recollect than forget what had passed the night before.'
+
+Steele, to quote Johnson's phrase, was 'the most agreeable rake that
+ever trod the rounds of indulgence,' but he had many a fine quality that
+does not harmonize with the character of a rake; and although he hurt
+himself by his follies, he did his best to help others by his genial
+wisdom. If he did not sufficiently regard his own interests, his
+thoughts, as Addison said, 'teemed with projects for his country's
+good.' Savage Landor, with an impulse of somewhat extravagant eulogy,
+exclaimed, 'What a good critic Steele was! I doubt if he has ever been
+surpassed.' This is one of the sayings that will not bear examination.
+Steele had doubtless the fine perception of what is noble in art and
+literature, which some men possess instinctively. He felt what was good,
+but does not appear either to have reached or strengthened his
+conclusions by any process of study.
+
+As an essayist Steele is careless, rapid, emotional, and disposed to be
+on the best terms with himself and with his readers. He makes them sure
+that if they could have met him in his rollicking mood at Will's
+Coffee-house, he would have treated them all round, even if, like
+Goldsmith, he had been forced to borrow the money to do it. But he was
+not always in this reckless humour. His heart was expansive in its
+sympathies and tender as a woman's; his mind was open to all kindly
+influences, and his essays have in them the rich blood and vivid
+utterances of a man who has 'warmed both hands before the fire of life.'
+
+Between Steele's _Guardian_ (1713) and the _Rambler_ of Johnson (1750),
+a period of thirty-seven years, a swarm of periodicals testify to the
+fame of Steele and Addison. The reader curious on the subject will find
+in Dr. Drake's essays a minute account of the numerous essayists who
+flourished, or who made an effort to live, between the close of the
+eighth volume of the _Spectator_ and the beginning of the present
+century. Of these a few have still a place on our shelves, but for the
+most part they enjoyed a butterfly existence, and serve but to prove the
+immeasurable superiority of the writers who created the English Essay.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[36] Cibber's _Apology_, p. 386.
+
+[37] Courthope's _Addison_, p. 150.
+
+[38] _English Dramatic Literature_, vol. ii., p. 603.
+
+[39] 'It is a strange thing,' he writes, 'that you will not behave
+yourself with the obedience people of worse features do, but that I must
+be always giving you an account of every trifle and minute of my time.'
+
+[40] Steele had been previously married to Mrs. Stretch, a widow, who
+possessed an estate in the West Indies; but the lady did not long
+survive the marriage.
+
+[41] Victor's _Original Letters, Dramatic Pieces, and Poems_, vol. i.,
+p. 330.
+
+[42] _Selections from Steele_, by Austin Dobson. Introduction, p. xxx.
+Clarendon Press.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+JONATHAN SWIFT--JOHN ARBUTHNOT.
+
+
+The booksellers who employed the most famous man of letters then living
+(1777), to write the _Lives of the Poets_, selected the authors whose
+biographies were to accompany the poems they proposed to publish. They
+did not know the difference between versemakers and poets; but they
+probably did know what authors of the rhyming tribe were likely to prove
+the most popular. Dr. Johnson, who was then in his sixty-ninth year, was
+willing to write the _Lives_ to order. He added, indeed, three or four
+names to the list which had been given him; but he made no protest, and
+contented himself, as he told Boswell, in saying that a man was a dunce
+when he thought that he was one.
+
+Among the biographies included by Johnson in the _Lives_, appears the
+illustrious name of Swift. He was far indeed from being a dunce; but
+just as certainly he was not a poet, unless the title be given to him by
+courtesy. On the other hand, Swift ranks among the most distinguished
+prose writers of his time--many critics consider him the greatest--and
+he therefore finds his natural place in the prose section of this
+volume.
+
+[Sidenote: Jonathan Swift (1667-1745).]
+
+Swift's life is an extraordinary psychological study, but it will
+suffice to state here the bare outline of his career. He was a
+posthumous child, and born in Dublin of English parents, November 30th,
+1667. When a year old he was kidnapped by his nurse out of pure
+affection, and carried off to Whitehaven, where she remained with the
+child for three years. At the age of six the boy was sent to Kilkenny
+school, and there he had William Congreve (1670-1729), the future
+dramatist, for a schoolfellow. Neither at school nor at Trinity College,
+Dublin, which he entered as a boy of fifteen, did Swift distinguish
+himself, and he left the University in disgrace. At the Revolution he
+found a refuge with his mother at Leicester, and she, through a family
+relationship, obtained a position for her boy in the house of Sir
+William Temple (1628-1698), who was accounted a great man in his own
+day, and was famous alike for statecraft and literature. By many readers
+he will be best remembered as the husband of the charming Dorothy
+Osborne, whose innocently sweet love-letters have not lost their
+freshness in the lapse of two centuries.
+
+There was a degree of servitude in Swift's position of secretary, which
+galled his proud spirit. But Temple, so far from treating him unkindly,
+introduced him to the King, and employed him in 'affairs of great
+importance.' In 1694 he left Temple, went to Dublin, took holy orders,
+and lived as prebend of Kilroot on £100 a year. In 1696 he resigned the
+office and returned to Moor Park, where he remained until Sir William
+Temple's death, in 1699. There he studied hard, ran up a steep hill
+daily for exercise, and cultivated the acquaintance of Esther Johnson,
+the 'Stella' destined to take a strange part in Swift's history, then a
+mere girl, and a companion of Temple's sister, who lived with him after
+his wife's death.
+
+Swift began his literary career by writing Pindaric odes, one of which
+led Dryden to say, and the prediction was amply verified, 'Cousin Swift,
+you will never be a poet.' Probably no man of genius ever wrote worse
+poetry than is to be found in these portentous efforts.
+
+Here is one fair illustration of his flights as an ode writer, and the
+reader will not ask for more:
+
+    'Were I to form a regular thought of Fame,
+      Which is perhaps, as hard to imagine right
+      As to paint Echo to the sight,
+    I would not draw the idea from an empty name;
+      Because, alas! when we all die,
+      Careless and ignorant posterity,
+    Although they praise the learning and the wit,
+      And though the title seems to show
+    The name and man by whom the book was writ,
+      Yet how shall they be brought to know
+    Whether that very name was he, or you, or I?
+      Less should I daub it o'er with transitory praise,
+      And water-colours of these days:
+    These days! where e'en th' extravagance of poetry
+      Is at a loss for figures to express
+    Men's folly, whimsies, and inconstancy,
+      And by a faint description makes them less.
+    Then tell us what is Fame, where shall we search for it?
+    Look where exalted Virtue and Religion sit,
+    Enthroned with heavenly Wit!
+      Look where you see
+      The greatest scorn of learned Vanity!
+      (And then how much a nothing is mankind!
+    Whose reason is weighed down by popular air.
+      Who, by that, vainly talks of baffling death,
+      And hopes to lengthen life by a transfusion of breath,
+      Which yet whoe'er examines right will find
+      To be an art as vain as bottling up of wind!)
+    And when you find out these, believe true Fame is there,
+      Far above all reward, yet to which all is due;
+      And this, ye great unknown! is only known in you.'
+
+It is remarkable that at the very time Swift was perpetrating these
+lyrical atrocities, he was at work on the _Tale of a Tub_, which is
+generally regarded as the most masterly effort of his genius. A critic
+has said that Swift's poetry 'lacks one quality only--imagination,' but
+verse without imagination is like a body without a soul, like a house
+without windows, like a landscape-painting without atmosphere, and no
+license of language will allow us to call Swift a poet. Enough that he
+became a master of rhyme, and used it with extraordinary facility. Dr.
+Johnson's estimate of Swift's powers in this respect is a just one:
+
+'In the poetical works of Dr. Swift there is not much upon which the
+critic can exercise his powers. They are often humorous, almost always
+light, and have the qualities which recommend such compositions, ease
+and gaiety. They are, for the most part, what their author intended. The
+diction is correct, the numbers are smooth, and the rhymes exact. There
+seldom occurs a hard-laboured expression, or a redundant epithet; all
+his verses exemplify his own definition of a good style; they consist of
+proper words in proper places.'
+
+The merits with which Swift's verse is credited are, therefore, not
+poetical merits, unless we accept what Schlegel calls the miserable
+doctrine of Boileau, that the essence of poetry consists in diction and
+versification.
+
+The great bulk of Swift's verse is suggested by the incidents of the
+hour. No subject is too trivial for his pen; but the poems which are
+addressed to Stella, and others which, like _Cadenus and Vanessa_, and
+_On the Death of Dr. Swift_, have a personal interest, are by far the
+most attractive. We see the best side of Swift when he addresses Stella,
+whether in verse or prose. The birthday rhymes he delighted to write in
+her praise have the mark of sincerity, and there is true feeling in the
+lines which describe her as a ministering angel in his sickness:
+
+    'When on my sickly couch I lay,
+    Impatient both of night and day,
+    Lamenting in unmanly strains,
+    Called every power to ease my pains;
+    Then Stella ran to my relief
+    With cheerful face and inward grief;
+    And though by Heaven's severe decree
+    She suffers hourly more than me,
+    No cruel master could require
+    From slaves employed for daily hire,
+    What Stella, by her friendship warmed,
+    With vigour and delight performed;
+    My sinking spirits now supplies
+    With cordials in her hands and eyes,
+    Now with a soft and silent tread
+    Unheard she moves about my bed.
+    I see her taste each nauseous draught
+    And so obligingly am caught,
+    I bless the hand from whence they came,
+    Nor dare distort my face for shame.'
+
+The poem in which Swift imagines what will take place upon his death, is
+full of satiric humour, combined with that vein of bitterness that is
+never long absent from his writings. His humour is always allied to
+sadness; his mirth often sounds like a cry of misery. In this poem he
+pictures his gradual decay, and how his special friends, anticipating
+the end, will show their tenderness by adding largely to his years:
+
+    'He's older than he would be reckoned,
+    And well remembers Charles the Second.
+    He hardly drinks a pint of wine,
+    And that I doubt is no good sign.
+    His stomach too begins to fail,
+    Last year we thought him strong and hale,
+    But now he's quite another thing,
+    I wish he may hold out till Spring.'
+
+No enemy can match a friend, Swift adds, in portending a great
+misfortune:
+
+    'He'd rather choose that I should die
+    Than his prediction prove a lie,
+    No one foretells I shall recover,
+    But all agree to give me over.'
+
+So he dies, and the first question asked is, 'What has he left and who's
+his heir?' and when these questions are answered, the Dean is blamed for
+his bequests. The news spreads to London and is told at Court:
+
+    'Kind Lady Suffolk, in the spleen,
+    Runs laughing up to tell the Queen.
+    The Queen so gracious, mild, and good,
+    Cries, "Is he gone? 'tis time he should."'
+
+But the loss of the Dean will cause a brief regret to his most intimate
+friends:
+
+    'Poor Pope will grieve a month; and Gay
+    A week; and Arbuthnot a day.
+    St. John himself will scarce forbear
+    To bite his pen and drop a tear.
+    The rest will give a shrug, and cry,
+    "I'm sorry--but we all must die."'
+
+Why grieve, indeed, at the death of friends, since no loss is more easy
+to supply, and in a year the Dean will be forgotten, and his wit be out
+of date.
+
+    'Some country squire to Lintot goes,
+    Inquires for "Swift in Verse and Prose."
+    Says Lintot, "I have heard the name;
+    He died a year ago." "The same."
+    He searches all the shop in vain.
+    "Sir, you may find them in Duck Lane,
+    I sent them with a load of books
+    Last Monday to the pastrycook's.
+    To fancy they could live a year!
+    I find you're but a stranger here.
+    The Dean was famous in his time,
+    And had a kind of knack at rhyme.
+    His way of writing now is past,
+    The town has got a better taste."'
+
+Enough has been transcribed to show Swift's art in this poem, which is
+of considerable, but not of wearisome length. Perhaps ten or twelve
+pieces, in addition to those already mentioned, will repay the student's
+attention. One of the worthiest is a _Rhapsody on Poetry_. _Baucis and
+Philemon_, too, is a lively piece that pleased Goldsmith, and will
+please every reader. It was much altered from the original draught at
+Addison's suggestion; but the alterations are not improvements.[43] _The
+City Shower_ is a piece of Dutch painting, reminding us of Crabbe. _Mrs.
+Harris's Petition_ is an admirable bit of fooling; _Mary the Cook-Maid's
+Letter_, is in its way inimitable; and so, too, is the amusing talk of
+'my lady's waiting-woman' in _The Grand Question Debated_.
+
+It is difficult, unhappily, to pursue one's way through Swift's poems,
+without being repelled again and again by the filth in which it pleases
+him to wade. _The Beast's Confession_, which has been reprinted in the
+_Selections from Swift_ (Clarendon Press), is not obscene, like _The
+Lady's Dressing-Room_, _Strephon and Chloe_, and other poems of the
+class; but it has the inhumanity which deforms the description of the
+Houyhnhnms. Strange to say, in private life Swift appears to have been
+not only moral in conduct, but refined in conversation, and he is even
+said to have rebuked Stella on one occasion for a slightly coarse
+remark. His imagination was diseased, and he was himself always
+apprehensive of the calamity under which he became at last 'a driveller
+and a show.' 'I shall be like that tree,' he said once to the poet
+Young, 'I shall die at the top.'
+
+It has been already said that _The Tale of a Tub_ was written at Moor
+Park. It appeared in 1704, and although published anonymously and never
+owned, the book effectually stood in the way of Swift's high preferment
+in the Church. Queen Anne declined, and not without reason, to make its
+author a bishop.
+
+It is a satire of amazing power, written by a man who takes, as Swift
+took throughout life, a misanthropical view of human nature, and who
+agrees with the cynical judgment of Carlyle, that men are mostly fools.
+Swift, however, did not consider fools useless, but observes that they
+'are as necessary for a good writer as pen, ink, and paper.' Never was
+volume written which betrayed in larger characters the opinions and
+disposition of its author. Swift was consistent in defending the
+National Church as a political institution; but in the _Tale of a Tub_
+he does so with weapons an atheist might use if he possessed the skill.
+The author maintains that in his ridicule of the Church of Rome and of
+Protestant dissenters, he is only displaying the abuses which deform the
+Christian Church; but no defence can be urged for his wild and
+irreverent method of turning subjects into ridicule which by a vast
+number of people are regarded as sacred. In judging of Swift's satire
+from a moral standing-point, one test, as Mr. Leslie Stephen observes,
+may be supposed to guide our decision. 'Imagine the _Tale of a Tub_ to
+be read by Bishop Butler and by Voltaire, who called Swift a _Rabelais
+perfectionné_. Can anyone doubt that the believer would be scandalized,
+and the scoffer find himself in a thoroughly congenial element? Would
+not any believer shrink from the use of such weapons, even though
+directed against his enemies?'[44]
+
+Although the wit poured out with such profusion in the _Tale of a Tub_,
+in so far as it offends the moral sense, fails to give pleasure, the
+reader is astonished, as Swift in later life was himself, at the genius
+displayed in this allegory, the argument of which may be told in a few
+words.
+
+A man is supposed to have three sons by one wife, and all at a birth. On
+his deathbed he leaves to each of them a new coat, which he says will
+grow with their growth, and last as long as they live. In his will he
+leaves directions, saying how the coats are to be used, and warning them
+against neglecting his instructions. For some years all goes well, the
+will is studied and followed, and the brothers, Peter (the Church of
+Rome), Martin (the Church of England), and Jack (the Calvinist), live in
+unity. How by degrees they misinterpret their father's will, how Peter
+begins by adding topknots to his coat, and afterwards grows so
+scandalous that his brothers resolve to leave him, and then fall out
+between themselves, is told with abundant wit. A great part of the
+volume consists of digressions written in Swift's most vigorous style,
+and with the cynical humour in which he has no competitor.
+
+It is always interesting to observe the influence of a work of genius on
+other minds, and in connection with the _Tale of a Tub_ a story told of
+his boyhood by William Cobbett is worth recording:
+
+'I was trudging through Richmond,' he writes, 'in my blue smock-frock,
+and my red garters tied under my knees, when, staring about me, my eyes
+fell upon a little book in a bookseller's window, on the outside of
+which was written, "_Tale of a Tub_, price threepence." The title was so
+odd that my curiosity was excited.... It was something so new to my mind
+that though I could not at all understand some of it, it delighted me
+beyond description; and it produced what I have always considered a sort
+of birth of intellect. I read on till it was dark, without any thought
+of supper or bed.' Cobbett adds, that having read till he could see no
+longer, he put the volume in his pocket, and 'tumbled down' by the side
+of a haystack, 'where I slept till the birds in Kew Gardens awakened me
+in the morning; when off I started to Kew, reading my little book.'
+
+One of the greatest masters of prose in the language has also recorded
+the impression made upon him by this wonderful book. At the age of
+eighty-three Landor wrote: 'I am reading once more the work I have read
+oftener than any other prose work in our language.... What a writer! Not
+the most imaginative or the most simple, not Bacon or Goldsmith had the
+power of saying more forcibly or completely whatever he meant to say.'
+'Simplicity,' said Swift, 'is the best and truest ornament of most
+things in human life;' and Landor, commenting on Swift's style, observes
+that 'he never attempted to round his sentences by redundant words,
+aware that from the simplest and the fewest arise the secret springs of
+genuine harmony.'
+
+The volume containing the _Tale of a Tub_ had also within its covers the
+_Battle of the Books_, which was suggested by a controversy that
+originated in France, and had been carried on by Sir W. Temple in
+England, as to the relative merits of the Ancients and the Moderns. Out
+of this, too, arose a discussion by some _savants_, with Richard Bentley
+(1662-1742), the greatest scholar of the age, at their head, with regard
+to the genuineness of the _Epistles of Phalaris_, a subject discussed in
+Macaulay's essay on Temple in his usually brilliant style. Swift, in the
+_Battle of the Books_ sides with Temple and with Charles Boyle, the
+nominal editor of the _Epistles_, who, in the famous _Reply to Bentley_,
+fought behind the shield of Atterbury. In a combat, which takes place in
+the Homeric style, the enemies of the Ancients, Bentley and Wotton, are
+slain by one lance upon the field. The mighty deed was achieved by
+Boyle. 'As when a slender cook has trussed a brace of woodcocks, he with
+iron skewer pierces the tender sides of both, their legs and wings close
+pinioned to their ribs, so was this pair of friends transfixed, till
+down they fell joined in their lives, joined in their deaths; so closely
+joined, that Charon would mistake them both for one, and waft them over
+Styx for half his fare.' The humour of the piece is delightful, and it
+matters not a whit for the enjoyment of it, that the wrong heroes gain
+the victory.
+
+In 1708 Swift produced several pamphlets or tracts, and in one of them,
+the _Argument against Abolishing Christianity_, he found ample scope for
+the irony of which he was so consummate a master.
+
+'Great wits,' he writes, 'love to be free with the highest objects; and
+if they cannot be allowed a God to revile or renounce, they will speak
+evil of dignities, abuse the Government, and reflect upon the ministry;
+which I am sure few will deny to be of much more pernicious
+consequence;' and he observes, in concluding the argument: 'Whatever
+some may think of the great advantages to trade by this favourite
+scheme, I do very much apprehend that in six months' time the Bank and
+East India Stock may fall at least one _per cent._ And since that is
+fifty times more than ever the wisdom of our age thought fit to venture
+for the preservation of Christianity, there is no reason we should be at
+so great a loss merely for the sake of destroying it.'
+
+An amusing piece which appeared also at this time from Swift's pen, is
+of literary interest. Under the name of Isaac Bickerstaff he predicted
+the death, upon a certain day, of Partridge, a notorious astrologer and
+almanac maker. When the day arrived his decease was announced, and he
+was afterwards decently buried by Swift, despite a loud protest from the
+poor man that he was not only alive, but well and hearty. The town took
+up the joke, all the wits joined in it, and Steele, who started the
+_Tatler_ in the following year (1709), found it of advantage to assume
+the name of Bickerstaff, which these squibs had made so popular. Swift
+loved practical jokes, and sometimes yielded to a license that bordered
+on buffoonery. He was now in London, charged with a mission from the
+Irish Church, and hoping for Church preferment himself. With the latter
+object in view he published the _Sentiments of a Church of England Man_
+(1708). Two years later, vexed at heart at being unable to gain for the
+Irish clergy privileges enjoyed by their English brethren, and foiled,
+too, in his ambition, Swift forsook the Whig party, which he had never
+loved, and going over to the Tories, fought their battle for some years
+with so masterly a pen, as to become a great power in the country.
+
+Some time before his return to London in 1710, a weekly Tory paper had
+been started by Bolingbroke and Prior called _The Examiner_, and in
+opposition to it, upon September 14th in that year, Addison produced the
+_Whig Examiner_ which lived a brief life of five numbers and died on the
+8th of October. Three weeks later, on the 2nd November, after thirteen
+numbers of the _Examiner_ had been published, Swift took up the pen, and
+from that date to June 14th, 1711, every paper was from his hand. Never
+before had a political journal exercised such power. In his change of
+party Swift was sincere in purpose, but unscrupulous in his methods of
+pursuing it, and to gain his ends told lies with a vigour that has
+rarely been surpassed. He is never delicate in his treatment of
+opponents, and when finer weapons would be useless, strikes with a
+sledge hammer. That such a writer, a master of every method most
+effective in controversy, should have been valued by the statesmen of
+the day is not surprising. When he forsook the Whig camp there was no
+opponent to pit against him, for neither Addison with his delicate
+humour, nor Steele with his brightness and versatility, could grapple
+with an enemy like this.
+
+Swift's arrogance in these days of his power was that of a despot. He
+was doing great things for ministers, and took care that they should
+know it. He was proud of his self-assertion, proud of being rude. Great
+men, and great ladies too, who wished for his acquaintance, had to make
+the first advances. He caused Lady Burlington to burst into tears by
+rudely ordering her to sing. 'She should sing or he would make her.' 'I
+was at court and church to-day,' he tells Stella, 'I generally am
+acquainted with about thirty in the drawing-room, and am so proud I make
+all the lords come up to me.' On one occasion he sent the Lord Treasurer
+into the House of Commons to call out the principal Secretary of State
+in order to say that he would not dine with him if he intended to dine
+late. He relates, too, how he warned St. John not to appear cold to him,
+for he would not be treated like a school-boy, and if he heard or saw
+anything to his disadvantage to let him know in plain words, and not to
+put him in pain by the change of his behaviour, for it was what he would
+hardly bear from a crowned head. 'If we let these great ministers
+pretend too much,' he says, 'there will be no governing them.' And in a
+letter to Pope he makes the following confession: 'All my endeavours
+from a boy to distinguish myself were only for want of a great title and
+fortune that I might be treated like a lord ... whether right or wrong
+it is no great matter; and so the reputation of great learning does the
+work of a blue ribbon, and of a coach and six horses.'
+
+It would be out of place in this volume to dwell on Swift's feats as a
+political writer; for us the most interesting fact connected with the
+years 1710-14 is that during that eventful period of Swift's life, in
+which he was hobnobbing with Ministers of State and doing them infinite
+service by his pen, he was writing at odd moments his inimitable
+_Journal to Stella_, and gaining the love which ended so tragically, of
+Hester Vanhomrigh. This strange chapter in Swift's life is closely bound
+up with his literary history, and must therefore be briefly noticed.
+
+At Moor Park Swift, who was more than twenty years her senior, had seen
+Esther Johnson growing up into womanhood. He had been to her as a
+master, a position he always liked to assume towards women.[45] When he
+settled in Ireland it was arranged that Esther and her companion, Mrs.
+Dingley, should also live there. Her preceptor, in his regard for
+propriety, appears never to have seen Esther apart from the useful
+Dingley, and his letters are apparently addressed to both of them, but
+Esther knew, as we know, that all the tenderness and affectionate humour
+they contain was meant for her alone. Swift never writes as a lover, but
+the kind of love he gave to 'Stella' sufficed to bind her to him for
+life. If there were moments when she wished to escape from his power,
+the wish was hopeless. Having once submitted to his fascination, she was
+held by it to the end. Hester Vanhomrigh, who was about ten years
+younger than Stella, felt the same spell, and having a far less
+restrained nature than Miss Johnson, gave free expression to the passion
+which devoured her. Between his two admirers, for such they were, Swift
+had a difficult course to steer. To Stella he was linked by strong ties
+of companionship, and to her, according to some authorities, he was
+secretly married. Whether this were the case or not she had the larger
+claims upon him, and if one of the twain had to be sacrificed, Vanessa
+must be the victim.
+
+In _Cadenus and Vanessa_ (1713) a poem which every student of Swift will
+read, the author strove to achieve an impossibility. His aim was to
+ignore the lover and to assume the character of a master to an
+intelligent and favourite pupil, or of a father to a daughter. His
+dignity and age, he says, forbade the thought of warmer feelings.
+
+    'But friendship in its greatest height,
+    A constant rational delight,
+    On Virtue's basis fixed to last
+    When love's allurements long are past,
+    Which gently warms but cannot burn,
+    He gladly offers in return;
+    His want of passion will redeem
+    With gratitude, respect, esteem;
+    With that devotion we bestow
+    When goddesses appear below.'
+
+And this was Swift's method of dealing with a woman who confessed the
+'inexpressible passion' she had for him, and that his 'dear image' was
+always before her eyes. 'Sometimes,' she wrote, 'you strike me with that
+prodigious awe, I tremble with fear; at other times a charming
+compassion shines through your countenance which moves my soul.' Swift
+had acted far more than indiscreetly in encouraging a friendship with
+Vanessa, and when she followed him to Dublin, in the neighbourhood of
+which she had some property, he knew not how to escape from the snare
+his own folly had laid. To Stella he had given 'friendship and esteem,'
+but, as he is careful to add, 'ne'er admitted love a guest;' the same
+cold gift was offered to Vanessa, but in vain. According to a report,
+the authority of which is doubtful, Miss Vanhomrigh wrote to Stella, in
+1723, asking if she was Swift's wife. She replied that she was, and sent
+the letter she had received to Swift. In a towering passion he rode to
+Vanessa's house, threw the letter on the table, and left again without
+saying a word. The blow was fatal, and Vanessa died soon afterwards,
+revoking her will in Swift's favour and leaving to him the legacy of
+remorse. Having told in outline this episode in Swift's story, I return
+to the _Journal to Stella_, which dates from September 2nd, 1710, to
+June 6th, 1713.
+
+Little did Swift imagine that the chit-chat he was writing every day for
+Esther Johnson's sake would be read and enjoyed by thousands who care
+little or nothing for the party questions upon which the strenuous
+efforts of his intellect were expended. The early years of the
+eighteenth century contain nothing more delightful than this _Journal_.
+Its gossip, its nonsense, its freshness and ease of style, the
+tenderness concealed, or half-revealed, in its 'little language,' and
+the illustrations it supplies incidentally of the manners of the court
+and town, these are some of the charms that make us turn again and again
+to its pages with ever-increasing pleasure. We enjoy Swift's egotism and
+trivialities, as we enjoy the egotism of Pepys or Montaigne, and can
+imagine the eagerness with which the _Letters_ were read by the lovely
+woman whose destiny it was to receive everything from Swift save the
+love which has its consummation in marriage. The style of the _Journal_
+is not that of an author composing, but of a companion talking; and it
+is all the more interesting since it reveals Swift's character under a
+pleasanter aspect than any of his formal writings. We see in it what a
+warm heart he had for the friends whom he had once learnt to love, and
+with what zeal he exerted himself in assisting brother-authors, while
+receiving little beyond empty praise from ministers himself.
+
+In the winter of 1713-14 Swift joined the Scriblerus Club, an
+association of such wits as Pope, Parnell, Arbuthnot, and Gay, and it
+was about this time that his friendship with Pope began. The members
+proposed writing a satire between them, and when Swift was exiled to
+Dublin as Dean of St. Patrick's, he pursued indirectly the suggestion of
+the Scriblerus wits by writing _Gulliver's Travels_ (1726), a book that
+has made his name known throughout Europe, and in all the lands where
+English literature is read. Although Swift did not hesitate to make use
+of hints and descriptions which he had met with in the course of his
+reading, this is one of the most original works of fiction ever written,
+and one of the wittiest. Yet like almost everything that Swift wrote, it
+is deformed by grossness of expression, and in the latter portion by a
+malignant contempt for human nature which betrays a diseased
+imagination. The stories of the Lilliputians and Brobdingnags, purified
+from coarse allusions, are the delight of children; but the description
+of the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos excites disgust and indignation. He said
+that his object in writing the satire was to vex the world, and he has
+succeeded.
+
+'It cannot be denied,' says Sir Walter Scott, one of the sanest and
+healthiest of imaginative writers, 'that even a moral purpose will not
+justify the nakedness with which Swift has sketched this horrible
+outline of mankind degraded to a bestial state; since a moralist ought
+to hold with the Romans that crimes of atrocity should be exposed when
+punished, but those of flagitious impurity concealed. In point of
+probability, too--for there are degrees of probability, proper even to
+the wildest fiction--the fourth part of _Gulliver_ is inferior to the
+three others.... The mind rejects, as utterly impossible, the
+supposition of a nation of horses, placed in houses which they could not
+build, fed with corn which they could neither sow, reap, nor save,
+possessing cows which they could not milk, depositing that milk in
+vessels which they could not make, and, in short, performing a hundred
+purposes of rational and social life for which their external structure
+altogether unfits them.'[46]
+
+Neither morality, nor a regard for probability are so outraged in the
+story of the Lilliputians and Brobdingnags.
+
+Having once accepted Swift's assumption of the existence of little
+people not six inches high, and of a country in which the inhabitants
+'appeared as tall as an ordinary spire-steeple,' the exactness and
+verisimilitude of the narrative, with its minute geographical details,
+make it appear so reasonable that a young reader may feel inclined to
+resent the criticism of an Irish bishop who said that 'the book was full
+of improbable lies, and for his part he hardly believed a word of it.'
+It is curious to note that Swift, who made a strange vow in early life
+'not to be fond of children, or let them come near me hardly,' should
+have done more to delight them than any author of his century, with the
+exception, perhaps, of Defoe. Gay and Pope wrote a joint letter to Swift
+on the appearance of the _Travels_, pretending that they did not know
+the author, and advising him to get the book if it had not yet reached
+Ireland. 'From the highest to the lowest,' they declare, 'it is
+universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery.... It has
+passed Lords and Commons _nemine contradicente_, and the whole town,
+men, women, and children, are quite full of it.' A book which attained
+in the author's lifetime a wellnigh unprecedented popularity should
+have yielded him a large profit. What it did yield we do not know, but
+in a letter dated 1735, in which, perhaps, he alludes to the _Travels_,
+Swift says, 'I never got a farthing for anything I writ, except once,
+about eight years ago, and that by Mr. Pope's prudent management for
+me.'
+
+The injustice done to Ireland in the last century, as short-sighted as
+it was cruel, is described at large in the second volume of Mr. Lecky's
+_History_. Swift, who hated Ireland, felt a righteous indignation at the
+misgovernment which threatened the country with ruin, and some of his
+most powerful phillipics were secretly written in her defence.
+
+In 1720 he issued a pamphlet urging the Irish to use only Irish
+manufactures: 'I heard the late Archbishop of Tuam,' he writes, 'mention
+a pleasant observation of somebody's, that Ireland would never be happy
+till a law were made for burning everything that came from England,
+except their people and their coals. I must confess, that as to the
+former, I should not be sorry if they would stay at home; and for the
+latter, I hope, in a little time we shall have no occasion for them
+
+    "Non tanti mitra est, non tanti judicis ostrum--"
+
+but I should rejoice to see a staylace from England be thought
+scandalous, and become a topic for censure at visits and tea-tables.'
+
+The pamphlet is a forcible attack on the oppression under which Ireland
+laboured, and the Government answered it by prosecuting the printer.
+Nine times the jury were sent back by the Chief Justice before they
+consented to bring in a 'special verdict,' and ultimately the
+prosecution was dropped.
+
+Two years later the English Government granted a patent to a man of the
+name of Wood to issue a new copper coinage for Ireland to an
+extravagant amount, out of which, in return for bribes to the Duchess of
+Kendal, it was supposed that the speculator would make a considerable
+profit at Ireland's expense. The country was aroused, and Swift, by the
+issue of the _Drapier's Letters_, purporting to come from a Dublin
+draper, roused the passions of the people to a white heat. It was known
+perfectly well from whom the _Letters_ came, but no one would betray
+Swift, and when the printer was thrown into prison the jury refused to
+convict. The battle was fought with vigour, Swift conquered, and the
+patent was withdrawn. A brief passage from the fourth and final letter
+'To the Whole People of Ireland' shall be quoted. It will be seen that
+the writer is not afraid of plain speaking. After saying that the king
+cannot compel the subject to take any money except it be sterling gold
+or silver, he adds:
+
+    'Now here you may see that the vile accusation of Wood and his
+    accomplices, charging us with disputing the King's prerogative
+    by refusing his brass, can have no place--because compelling the
+    subject to take any coin which is not sterling is no part of the
+    King's prerogative, and I am very confident, if it were so, we
+    should be the last of his people to dispute it, as well from
+    that inviolable loyalty we have always paid to his Majesty, as
+    from the treatment we might in such a case justly expect from
+    some, who seem to think we have neither common sense nor common
+    senses. But, God be thanked, the best of them are only our
+    fellow-subjects, and not our masters. One great merit I am sure
+    we have which those of English birth can have no pretence
+    to--that our ancestors reduced this kingdom to the obedience of
+    England; for which we have been rewarded with a worse
+    climate--the privilege of being governed by laws to which we do
+    not consent--a ruined trade--a House of Peers without
+    jurisdiction--almost an incapacity for all employments--and the
+    dread of Wood's halfpence. But we are so far from disputing the
+    king's prerogative in coining, that we own he has power to give
+    a patent to any man for setting his royal image and
+    superscription upon whatever materials he pleases, and liberty
+    to the patentee to offer them in any country from England to
+    Japan; only attended with one small limitation--that nobody
+    alive is obliged to take them.'
+
+With much humour, in the last paragraph of the letter, Swift undertakes
+to show that Walpole is against Wood's project 'by this one invincible
+argument, that he has the universal opinion of being a wise man, an able
+minister, and in all his proceedings pursuing the true interest of the
+King his master; and that as his integrity is above all corruption, so
+is his fortune above all temptation.'
+
+Swift's arguments in the _Drapier's Letters_ are sophistical, his
+statements grossly exaggerated, and his advice sometimes shameless, as,
+for instance, in recommending what is now but too well known as
+'boycotting.' The end, however, was gained, and the Dean was treated
+with the honours of a conqueror. On his return from England in 1726, a
+guard of honour conducted him through the streets, and the city bells
+sounded a joyful peal. Wherever he went he was received with something
+like royal honours, and when Walpole talked of arresting him, he was
+told that 10,000 soldiers would be needed to make the attempt
+successful. The Dean's hatred of oppression and injustice had its
+limits. He defended the Test Act, and assailed all dissenters with
+ungovernable fury. It was his aim to exclude them from every kind of
+power.
+
+In 1729, with a passion outwardly calm and in a moderate style, which
+makes his amazing satire the more appalling, Swift published _A Modest
+Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from
+being a Burden to their Parents or Country and for making them
+Beneficial to the Public_. A more hideous piece of irony was never
+written; it is the fruit of an indignation that tore his heart. The
+_Proposal_ is, that considering the great misery of Ireland, young
+children should be used for food. 'I grant,' he says,'this food will be
+somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they
+have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title
+to the children. 'A very worthy person, he says, considers that young
+lads and maidens over twelve would supply the want of venison, but 'it
+is not improbable that some scrupulous people might be apt to censure
+such a practice (although, indeed, very unjustly), as a little bordering
+upon cruelty; which I confess has always been with me the strongest
+objection against any project, how well soever intended.' The
+business-like way in which the argument is conducted throughout, adds
+greatly to its force. Swift has written nothing so terrible as this
+satire, and nothing that surpasses it in power.
+
+The Dean was fretting away his life when he wrote this pamphlet. Two
+years before he had paid his last visit to the country where, as he said
+in a letter to Gay, he had made his friendships and left his desires. On
+the death of George I. he visited England, vainly hoping to gain some
+preferment there through the aid of Mrs. Howard, the mistress of George
+II., and returned to 'wretched Dublin,' to lose the woman he had loved
+so well and treated so strangely, and to 'die in a rage like a poisoned
+rat in a hole.' After Stella's death, in 1728, Swift's burden of
+misanthropy was never destined to be lightened. His rage and gloom
+increased as the years moved on, and in penning his lines of savage
+invective against the Irish House of Commons, the Dean had a fit and
+wrote no more verse. Here is a specimen of his _sæva indignatio_:
+
+    'Could I from the building's top
+    Hear the rattling thunder drop,
+    While the devil upon the roof
+    (If the devil be thunder-proof)
+    Should with poker fiery red
+    Crack the stones and melt the lead;
+    Drive them down on every skull,
+    While the den of thieves is full;
+    Quite destroy that harpies' nest,
+    How might then our isle be blest!'
+
+It should be observed at the same time that even in his declining days,
+when his heart was heavy with bitterness, Swift indulged in practical
+jokes and in the most trivial pursuits. _Vive la bagatelle_ was his cry,
+but it was the cry of a man who had as deep a contempt for the wiser
+pursuits of life as for its frivolities. Of the mirth that is the
+natural outcome of a cheerful nature, the Dean knew nothing. His
+hilarity was but a vain attempt to escape from despair. In 1740 he
+writes of being very miserable, extremely deaf, and full of pain.
+Sometimes he gave way to furious bursts of temper, and for several years
+before the end came, he fell into a state resembling idiocy. Swift died
+on October 19th, 1745, leaving his money to a hospital for lunatics,
+
+    'And showed by one satiric touch
+    No nation needed it so much.'
+
+A brilliant writer, who has undertaken to prove the 'glaring injustice'
+of the popular estimate of Swift, and by his forcible epithets has
+strengthened the grounds on which that estimate is built, observes that
+Swift's 'philosophy of life is ignoble, base, and false,' that 'his
+impious mockery extends even to the Deity,' and that 'a large portion of
+his works exhibit, and in intense activity, all the worst attributes of
+our nature--revenge, spite, malignity, uncleanness.'[47]
+
+This harsh judgment is essentially a true one; but Swift's was a
+many-sided character. He was a misanthrope, with deep, though very
+limited affections, a man frugal to eccentricity, with a benevolence at
+once active and extensive. His powerful intellect compels our
+admiration, if not our sympathy. His irony, his genius for satire and
+humour, his argumentative skill, his language, which is never wanting in
+strength, and is as clear as the most pellucid of mountain
+streams--these gifts are of so rare an order, that Swift's place in the
+literary history of his age must be always one of high eminence.
+Doubtless, as a master of style, he has been sometimes over-praised. If
+we regard the writer's end, it must be admitted that his language is
+admirably fitted for that end. What more then, it may be asked, can be
+needed? The reply is, that in composition, as in other things, there are
+different orders of excellence. The kind, although perfect, may be a low
+kind, and Swift's style wants the 'sweetness and light,' to quote a
+phrase of his own, which distinguish our greatest prose writers. It
+lacks also the elevation which inspires, and the persuasiveness that
+convinces while it charms. With infinitely more vigour than Addison,
+Swift, apart from his _Letters_, has none of Addison's attractiveness.
+No style, perhaps, is better fitted to exhibit scorn and contempt; but
+its author cannot express, because he does not possess, the sense of
+beauty.
+
+Unlike Pope, Swift was a man of affairs rather than of letters. He wrote
+neither for literary fame nor for money. His ambition was to be a ruler
+of men, and in imperious will he was strong enough to make a second
+Strafford. 'When people ask me,' said Lord Carteret, 'how I governed
+Ireland, I say that I pleased Dr. Swift, "_quæsitam meritis sume
+superbiam_."' As a political pamphleteer he succeeded, because he was
+savagely in earnest, and had the special genius of a combatant. If
+argument was against him he used satire; if satire failed he tried
+invective; his armoury was full of weapons, and there was not one of
+them he could not wield. He loved power, and exercised it on the
+ministers who needed the services of his pen. And, as we have already
+said, he dispensed his favours like a king! Swift's commanding genius
+gives even to his most trivial productions a measure of vitality. The
+student of our eighteenth century literature is arrested by the man and
+his works, and to treat either him or them with indifference would be to
+neglect a significant chapter in the history of the time.
+
+[Sidenote: John Arbuthnot (1667-1735).]
+
+John Arbuthnot, one of the most prominent of the Queen Anne wits, and
+the warm friend of Swift and Pope, was born at Arbuthnot, near Montrose,
+in 1667. He studied medicine at Aberdeen, and having taken his doctor's
+degree at St. Andrews, came, after the wont of ambitious Scotchmen, to
+seek his fortune in London, where in 1700 he published an _Essay on the
+Usefulness of Mathematical Learning_, and having won high reputation as
+a man of science, was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. A few years
+later he was made Physician Extraordinary to Queen Anne; and it was not
+long before he had as high a repute among men of letters as with men of
+science. He suffered frequently from illness; but no pain, it has been
+said, could extinguish his gaiety of mind. In the last century Hampstead
+was a favourite resort of invalids. Arbuthnot had sent Gay there on one
+occasion, and thither in 1734 he went himself, so ill that he 'could
+neither sleep, breathe, eat, nor move.' Contrary to his expectation he
+regained a little strength, and lived until the following spring. 'Pope
+and I were with him,' Lord Chesterfield wrote, 'the evening before he
+died, when he suffered racking pains.... He took leave of us with
+tenderness, without weakness, and told us that he died not only with the
+comfort, but even the devout assurance of a Christian.'
+
+There is not one of Pope's circle who holds a more enviable position
+than Arbuthnot. In strength of intellect and readiness of wit Swift only
+was his equal, and in classical learning he was Swift's superior. Like
+Othello, Arbuthnot was of a free and open nature, and his friends clung
+to him with an affection that was almost womanly. He had the fine
+impulses of Goldsmith combined with the manliness and practical sagacity
+of Dr. Johnson, and Johnson recognized in this celebrated physician a
+kindred spirit. 'I think Dr. Arbuthnot,' he said, 'the first man among
+the wits of the age. He was the most universal genius, being an
+excellent physician, a man of deep learning, and a man of much humour.'
+His genius and generous qualities were amply acknowledged by his
+contemporaries, Pope calls Arbuthnot 'as good a doctor as any man for
+one that is ill, and a better doctor for one that is well;' Swift said
+he had every virtue which could make a man amiable; Berkeley wrote of
+him as a great philosopher who was reckoned the first mathematician of
+the age and had the character 'of uncommon virtue and probity,' and
+Chesterfield, who declared that his knowledge and 'almost inexhaustible
+imagination' were at every one's service, added that 'charity,
+benevolence, and a love of mankind appeared unaffectedly in all he said
+and did.'
+
+Strange to say we know little of Arbuthnot but what is to be gleaned
+from the correspondence of his friends, and it is only of late years
+that an attempt has been made to write the doctor's biography, and to
+collect his works.[48] To edit these works satisfactorily is a difficult
+and a doubtful task--several of Arbuthnot's writings having been
+produced in connection with Swift, Pope, and Gay. So indifferent was he
+to literary fame, that his children are said to have made kites of
+papers in which he had jotted down hints that would have furnished good
+matter for folios. His most famous work is _The History of John Bull_
+(1713), which Macaulay considered the most humorous political satire in
+the language. It was designed to help the Tory party at the expense of
+the Duke of Marlborough, whose genius as a military leader was probably
+equal to that of Wellington, while he fell far below the 'Great Duke' in
+the virtues which form a noble character. The irony and dry humour of
+the satire remind one of Swift, and, like Arbuthnot's _Art of Political
+Lying_, is so much in Swift's vein throughout that M. Taine may be
+excused for attributing both of these pieces to the Dean of St.
+Patrick's.
+
+The _History of John Bull_ is not fitted to attain lasting popularity.
+It will be read from curiosity and for information; but the keen
+excitement, the amusement, and the irritation caused by a brilliant
+satire of living men and passing events can be but vaguely imagined by
+readers whose interest in the statecraft of the age is historical and
+not personal. Arbuthnot, like Swift, belonged to the Tory camp, and both
+did their utmost to depreciate the great General who never knew defeat,
+and to promote the designs of Harley. When Arbuthnot produced his
+satire, all the town laughed at the representation of Marlborough as an
+old smooth-tongued attorney who loved money, and was said by his
+neighbours to be hen-pecked, 'which was impossible by such a
+mild-spirited woman as his wife was.' That an 'honest plain-dealing
+fellow' like John Bull the Clothier, should be deceived by such wily men
+of business as Lewis Baboon of France, and Lord Strutt of Spain, and
+also that other tradesmen should be willing to join John and Nic Frog,
+the linen-draper of Holland, in the lawsuit, provided that Bull and
+Frog, or Bull alone, would bear the law charges, is made to appear
+likely enough; and Scott says truly that 'it was scarce possible so
+effectually to dim the lustre of Marlborough's splendid achievements as
+by parodying them under the history of a suit conducted by a wily
+attorney who made every advantage gained over the defendant a reason for
+protracting law procedure, and enhancing the expense of his client.' In
+this long lawsuit everybody is represented as gaining something except
+_John Bull_, whose ready money, book debts, bonds, and mortgages go into
+the lawyer's pockets. Whether the nickname of _John Bull_ originated
+with Arbuthnot or was merely adopted by him is not known.
+
+Arbuthnot was an active member of the Scriblerus Club, and wrote the
+larger portion of the _Memoirs of Martin Scriblerus_ (1741), the design
+of which was, as Pope said, to ridicule false tastes in learning, in the
+character of a man 'that had dipped into every art and science, but
+injudiciously in each.' Dr. Johnson says of this work that no man can be
+wiser, better, or merrier for remembering it. Perhaps he is right; but
+the _Memoirs_ contain some humorous points which, if they do not create
+merriment, may yield some slight amusement. The pedant's endeavours to
+make a philosopher of his child are sufficiently ludicrous. He is
+delighted to find that the infant has the wart of Cicero and the very
+neck of Alexander, and hopes that he may come to stammer like
+Demosthenes, 'and in time arrive at many other defects of famous men.'
+As the boy grows up his father invents for him a geographical suit of
+clothes, and stamps his gingerbread with the letters of the Greek
+alphabet, which proved so successful a mode of teaching the language,
+that on the very first day the child 'ate as far as iota.' He also
+taught him as a diversion 'an odd and secret manner of stealing,
+according to the custom of the Lacedemonians, wherein he succeeded so
+well that he practised it till the day of his death.' Martin studies
+logic, philosophy, and medicine, and discovers that the seat of the soul
+is not confined to one place in all persons, but resides in the stomach
+of epicures, in the brain of philosophers, in the fingers of fiddlers,
+and in the toes of rope-dancers. His discoveries, it may be added, are
+made 'without the trivial help of experiments or observations.'
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[43] _Life of Jonathan Swift_, by John Forster, vol. i., pp. 164-174.
+Mr. Forster did not live to produce more than one volume of a work to
+which for many years he had given 'much labour and time.'
+
+[44] _English Men of Letters--Jonathan Swift_, by Leslie Stephen, p. 43.
+
+[45] Mrs. Pendarves writes (1733) 'The day before we came out of town we
+dined at Doctor Delany's, and met the usual company. The Dean of St.
+Patrick's was there _in very good humour_, he calls himself "_my
+master_," and corrects me when I speak bad English or do not pronounce
+my words distinctly. I wish he lived in England, I should not only have
+a great deal of entertainment from him, but improvement.'--_Life and
+Correspondence of Mrs Delany_, vol. i., p. 407.
+
+[46] _Life of Swift_, p. 299.
+
+[47] _Jonathan Swift, a Biographical and Critical Study_, by J. Churton
+Collins, p. 267.
+
+[48] See _The Life and Works of Dr. Arbuthnot_, by George A. Aitken.
+Oxford, Clarendon Press.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+DANIEL DEFOE--JOHN DENNIS--COLLEY CIBBER--LADY MARY WORTLEY
+    MONTAGU--EARL OF CHESTERFIELD--LORD LYTTELTON--JOSEPH SPENCE.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Daniel Defoe (1661-1731).]
+
+The most voluminous writer of his century is popularly remembered as the
+author of one book, published in old age. Everybody has read _Robinson
+Crusoe_, and knows the name of its author; but few readers outside the
+narrow circle of literary students are aware of Defoe's exhaustless
+labours as a politician, social reformer, projector, pamphleteer, and
+novelist.
+
+It would be well for the author's reputation if we knew less about him
+than we do. There was a time when he was regarded as a noble sufferer in
+the cause of civil and religious liberty. His faults were credited to
+his age while his virtues were supposed to place him on an eminence far
+above the time-servers who despised him. He has been praised as a man
+courageously living for great aims, who was maligned by the malice of
+party, and to whose memory scant justice has been done. 'No one,' says
+Henry Kingsley, 'could come up to the standard of his absolute
+precision,' and his 'inexorable honesty alienated everyone.' These words
+were written in 1868. Four years previously, however, the discovery of
+six letters in the State Paper Office, in Defoe's own hand, had entirely
+destroyed his character for inexorable honesty, and the researches of
+his latest and most exhaustive biographer,[49] who regards his hero's
+vices as virtues, do but serve to give greater prominence to the
+baseness of his conduct. Defoe, by his own confession, was for many
+years in the pay of the Government for secret services, taking shares in
+Tory papers and supervising them as editor, in order to defeat the aims
+of the party to which he professed to be allied, and of the proprietors
+with whom he was in partnership. Thus in 1718, he writes as a plea that
+his labours should be remembered: 'I am, Sir, for this service, posted
+among Papists, Jacobites, and enraged High Tories--a generation who I
+profess my very soul abhors; I am obliged to hear traitorous expressions
+and outrageous words against his majesty's person and government, and
+his most faithful servants, and smile at it all as if I approved it; I
+am obliged to take all the scandalous and indeed villainous papers that
+come, and keep them by me as if I would gather materials from them to
+put them into the _News_; nay, I often venture to let things pass which
+are a little shocking that I may not render myself suspected. Thus I bow
+in the House of _Rimmon_, and must humbly recommend myself to his
+lordship's protection, or I may be undone the sooner, by how much the
+more faithfully I execute the commands I am under.' It would not be fair
+to judge Defoe altogether by the moral standard of our own day, but the
+part he played as a servant and spy of the government would have been an
+act of baseness in any age, and of this he seems to have been conscious.
+
+Daniel Foe, who about 1703 assumed the prefix of De, for no assignable
+reason, was the son of a butcher and Nonconformist in Cripplegate, who
+had the youth educated for the ministry. Daniel, however, preferred a
+more exciting occupation, and took part in the unfortunate expedition of
+the Duke of Monmouth. Escaping from that peril he began business as a
+hose factor in Cornhill, and carried it on until he failed about the
+year 1692. Already he had learnt to use the pen, and a loyal pamphlet
+secured for him a public appointment which lasted for some years. He was
+also connected with a brick manufactory at Tilbury. Meanwhile he wrote
+for the press, and showed himself the possessor of a clear and masculine
+style, which could be 'understanded of the people.'
+
+In 1698 Defoe published his _Essay on Projects_, 'which perhaps,'
+Benjamin Franklin says, 'gave me a turn of thinking that had an
+influence on some of the principal future events of my life.'
+
+One of the most interesting projects in the book is the proposal to form
+an Academy on the French model. In 1712 Swift wrote a pamphlet (the only
+piece he published with his name) entitled _A proposal for correcting,
+improving, and ascertaining the English tongue_, in which he suggests
+the foundation of an Academy under the protection of the Queen and her
+ministers. The idea it will be seen had been anticipated fifteen years
+before.
+
+    'The peculiar study of the Academy of France,' Defoe writes,
+    'has been to refine and correct their own language, which they
+    have done to that happy degree that we see it now spoken in all
+    the courts of Christendom as the language allowed to be most
+    universal. I had the honour once to be a member of a small
+    society who seemed to offer at this noble design in England; but
+    the greatness of the work and the modesty of the gentlemen
+    concerned prevailed with them to desist from an enterprise which
+    appeared too great for private hands to undertake. We want
+    indeed a Richelieu to commence such a work, for I am persuaded
+    were there such a genius in our kingdom to lead the way, there
+    would not want capacities who could carry on the work to a
+    glory equal to all that has gone before them. The English tongue
+    is a subject not at all less worthy the labours of such a
+    society than the French, and capable of a much greater
+    perfection. The learned among the French will own that the
+    comprehensiveness of expression is a glory in which the English
+    tongue not only equals, but excels its neighbours.... It is a
+    great pity that a subject so noble should not have some as noble
+    to attempt it; and for a method what greater can be set before
+    us than the Academy of Paris, which, to give the French their
+    due, stands foremost among all the great attempts in the learned
+    part of the world.'
+
+Defoe also projected a Royal Military Academy, and an academy for women
+which should have only one entrance and a large moat round it. With
+these precautions, spies, he observes, would be unnecessary, since, in
+his opinion, 'there needs no other care to prevent intriguing than to
+keep the men effectually away.' He had the Eastern notion of guarding
+women from danger by preventing the access to it, yet he could write:
+
+    'A woman of sense and manners is the finest and most delicate
+    part of God's creation; the glory of her Maker, and the great
+    instance of His singular regard to man, His darling creature, to
+    whom He gave the best gift either God could bestow or man
+    receive. And it is the sordidest piece of folly and ingratitude
+    in the world to withhold from the sex the due lustre which the
+    advantages of education gives to the natural beauty of their
+    minds. A woman well bred and well taught, furnished with the
+    additional accomplishments of knowledge and behaviour, is a
+    creature without comparison; her society is the emblem of
+    sublime enjoyments; her person is angelic and her conversation
+    heavenly.... She is every way suitable to the sublimest wish,
+    and the man that has such a one to his portion has nothing to do
+    but to rejoice in her and be thankful.'
+
+In verse Defoe published the _True Born Englishman_ (1701), in defence
+of King William and his Dutch followers:
+
+    'William's the name that's spoke by every tongue,
+    William's the darling subject of my song;
+    Listen, ye virgins, to the charming sound,
+    And in eternal dances hand it round.
+    Your early offerings to this altar bring,
+    Make him at once a lover and a king.'
+
+The nonsense deepens as the rhyme goes on. For William every tender vow
+is to be made, he is to be the first thought in the morning, and his
+name will act as a charm, affrighting the infernal powers and guarding
+from the terror of the night.
+
+The poem proved very popular, and Defoe writes that had he been able to
+enjoy the profit of his own labour he would have gained above £1,000. He
+printed nine editions at the price of one shilling a copy, but meanwhile
+twelve surreptitious editions were published and sold for a few pence, a
+fraud for which he says he had no remedy but patience. Throughout his
+busy life of authorship he was indeed continually victimized by pirates.
+
+While in verse Defoe extolled the king as if he were a demi-god, he did
+William good service by his pamphlets, and was in some degree admitted
+into his confidence.
+
+Up to the king's death in 1702 his course appears to have been
+straightforward; after the accession of Anne he acted a less honourable
+part. No fault can be found with his design that year in writing _The
+Shortest Way with the Dissenters_, a piece of irony unsurpassed in that
+age until the publication of Swift's _Modest Proposal_, twenty-seven
+years later. The satire was at first accepted as a serious argument. The
+Dissenters were alarmed, and the most bigoted of High Churchmen
+delighted. Then, Defoe's aim being discovered, both parties joined in
+the cry for vengeance. He was condemned to stand for three days in the
+pillory, and was afterwards imprisoned in Newgate. To the 'hieroglyphic
+state machine, contrived to punish Fancy in,' the undaunted man
+addressed a hymn which was hawked about the streets, and the mob instead
+of pelting him with offensive missiles, covered him with flowers.
+'Earless on high stood unabashed Defoe,' says Pope. He was unabashed,
+but he was not earless.
+
+In Newgate he remained until 1704, when he was released by Harley. In
+prison he wrote a minutely circumstantial account of the great storm
+commemorated in Addison's _Campaign_. How much of Defoe's narrative is
+truth and how much invention it is impossible to say. The fact that he
+solemnly vouches for the accuracy of his statements inclines one to
+believe that they are not to be trusted, for this was always Defoe's
+_rôle_ as a writer of fiction. His first and most deliberate effort is
+to impose upon his readers, and in this art he is without a rival.
+
+While in Newgate he began his _Review_, a political journal of great
+ability. The first number was published in February, 1704, and it
+existed, though not in its original form, for more than nine years.
+
+'When it is remembered that no other pen was ever employed than that of
+Defoe, upon a work appearing at such frequent intervals, extending over
+more than nine years, and embracing, in more than five thousand printed
+pages, essays on almost every branch of human knowledge, the achievement
+must be pronounced a great one, even if he had written nothing else. If
+we add that between the dates of the first and last numbers of the
+_Review_ he wrote and published no less than eighty other distinct
+works, containing 4,727 pages, and perhaps more not now known, the
+fertility of his genius must appear as astonishing as the greatness of
+his capacity for labour.'[50]
+
+Defoe was permitted to leave his prison upon condition that he should
+act in the secret service of the Government, and his work was that of an
+hireling writer unburdened by principle. When Harley was ejected he made
+himself useful to Godolphin; when Godolphin was dismissed he went back
+to Harley, and 'the spirit of the _Review_ changed abruptly.' A more
+useful man for the work he had undertaken could not be found. His
+dexterity, his boldness, his knowledge of men and of affairs, his
+readiness as a writer, and it must be added his unscrupulousness, fitted
+him admirably for services which had to be done in secret.
+
+Much that he did openly was deserving of high praise. He was tolerant in
+an intolerant age, he did his best to forward the Union of England and
+Scotland, his patriotic spirit was not feigned, his words are often
+weighty with wisdom, and it has been truly said, that 'his powerful
+advocacy was enlisted in favour of almost every practicable scheme of
+social improvement that came to the front in his time.'[51]
+
+With equal truth the writer adds that Defoe was 'a wonderful mixture of
+knave and patriot.' The knavery is seen to some extent in his method of
+workmanship as a man of letters. In _A True Relation of the Apparition
+of one Mrs. Veal[52] the next day after her Death to one Mrs. Bargrave
+at Canterbury, 8th September, 1705_ (1706) Defoe's art of mystification
+is skilfully practised.
+
+'This relation,' he says in the Preface, 'is matter of fact, and
+attended with such circumstances as may induce any reasonable man to
+believe it. It was sent by a gentleman, a Justice of Peace at Maidstone,
+in Kent, and a very intelligent person, to his friend in London as it is
+here worded; which discourse is here attested by a very sober and
+understanding gentleman, who had it from his kinswoman who lives in
+Canterbury, within a few doors of the house in which the within-named
+Mrs. Bargrave lives ... and who positively assured him that the whole
+matter as it is related and laid down is really true, and what she
+herself had in the same words, as near as may be, from Mrs. Bargrave's
+own mouth.'
+
+In addition to this circumstantial statement, the veritable appearance
+of the ghostly lady is confirmed by the fact that she wore a scoured
+silk gown, newly made up, which, as Mrs. Bargrave told a friend, she
+felt and commended. 'Then Mrs. Watson cried out, "you have seen her
+indeed, for none knew but Mrs. Veal and myself that the gown was
+scoured."' The ghost came chiefly for the purpose of recommending
+Drelincourt's volume, _A Christian's Defence Against the Fear of Death_,
+then in its third edition. The fourth edition contained Mrs. Bargrave's
+story. 'I am unable to say,' Mr. Lee writes, 'when Defoe's "Apparition"
+became a necessary appendage to the book; but think, that since the
+eleventh edition, to the present time, Drelincourt has never been
+published without it.'
+
+When in 1719, at the age of fifty-nine, he produced his first and
+greatest work of fiction, _Robinson Crusoe_, he aimed by the constant
+reiteration of commonplace details to give a matter-of-fact aspect to
+the narrative, and in most of his later novels, with the exception of
+_Colonel Jack_ (1722), which he allows to be in part a 'moral romance,'
+Defoe boldly maintains that his relations are in every respect true to
+biography and to history. To make this more probable he overloads his
+pages with a number of business-like statements, and with affairs so
+insignificant and sordid that only his genius can save the narrative
+from being wearisome. To inculcate morality he carries his readers into
+the worst dens of vice--his heroes being pickpockets, pirates, and
+convicts, and his heroines depraved women of the lowest order. The
+interest felt in _Captain Singleton_ (1720), in _Moll Flanders_ (1722),
+in _Colonel Jack_ (1722), and in _Roxana_ (1724), is to be found in the
+minute record of their shameless adventures, their miseries and vices.
+When the characters reform, Defoe's occupation is gone. The atmosphere
+the reader is forced to breathe in these tales is indeed so oppressive
+that he will be glad to escape from it into the pure and exhilarating
+air of a Shakespeare or a Scott.
+
+A critic has asserted that as models of fictitious narrative these tales
+are supreme, but it is impossible to agree with this judgment. The
+highest imaginative art is not deceptive art. The fact that Lord Chatham
+thought the _Memoirs of a Cavalier_[53] (1720) a true history, is not to
+the credit of the work as fiction. As well, it has been said, might you
+claim the highest genius for the painter, whose fruit and flowers were
+so deceptively painted as to tempt birds to peck at the canvas.
+
+Whatever interest the reader feels in Defoe's 'secondary novels,' of
+which _Roxana_ is the most powerful, is due to scenes which disgust as
+much as they impress. The vividness with which they are depicted is
+undeniable, but one does not desire to inspect filth with a microscope.
+Happily _Robinson Crusoe_, on which the author's fame rests, is a
+thoroughly healthy book that still holds its place as the best, or one
+of the best, volumes ever written for boys. There is genius as well as
+extraordinary skill in the way this admirable story is told, but it is
+not among the fictions which are read with as much pleasure in old age
+as in youth. Defoe's amazing gift of invention does not compensate for
+the want of a creative and elevating imagination.
+
+_The History of the Plague in London_ (1722) stands next to _Robinson
+Crusoe_ in literary merit. Had Defoe been a witness, as he pretends to
+have been, of the scenes which he describes, the record could not be
+more vivid. It professes to have been 'written by a citizen who
+continued all the while in London,' and 'lived without Aldgate Church
+and Whitechapel Bars, on the left hand or north side of the street.' In
+this case, as in others, the circumstantial character of the narrative
+led readers to regard it as a true history, and Dr. Mead, in his
+_Discourse on the Plague_ (1744), quotes the book as an authority.
+
+Highly characteristic of Defoe's style, and of his art as a moralist is
+the _Religious Courtship_, also published in 1722. It is the fictitious
+history of a family told partly in dialogue, and so written as to
+attract the reader in spite of repetitions and of reflections as
+praiseworthy as they are commonplace. It appeals to a class whose
+attention would not be won by fine literature, and has not appealed in
+vain, for the book, after passing through a large number of editions,
+has not yet lost its popularity. Morally the work is unobjectionable,
+though not a little narrow, and it is strange that it should have
+appeared about the same time as a story so offensively coarse as _Moll
+Flanders_.
+
+The most veracious book written by Defoe is _A Tour through the Whole
+Island of Great Britain, By a Gentleman_, 1724, in three volumes. The
+full title of the work is too long to quote, but it may be observed that
+the promises it holds out under five headings are satisfactorily
+fulfilled. The _Tour_ bears the marks of having been written with great
+care and from personal observation throughout. Defoe states that before
+publishing the book he had made seventeen large circuits or separate
+journeys, and three general tours through the whole island. It contains
+curious information as to the state of England and Scotland one hundred
+and seventy years ago, and readers interested in our social progress and
+the industrial life of the country will find much to interest them in
+the traveller's shrewd observations and careful details. The love of
+mountain and lake scenery felt by Gray more than forty years later was a
+passion unknown to Defoe and to most of his contemporaries. In the
+_Tour_ Westmoreland is described as the wildest, most barbarous and
+frightful country of any which the author had passed over. He observes
+that it is 'of no advantage to represent horror,' and the impassable
+hills with their snow-covered tops 'seemed,' he says, 'to tell us all
+the pleasant part of England was at an end.' The _Tour_ exhibits Defoe's
+literary gift of expressing what he has to say in the clearest language.
+A homely style which fulfils its purpose has a merit deserving of
+recognition. For steady work upon the road the sober hackney is of more
+service than the race-horse.
+
+Defoe was a husband and father and a man of affairs, yet, like his own
+Crusoe, he lived a lonely life, and in 1731, owing to some strange
+circumstance of which there is no record, died a lonely death at a
+lodging-house at Moorfields. He has been called the father of the
+English novel, and deserves the title, although on a slighter scale
+Steele and Addison preceded him as writers of fiction. As a novelist he
+is without refinement, without ideality, without passion; he looks at
+life from a low level, but in the narrow territory of which he is
+master--the art of realistic invention--his power of insight is
+incontestible. Defoe adopted a method dear in our day to some of the
+least worthy of French novelists, who while aiming to copy Nature debase
+her. For Nature must be interpreted by Art, since only thus can we
+obtain a likeness that shall be both beautiful and true. Defoe,
+nevertheless, has contributed one book of lasting value to the
+literature of his country, and such a gift, in the eyes of the literary
+chronicler, hides a multitude of faults.
+
+[Sidenote: John Dennis (1657-1733-4).]
+
+John Dennis was born in London and educated at Harrow and Caius College,
+Cambridge. His relations with Pope give him a more prominent position
+among men of letters than he would otherwise deserve, and mark with
+unpleasing distinctness the coarse methods of literary warfare adopted
+in Pope's day. The poet began the attack in his _Essay on Criticism_.
+Dennis had written a tragedy called _Appius and Virginia_, and Pope, who
+had a grudge against him for not admiring his _Pastorals_, showed his
+spite in the following lines:
+
+    'But Appius reddens at each word you speak,
+    And stares tremendous, with a threatening eye,
+    Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.'
+
+It was perilous in Pope to allude to the personal defects of an
+antagonist, and Dennis attacked him coarsely in return as a 'young,
+squab, short gentleman, an eternal writer of amorous pastoral madrigals,
+and the very bow of the god of Love.' 'He has reason,' he adds, 'to
+thank the good gods that he was born a modern; for had he been born of
+Grecian parents, and his father by consequence had by law the absolute
+disposal of him, his life had been no longer than one of his poems--the
+life of half a day.'
+
+Dennis's pamphlet on the _Essay_ caused Pope some pain when he heard of
+it, 'But it was quite over,' he told Spence, 'as soon as I came to look
+into his book and found he was in such a passion.'
+
+The critic, however, was a thorn in Pope's flesh for many a year, and
+the poet showed his irritation by assaulting him in prose and verse.
+Dennis was equally ready, although not equally capable of returning the
+poet's blows, and when free from the impotence of anger, made several
+shrewd critical thrusts which his antagonist felt keenly.
+
+Dennis aspired to be a poet and dramatist. He wrote a bombastic poem in
+blank verse called _The Monument_, sacred to the immortal memory of 'the
+good, the great, the god-like, William III.'; a poem, also in blank
+verse, and still more 'tremendous,' to quote his favourite word, on the
+_Battle of Blenheim_, in which he frequently invokes his soul to say and
+sing a thousand things far beyond his soul's reach--and a poem equally
+laboured and grandiloquent, on the Battle of Ramillies, in which there
+are passages that read like a burlesque of Milton. Dennis observes in
+his _Grounds of Criticism in Poetry_ (1704) that 'poetry unless it
+pleases, nay, and pleases to a height, is the most contemptible thing in
+the world.' This is just criticism, but the writer did not recognize
+that his own verse was contemptible. In this essay, which contains many
+sound critical remarks and an appreciation of Milton seldom felt at that
+time, he has the bad taste to quote as an illustration of the sublime, a
+passage from his own paraphrase of the Te Deum:
+
+    'Where'er at utmost stretch we cast our eyes
+    Through the vast frightful spaces of the skies,
+    Ev'n there we find Thy glory, there we gaze
+    On Thy bright Majesty's unbounded blaze;
+    Ten thousand suns prodigious globes of light
+    At once in broad dimensions strike our sight;
+    Millions behind, in the remoter skies,
+    Appear but spangles to our wearied eyes;
+    And when our wearied eyes want farther strength
+    To pierce the void's immeasurable length
+    Our vigorous towering thoughts still further fly,
+    And still remoter flaming worlds descry;
+    But even an Angel's comprehensive thought
+    Cannot extend so far as Thou hast wrought;
+    Our vast conceptions are by swelling, brought,
+    Swallowed and lost in Infinite, to nought.'
+
+It is significant of Dennis's judgment of his own verse that these
+inflated lines follow one of the loveliest passages contained in
+_Paradise Lost_. Milton describes the moon unveiling her peerless light;
+and the poet-critic exhibits in juxtaposition his 'vigorous towering
+thoughts' about the stars. The comparison forced upon the reader is
+unfortunate.
+
+His tragedies, _Iphigenia_ (1704), _Liberty Asserted_ (1704), _Appius
+and Virginia_ (1709), and a comedy called _A Plot and No Plot_ (1697)
+were brought upon the stage. _Liberty Asserted_, which was received with
+applause due to the violence of its attacks upon the French, although
+called a tragedy, does not end tragically. The heroine's patriotism is
+so fervid that she professes herself willing, while loving one man, to
+marry another whom she does not love, if her country deems him the more
+worthy.
+
+Among other poetical attempts, Dennis addressed a Pindaric Ode to
+Dryden, and the great poet, with the flattery which he was always ready
+to lavish on his well-wishers, called him 'one of the greatest masters'
+in that kind of verse. 'You have the sublimity of sense as well as
+sound,' he wrote, 'and know how far the boldness of a poet may lawfully
+extend.'
+
+It may be added that Dennis on one occasion successfully opposed one of
+the ablest controversialists of the age. In _The Absolute Unlawfulness
+of Stage Entertainments fully demonstrated_, William Law attacked
+dramatic representations, not on account of the evils at that time
+associated with them, but as 'in their own nature grossly sinful.' 'To
+suppose an innocent play,' Law says, 'is like supposing innocent lust,
+sober rant, or harmless profaneness,' and throughout the pamphlet this
+strain of fierce hostility is maintained.
+
+'Law,' says his biographer,'measured his strength with some of the very
+ablest men of his day, with men like Hoadly and Warburton, and Tindal
+and Wesley; and it may safely be said that he never came forth from the
+contest defeated. But, absurd as it may sound, it is perfectly true that
+what neither Hoadly nor Warburton, nor Tindal, nor Wesley could do, was
+done by John Dennis.... "Plays," wrote Law, "are contrary to Scripture
+as the devil is to God, as the worship of images is to the second
+commandment." To this Dennis gave the obvious and unanswerable retort
+that "when St. Paul was at Athens, the very source of dramatic poetry,
+he said a great deal publicly against the idolatry of the Athenians, but
+not one word against their stage. At Corinth he said as little against
+theirs. He quoted on one occasion an Athenian dramatic poet, and on
+others Aratus and Epimenides. He was educated in all the learning of the
+Grecians, and could not but have read their dramatic poems; and yet, so
+far from speaking a word against them, he makes use of them for the
+instruction and conversion of mankind."'
+
+Dennis's pamphlet, _The Stage defended from Scripture, Reason,
+Experience, and the Common Sense of Mankind for Two Thousand Years_, was
+published in 1726. In his latter days he suffered from two grievous
+calamities, poverty and blindness. In 1733 Vanbrugh's play, _The
+Provoked Husband_, was acted for his benefit, and his old enemy Pope
+wrote the prologue, of which the sarcasm is more conspicuous than the
+kindness. There is a story, to which allusion is made in the _Dunciad_,
+that Dennis had invented some kind of theatrical thunder, and how, being
+once present at a tragedy, he fell into a great passion because his art
+had been appropriated, and cried out ''Sdeath! that is _my_ thunder.'
+The critic was also known to have an intense hatred of the French and of
+the Pope, and these peculiarities are not forgotten in the prologue.
+
+After saying that Dennis lay pressed by want and weakness, his doubtful
+friend adds:
+
+    'How changed from him who made the boxes groan,
+    And shook the stage with thunders all his own!
+    Stood up to dash each vain Pretender's hope,
+    Maul the French tyrant, or pull down the Pope!
+    If there's a Briton then, true bred and born,
+    Who holds Dragoons and wooden shoes in scorn;
+    If there's a critic of distinguished rage;
+    If there's a senior who contemns this age;
+    Let him to-night his just assistance lend,
+    And be the Critic's, Briton's, Old Man's friend.'
+
+Dennis got £100 by this benefit, but had little time in which to spend
+it, for he died about a fortnight afterwards at the age of
+seventy-seven. Upon his death Aaron Hill wrote some memorial verses, in
+which he prophesies that, while the critic's frailties will be no longer
+remembered,
+
+    'The rising ages shall redeem his name,
+    And nations read him into lasting fame.'
+
+It will be seen that the poets did not all treat Dennis unkindly. If
+praise were substantial food, he would have had enough to sustain him
+from 'glorious John' alone.
+
+[Sidenote: Colley Cibber (1671-1757).]
+
+Colley Cibber holds a more prominent place than Dennis in the list of
+men whom Pope selected for attack. He could not have chosen one more
+impervious to assault. The poet's anger excited Cibber's mirth, his
+satire contributed to his content. The comedian's unbounded
+self-satisfaction and good humour, his vivacity and spirits, were proof
+against Pope's malice. Graceless he may have been, but a dullard the
+mercurial 'King Colley' was not.
+
+Born in 1671, he disappointed the hopes of his father, the famous
+sculptor, and at the age of eighteen made his first appearance on the
+stage. As actor and as dramatist, the theatre throughout his life was
+Cibber's all-absorbing interest. His first play, _Love's Last Shift_
+(1696), kept possession of the stage for forty years, and his best play,
+_The Careless Husband_ (1704), received a like welcome. As an actor he
+was also successful, and played for £50 a night, the highest sum ever
+given at that time to any English player. His career was as long as it
+was prosperous. 'Old Cibber plays to-night,' Horace Walpole wrote in
+1741, 'and all the world will be there.'
+
+It was only as Poet Laureate, for he could not write poetry, that Cibber
+displayed his inferiority. The honour was conferred in 1730, two years
+after Gay had produced the _Beggar's Opera_, when Pope was in the height
+of his fame, when Thomson had published his _Seasons_ and Young _The
+Universal Passion_. Pope, as a Roman Catholic, was out of the running,
+but there were poets living who would have saved the office from the
+disgrace brought upon it by Cibber. 'As to Cibber,' Swift wrote to Pope,
+'if I had any inclination to excuse the Court, I would allege that the
+Laureate's place is entirely in the Lord Chamberlain's gift; but who
+makes Lord Chamberlains is another question.' The sole result of the
+appointment that deserves to be recorded is an epigram by Johnson, as
+just as it is severe:
+
+    'Augustus still survives in Maro's strain,
+    And Spenser's verse prolongs Eliza's reign;
+    Great George's acts let tuneful Cibber sing,
+    For Nature formed the Poet for the King!'
+
+Of poetry there is no trace in the five volumes of his dramatic works;
+there are few touches of nature, and little genuine wit, but these
+defects are to some extent supplied by sparkling dialogue and lively
+badinage. Cibber is often sentimental, and when he is sentimental he is
+odious. His attempts to express strong emotion and honourable feeling
+excite laughter instead of sympathy, and on this account it is difficult
+to accept without some deduction Mr. Ward's favourable judgment of _The
+Careless Husband_,[54] which, if it be one of the cleverest of Cibber's
+dramas, is also one of the most conspicuous for this defect. Here, as
+elsewhere, Cibber should have left sentiment alone. Imagine a lover
+exclaiming to a relenting mistress, 'Oh, let my soul thus bending to
+your power, adore this soft descending goodness!' or a man conversing in
+the following strain with a wife who has discovered and forgiven his
+infidelities:
+
+    '_Sir Charles._ Come, I will not shock your softness by any
+    untimely blush for what is past, but rather soothe you to a
+    pleasure at my sense of joy for my recovered happiness to come.
+    Give then to my new-born love what name you please, it cannot,
+    shall not be too kind. Oh! it cannot be too soft for what my
+    soul swells up with emulation to deserve. Receive me then entire
+    at last, and take what yet no woman ever truly had, my conquered
+    heart.
+
+    '_Lady Easy._ Oh, the soft treasure! Oh, the dear reward of
+    long-desiring love--thus, thus to have you mine is something
+    more than happiness, 'tis double life and madness of abounding
+    joy....
+
+    '_Sir Charles._ Oh, thou engaging virtue! But I'm too slow in
+    doing justice to thy love. I know thy softness will refuse me;
+    but remember, I insist upon it--let thy woman be discharged this
+    minute.'
+
+It has been said that Cibber wrote genteel comedy because he lived in
+the best society. If this assertion be true, the reader of his plays
+will decide that the best society of those days was unrefined and
+immoral, and that genteel comedy can be extremely vulgar. Cibber's
+dramas are coarse in incident, and often offensive in suggestion. The
+language is frequently gross, and even when he writes, or professes to
+write, with a moral purpose, his method may justly offend a rigid
+moralist. Moreover his comedy, like that of the dramatists of the
+Restoration, is of a wholly artificial type. Human nature has
+comparatively little place in it, and the fine ladies and gentlemen, the
+fops and fools who play their parts in his scenes, belong to a world
+which has no existence off the boards of the theatre.
+
+His one work which is still read by all students of the drama, and by
+many who are not students, is the _Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley
+Cibber_ (1740), which Dr. Johnson, who sneered at actors, allowed to be
+very entertaining. It is that, and something more, for it contains much
+just and generous criticism. Cibber was the author or adapter of about
+thirty plays, and in the latter vocation did not spare Shakespeare.
+
+[Sidenote: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762).]
+
+Letter writing, a delightful branch of literature, attained its highest
+excellence in the eighteenth century. It is an art which gains most, if
+the paradox may be allowed, by being artless. The carefully studied
+epistle, written with a view to publication, may have its value, but it
+cannot have the charm of a letter written in the familiar intercourse of
+friendship. It is the correspondence prompted by the heart which reaches
+the heart of the reader. The humour, the gaiety, the tenderness, and the
+chatty details that make a letter attractive, should be prompted by the
+feelings and events of the hour. Carefully constructed sentences and
+rhetorical flourishes ring hollow; to write for effect is to write
+badly, and to make a display of knowledge is to reveal an ignorance of
+the art.
+
+For letter writing, although the most natural of literary gifts, is not
+wholly due to nature. It is the outcome of many qualities which need
+cultivation; the soil that produces such fruit must have been carefully
+tilled. In our day epistolary correspondence has been in great measure
+destroyed by the penny post and by rapidity of communication. In the
+last century postage was costly: and although the burden was frequently
+and unjustly lightened by franks, the transmission of letters was slow
+and uncertain. Letters, therefore, were seldom written unless the writer
+had something definite to say, and had leisure in which to say it. Much
+time was spent in the occupation, letters were carefully preserved as
+family heirlooms, and thus it has come to pass that much of our
+knowledge of the age, and very much of the pleasure to be gained from a
+study of the period, is due to its letter writers. The list of them is a
+striking one, for it includes the names of Swift and Steele, of Pope and
+Gay, of Bolingbroke and Chesterfield, of Mrs. Delany and Mrs. Thrale,
+and of the three gifted rivals in the art, Gray, Horace Walpole, and
+Cowper.
+
+In the band of authors famous for their correspondence, Lady Mary
+Wortley Montagu holds a conspicuous place. Reference has been already
+made to the Pope correspondence, large in bulk and large too in
+interest. To this Lady Mary contributed slightly, and the greater
+portion of her letters were addressed to her husband, to her sister,
+Lady Mar, and to her daughter, the Countess of Bute. She was shrewd
+enough to know their value: 'Keep my letters,' she wrote, 'they will be
+as good as Madame de Sévigné's forty years hence;' and they are,
+perhaps, as good as letters can be which are written with a sense of
+their value, which Madame de Sévigné's were not. Lady Mary, who may be
+said to have belonged to the wits from her infancy, for in her eighth
+year she was made the toast of the Kit Kat Club, was not only a beauty,
+but a woman of some learning and of the keenest intelligence. At twenty
+she translated the _Encheiridion_ of Epictetus. She was a great reader
+and a good critic, unless, which often happened, political prejudices
+warped her judgment. She had considerable facility in rhyming, and both
+with tongue and pen cultivated many enmities, the deadliest of her foes
+being the poet who was at one time her most ardent admirer. The story of
+Lady Mary's career, with its vicissitudes and singularities, may be read
+in Lord Wharncliffe's edition of her _Life and Letters_. She is a
+prominent figure in the literature of the period, and made several
+passing contributions to it, but apart from a few facile and far from
+decent verses her letters are the sole legacy she has left behind her
+for the literary student. Some of them, and especially those addressed
+to her sister the Countess of Mar, are often coarse; those to her
+daughter the Countess of Bute exhibit good sense, and all abound in
+lively sallies, interesting anecdotes, and the personal allusions which
+give a charm to correspondence. The section containing the letters
+written during her husband's embassy to Constantinople (1716-1718) is
+perhaps the best known.
+
+Among the strangest of Lady Mary's letters are those addressed to her
+future husband, whom she requests to settle an annuity upon her in
+order to propitiate her friends. In one of them she describes her
+father's purpose to marry her as he thought fit without regarding her
+inclinations, and observes that having declined to marry 'where it is
+impossible to love,' she is bidden to consult her relatives: 'I told my
+intention to all my nearest relations. I was surprised at their blaming
+it to the greatest degree. I was told they were sorry I would ruin
+myself; but if I was so unreasonable they could not blame my F. [father]
+whatever he inflicted on me. I objected I did not love him. They made
+answer they found no necessity of loving; if I lived well with him that
+was all was required of me; and that if I considered this town I should
+find very few women in love with their husbands and yet a many happy. It
+was in vain to dispute with such prudent people.'
+
+This incident is characteristic of the period, but Lady Mary's letters
+to Wortley Montagu are more characteristic of the woman who had her own
+views of female propriety, and of the right method of love-making. To
+escape from the man she hated, she eloped with Wortley, and if, in
+story-book phrase, the curiously-matched couple 'lived happily ever
+afterwards,' it was probably because for more than twenty years they
+lived apart.
+
+Of the following letter, written in her old age, it has been aptly said
+that 'the graceful cynicism of Horace and Pope has perhaps never been
+more successfully reproduced in prose.'[55]
+
+    'Daughter, daughter! Don't call names; You are always abusing my
+    pleasures, which is what no mortal will bear. Trash, lumber and
+    stuff are the titles you give to my favourite amusement. If I
+    called a white staff a stick of wood, a gold key gilded brass,
+    and the ensigns of illustrious orders coloured strings, this
+    may be philosophically true, but would be very ill received. We
+    have all our playthings; happy are they that can be contented
+    with those they can obtain; those hours are spent in the wisest
+    manner that can easiest shade the ills of life, and are the
+    least productive of ill-consequences.... The active scenes are
+    over at my age. I indulge with all the art I can my taste for
+    reading. If I would confine it to valuable books, they are
+    almost as rare as valuable men. I must be content with what I
+    can find. As I approach a second childhood, I endeavour to enter
+    into the pleasures of it. Your youngest son is perhaps at this
+    very moment riding on a poker with great delight, not at all
+    regretting that it is not a gold one, and much less wishing it
+    an Arabian horse which he would not know how to manage. I am
+    reading an idle tale, not expecting wit or truth in it, and am
+    very glad it is not metaphysics to puzzle my judgment, or
+    history to mislead my opinion. He fortifies his health by
+    exercise; I calm my cares by oblivion. The methods may appear
+    low to busy people; but if he improves his strength, and I
+    forget my infirmities, we both attain very desirable ends.'
+
+Lady Mary, it may be added, deserves to be remembered for her courage in
+trying inoculation on her own children, and then introducing it into
+this country. This was in 1721, seventy-eight years before Jenner
+discovered a more excellent way of grappling with the small pox.
+
+[Sidenote: Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773).]
+
+Lord Chesterfield's position in the literature of the period is also
+among the letter writers. He was emphatically a man of affairs, and as
+Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1745, gained a high reputation. He entered
+upon his labours with the resolution to be independent of party, and
+during his brief administration did all that man could do for the
+benefit of the country. In his public career, Chesterfield has the
+reputation of an orator who spoke 'most exquisitely well;' he was an
+able diplomatist, and probably no man of the time took a wider interest
+in public affairs. In a corrupt age, too, he appears to have been
+politically incorruptible: 'I call corruption,' he writes, 'the taking
+of a sixpence more than the just and known salary of your employment
+under any pretence whatsoever.' The reform of the Calendar, in which he
+was assisted by two great mathematicians, Bradley and the Earl of
+Macclesfield, is also one of his honourable claims to remembrance.
+
+On the other hand, Chesterfield, whom George II. called 'a tea-table
+scoundrel,' was an inveterate gambler, he mistook vice for virtue,
+practised dissimulation as an art, and studied men's weaknesses in order
+that he might flatter them. One of the chief ends of man, in the Earl's
+opinion, was to shine in society; we need not therefore wonder that
+Johnson, with his sturdy honesty, revolted from Chesterfield's
+insincerity, and we have to thank the Earl's character for, perhaps, the
+noblest piece of invective in the language. If, however, he neglected
+Johnson at the time when his help would have been of service, he
+appreciated the society of men of letters, and took his part among the
+wits of the age. 'I used,' he tells his son, 'to think myself in company
+as much above me when I was with Mr. Addison and Mr. Pope as if I had
+been with all the princes in Europe.'
+
+As an essayist, although Chesterfield cannot compete with Addison or
+Steele, he is far from contemptible, and his twenty-three papers in the
+_World_ (1753-1756) may still be read with pleasure. His literary
+reputation is based upon the _Letters_ (1774)[56] to his illegitimate
+son written for the purpose of making him a fine gentleman, but the
+young man had no aptitude for the part. His father offered him 'a
+present of the Graces,' and he despised the gift. The _Letters_, which
+Johnson denounced in language better fitted for his day than for ours,
+abound in worldly sagacity and wise counsels; the best that can be said
+of them from a moral point of view is that they show the extremely low
+standpoint of the writer. He is honestly desirous of benefiting his son
+and advancing his interest in life, and so far as morality will do this
+it is earnestly inculcated. 'A real man of fashion,' he says, 'observes
+decency; at least neither borrows nor affects vices; and, if he
+unfortunately has any, he gratifies them with choice, delicacy and
+secrecy.' He observes that an intrigue with a woman of fashion is an
+amusement which a man of sense and decency may pursue with a proper
+regard for his character; gallantry without debauchery being 'the
+elegant pleasure of a rational being.'
+
+Chesterfield's son, who was educated for a diplomatist, is told that the
+art of pleasing is more necessary in his profession than perhaps in any
+other. 'Make your court particularly, and show distinguished attentions
+to such men and women as are best at Court, highest in the fashion and
+in the opinion of the public; speak advantageously of them behind their
+backs, in companies who you have reason to believe will tell them
+again.'
+
+The necessity for dissimulation, constantly enjoined by his father was
+not forgotten by Philip Stanhope. So effectually did he conceal his
+marriage that the Earl was not aware of it until after his son's death.
+
+[Sidenote: George Lyttelton (1708-1773).]
+
+George Lyttelton, afterwards Lord Lyttelton, has a place among the poets
+in the collections of Anderson and Chalmers. Some of his best verses
+were written when a school-boy at Eton, and are worthy of a clever
+school-boy. The _Monody_ on his wife's death has the merit of sincere
+feeling, expressed in one or two passages poetically. In 1747 he
+published his _Dissertation on the Conversion of St. Paul_, 'a
+treatise,' says Dr. Johnson, 'to which infidelity has never been able to
+fabricate a specious answer.' He made himself conspicuous in parliament
+as an opponent of Walpole, and after the fall of that minister was
+appointed one of the Lords of the Treasury. In 1760 Lyttelton published
+his _Dialogues of the Dead_, a volume for which he owes much to Fénelon.
+This was followed a few years later by a History of Henry II. in three
+volumes, upon which great labour was expended. He is said to have had
+the whole history printed twice over, and many sheets four or five
+times, an amusement which cost him £1,000. The work is praised by Mr. J.
+R. Green as 'a full and sober account of the time.'
+
+Lyttelton died at Hagley Park in his sixty-fourth year. Close to Hagley,
+Shenstone had his little estate of the Leasowes, and the poet is said to
+have cherished the absurd fancy that Lord Lyttelton was envious of its
+beauty. He is now chiefly remembered as the patron of Thomson, whom he
+called 'one of the best and most beloved' of his friends.
+
+[Sidenote: Joseph Spence (1698-1768).]
+
+Joseph Spence, a warm friend and admirer of Pope in the poet's later
+life, had the happy peculiarity of keeping free from the party
+animosities of the time. His course throughout was that of a gentleman,
+and to him we owe the little volume of _Anecdotes_ which every student
+of Pope has learnt to value. Spence had much of Boswell's curiosity and
+hero-worship, but there is neither insight into character in his pages,
+nor any trace of the dramatic skill which makes Boswell's narrative so
+delightful. At the same time there is every indication that he strove
+to give the sayings of the poet, as far as possible, in his own words.
+Johnson and Warton saw the _Anecdotes_ in manuscript, but strange to
+say, the collection was not published until 1820, when two separate
+editions appeared simultaneously. The publication by Spence in 1727 of
+_An Essay on Pope's Translation of Homer's Odyssey_ led to an
+acquaintance which soon became intimate between the poet and his critic.
+Apart from literature, they had more than one point of interest in
+common. Like Pope, Spence was devoted to his mother, and like Pope he
+had a passion for landscape gardening. His mild virtues and engaging
+disposition are said to be portrayed in the _Tales of the Genii_, under
+the character of Fincal the Dervise of the Groves. In 1747 he published
+his _Polymetis, an Enquiry into the agreement between the Works of the
+Roman Poets and the Remains of Ancient Artists_. Under the _nom de
+plume_ of Sir Harry Beaumont, Spence produced a volume of _Moralities or
+Essays, Letters, Fables and Translations_ (1753), and in the following
+year an account of the blind poet Blacklock. For a learned tailor,
+Thomas Hill by name, he also performed a similarly kind office,
+comparing him in _A Parallel in the Manner of Plutarch_ with the famous
+linguist Magliabecchi. Spence was made Professor of Poetry at Oxford in
+1728, and held the post for ten years. His end was a sad one. He was
+accidentally drowned in a canal in the garden which he had loved so
+well.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[49] _Daniel Defoe: his Life and recently discovered Writings, extending
+from 1716 to 1729._ By William Lee. 3 vols.
+
+[50] Lee's _Defoe_, vol. i., p. 85. Of Defoe's fertility and capacity
+for work there cannot be a question; but the biographer's stupendous
+catalogue of his publications--254 in number--contains many which are
+ascribed to him solely on what Mr. Lee regards as internal evidence.
+
+[51] _English Men of Letters--Daniel Defoe._ By William Minto. P. 170.
+
+[52] See note on page 248.
+
+[53] There can be no doubt, I think, despite Mr. Lee's arguments, that
+the work is as much a fiction as any other historical novel. That it may
+be based upon some authentic document is highly probable, although it is
+not necessary to agree with his biographer, that 'to claim for Defoe the
+authorship of the _Cavalier_, as a work of pure fiction, would be
+equivalent to a claim of almost superhuman genius.'
+
+[54] Ward's _History of English Dramatic Literature_, vol. ii., p. 597.
+
+[55] _Four Centuries of English Letters_, edited and arranged by W.
+Baptiste Scoones, p. 214.
+
+[56] These _Letters_ were not published until after the earl's death,
+but many of them belong, chronologically, to our period. The first
+letter of the series was written in 1738.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+FRANCIS ATTERBURY--LORD SHAFTESBURY--BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE--LORD
+    BOLINGBROKE--BISHOP BERKELEY--WILLIAM LAW--BISHOP
+    BUTLER--BISHOP WARBURTON.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Francis Atterbury (1662-1732).]
+
+During the first half of the eighteenth century the position held by
+Bishop Atterbury was one of high eminence. Addison ranked him with the
+most illustrious geniuses of his age; Pope said he was one of the
+greatest men in polite learning the nation ever possessed; Doddridge
+called him the glory of English orators; and Johnson said that for style
+his sermons are among the best.
+
+Unfortunately Atterbury's literary gifts, like his oratory, lack the
+merit of permanence, and his sermons, more conspicuous for eloquence
+than for weightiness of matter, although extremely popular at the time,
+have long ceased to be read. His prominence among the Queen Anne
+wits,--and he was admired by them all,--is a sufficient reason for
+saying a few words about him in these pages.
+
+He was born in 1662, and, like Prior, educated at Westminster under the
+famous Dr. Busby. Thence he went to Christ Church, Oxford, where he
+gained a good reputation. He undertook the tutorship of the Hon. C.
+Boyle, a young man of more spirit than judgment, who had the audacity to
+enter the lists with Bentley in a matter of scholarship. For this rash
+deed Atterbury must be held responsible. Sir William Temple had
+published a foolish but eloquently written essay in defence of the
+ancient writers in comparison with the modern. In this essay he praises
+warmly the _Letters of Phalaris_. Of these letters Boyle, with the help
+of Atterbury and other members of Christ Church, published a new edition
+to satisfy the demand caused by Temple's essay. Bentley, roused to reply
+by a remark of Boyle in his preface, proved that the _Letters_ were not
+only spurious but contemptible. Under his pupil's name Atterbury replied
+to Bentley's _Dissertations_, and to the discussion, as the reader will
+remember, Swift added wit if not argument.
+
+For the moment Boyle's, or rather Atterbury's success, was great, for
+wit and rhetoric are powerful persuasives. The authors, too, had the
+Christ Church men to back them, the arch-critic having treated them with
+contempt. Atterbury's share in the work, as he tells Boyle, "consisted
+in writing more than half the book, in reviewing a great part of the
+rest, and in transcribing the whole." His _Examination of Dr. Bentley's
+Dissertations_ (1698) is a brilliant piece of work, and 'deserves the
+praise,' says Macaulay, 'whatever that praise may be worth, of being the
+best book ever written by any man on the wrong side of a question of
+which he was profoundly ignorant.' Having taken holy orders, Atterbury
+became a court preacher, and ample clerical honours fell to his share.
+In 1700 he published a book entitled, _The Rights, Powers, and
+Privileges of an English Convocation Stated and Vindicated_, which was
+warmly applauded by High Churchmen. In 1701 he was appointed Archdeacon
+of Totness, and afterwards Prebend of Exeter. He became the favourite
+chaplain of Queen Anne, and when Prince George died proved the power of
+his eloquence by representing 'his unassuming virtues in such high
+relief that his widow could not help feeling her irreparable loss.'
+
+Atterbury was made successively Dean of Carlisle and of Christ Church,
+and in 1713 succeeded Sprat as Dean of Westminster and Bishop of
+Rochester. Before making Swift's acquaintance he recommended his friend
+Trelawney, Bishop of Exeter, to read the _Tale of a Tub_, a book which
+is to be valued, 'in spite of its profaneness,' as 'an original in its
+kind, full of wit, humour, good sense, and learning.' Atterbury's taste
+for literature was not always so discriminative. He advised Pope, as has
+been already stated, to 'polish' _Samson Agonistes_, declared that all
+verses should have instruction at the bottom of them, and told the poet,
+as though he had discovered a merit, that his poetry was 'all over
+morality from the beginning to the end of it.' He ventured occasionally
+into the verse-making field himself, and wrote a song to Silvia, in
+which, after admitting that he had loved before as men worship strange
+deities, he adds:
+
+    'My heart, 'tis true, has often ranged,
+      Like bees on gaudy flowers,
+    And many a thousand loves has changed,
+      Till it was fixed on yours.
+
+    'But, Silvia, when I saw those eyes,
+      'Twas soon determined there;
+    Stars might as well forsake the skies,
+      And vanish into air.
+
+    'When I from this great rule do err,
+      New beauties to adore,
+    May I again turn wanderer,
+      And never settle more.'
+
+The close friendship between Atterbury and Pope did honour to both men,
+and when Pope went to London he would 'lie at the deanery.' There,
+unknown to his friend, the bishop carried on his Jacobite intrigues,
+and there may still be seen, in a residence made famous by more than one
+great name, a secret room in which Atterbury concealed his treasonable
+correspondence. The poet did not believe that his friend was guilty, but
+it has been well known since the publication of the Stuart papers, more
+than forty years ago, that the splendid defence made by Atterbury at his
+trial in the House of Lords was based upon a falsehood. For years the
+bishop appears to have corresponded, under feigned names and by the help
+of ciphers, with 'the king over the water;' but the plot which led to
+his imprisonment and ultimate exile was not discovered until 1722, when
+he was arrested for high treason. At his trial he called God to witness
+his innocence; and when Pope took leave of him in the Tower he told the
+poet he would allow him to call his sentence a just one if he should
+ever find that he had dealings with the Pretender in his exile. Pope
+gave evidence at his trial, and, as he told Spence, lost his
+self-possession and made two or three blunders.
+
+Atterbury was exiled in June, 1723. On reaching Calais he heard that
+Bolingbroke had just arrived there on his way to England, having had a
+royal pardon. 'Then I am exchanged,' he said.
+
+The pathetic story of his banishment, and of his devoted daughter's
+illness and voyage to the south of France, where after a union of a few
+hours, she died in her father's arms, is full of the most touching
+details, and may be read in Atterbury's correspondence. 'She is gone,'
+the bishop wrote, 'and I must follow her. When I do, may my latter end
+be like hers! It was my business to have taught her to die; instead of
+it, she has taught me.' Like Fielding's account of his _Voyage to
+Lisbon_, the letters give a picture of the time, and of travelling
+discomforts and difficulties of which we, in these more fortunate days,
+know nothing. The bishop, who did not long survive his daughter, died in
+1732, but before the end came he defended himself admirably from the
+accusation of Oldmixon, a libeller who stands in the pillory of the
+_Dunciad_, that he had helped to garble Clarendon's _History_. The body
+was carried to England and privately buried by the side of his daughter
+in Westminster Abbey. The eloquence of Atterbury's sermons--there are
+four volumes of them in print--has not secured to them a lasting place
+in literature, but they are distinguished by purity of style, and have
+enough of _unction_ to make them highly effective as pulpit discourses.
+In book form, too, they were for a long time popular, and reached an
+eighth edition about thirty years after the bishop's death. The eloquent
+sermon on the death of Lady Cutts endows the lady with such an array of
+virtues, that one is inclined to wonder how so many rare qualities could
+have been exhibited in so brief a life:
+
+    'She excelled in all the characters that belonged to her, and
+    was in a great measure equal to all the obligations that she lay
+    under. She was devout without superstition; strict, without ill
+    humour; good-natured, without weakness; cheerful, without
+    levity; regular, without affectation. She was to her husband the
+    best of wives, the most agreeable of companions, and most
+    faithful of friends; to her servants the best of mistresses; to
+    her relations extremely respectful; to her inferiors very
+    obliging; and by all that knew her, either nearly or at a
+    distance, she was reckoned and confessed to be one of the best
+    of women. And yet all this goodness and all this excellence was
+    bounded within the compass of eighteen years and as many days;
+    for no longer was she allowed to live among us. She was snatched
+    out of the world as soon almost as she had made her appearance
+    in it, like a jewel of high price just shown a little, and then
+    put up again, and we were deprived of her by that time we had
+    learnt to value her. But circles may be complete though small;
+    the perfection of life doth not consist in the length of it.'
+
+As a friend of literature and of men of letters, Atterbury claims the
+student's recognition, and the five volumes of his correspondence
+deserve to be consulted.
+
+[Sidenote: Anthony, third Lord Shaftesbury (1671-1713).]
+
+'I will tell you,' writes the poet Gray, 'how Lord Shaftesbury came to
+be a philosopher in vogue: first, he was a lord; secondly, he was as
+vain as any of his readers; thirdly, men are very prone to believe what
+they do not understand; fourthly, they will believe anything at all
+provided they are under no obligation to believe it; fifthly, they love
+to take a new road, even when that road leads nowhere; sixthly, he was
+reckoned a fine writer, and seemed always to mean more than he said.
+Would you have any more reasons? An interval of above forty years has
+pretty well destroyed the charm.'
+
+One hundred and thirty-five years have gone by since Gray wrote his
+estimate of Lord Shaftesbury, whose _Characteristics of Men, Manners,
+Opinions, Times_ (1711) passed through several editions in the last
+century. The first volume consists of: _A Letter concerning Enthusiasm_,
+_An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour_ and _Advice to an Author_;
+Vol. ii. contains _An Inquiry concerning Virtue and Merit_ (1699), and
+_The Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody_ (1709), and Vol. iii. contains
+_Miscellaneous Reflections_ and the _Judgments of Hercules_.
+
+Shaftesbury was a Deist, and while professing to honour the Christian
+faith, which he terms 'our holy religion,' exercises his wit and
+casuistry and command of English to undermine it. Pope, who shows in the
+_Essay on Man_ that he had read the _Characteristics_, said that to his
+knowledge 'the work had done more harm to revealed religion in England
+than all the works of infidelity,' a judgment which may seem
+extravagant, for Shaftesbury is too vague and rhetorical greatly to
+influence thoughtful readers, and too much of a 'virtuoso,' to use his
+own words, for readers of another class; yet the fact that the work
+passed, as we have said, through several editions, shows that the author
+had a considerable public to whom he could appeal. Moreover, it is clear
+that what Mr. Balfour calls 'the shallow optimism' of his creed was not
+deemed so inconsiderable then as it now appears, or Berkeley would not
+have deemed it necessary to controvert his arguments in the third
+Dialogue of his _Alciphron_. Like Berkeley, Shaftesbury occasionally
+makes use of the dialogue very effectively, but he has not the bishop's
+incisiveness. His style, though often faulty, and giving one the
+impression that the author is affected, and wishes to say fine things,
+is at its best fresh and lucid. The reader will observe that whatever be
+the topic Shaftesbury professes to discuss, his one aim is to assert his
+principles as a free-thinking and free-speaking philosopher. His
+inferences, his illustrations, his criticisms, and exaltation of the
+'moral sense,' are all so many underhanded blows at the faith which he
+never openly opposes.
+
+Thus his essay on the _Freedom of Wit and Humour_ is chiefly written in
+defence of raillery in the discussion of serious subjects, when managed
+'with good breeding,' and for 'a liberty in decent language to question
+everything' amongst gentlemen and friends. He regards ridicule as the
+antidote to enthusiasm, believes in the harmony and perfection of
+nature, and considers that evil only exists in our ignorance. Mr. Leslie
+Stephen, whose impartiality in estimating an author like Shaftesbury
+will not be questioned, calls him a wearisome and perplexed writer,
+whose rhetoric is flimsy, but who has 'a true vigour and originality
+which redeems him from contempt.'
+
+Judged by his influence on the age Shaftesbury's place in the history of
+literature and of philosophy is an important one. Seed springs up
+quickly when the soil is prepared for it, and Shaftesbury by his belief
+in the perfectibility of human nature through the aid of culture,
+appealed, as Mandeville also did from a lower and opposite platform, to
+the views current in polite society. According to Shaftesbury men have a
+natural instinct for virtue, and the sense of what is beautiful enables
+the virtuoso to reject what is evil and to cleave to what is good. Let a
+man once see that to be wicked is to be miserable, and virtue will be
+dear for its own sake apart from the fear of punishment or the hope of
+reward. He found salvation for the world in a cultivated taste, but had
+no gospel for the men whose tastes were not cultivated.
+
+Voltaire sneered at the optimism of the _Essay on Man_ and of the
+_Characteristics_. 'Shaftesbury,' he says, 'who made the fable
+fashionable, was a very unhappy man. I have seen Bolingbroke a prey to
+vexation and rage, and Pope, whom he induced to put this sorry jest into
+verse, was as much to be pitied as any man I have ever known; mis-shapen
+in body, dissatisfied in mind, always ill, always a burden to himself,
+and harassed by a hundred enemies to his very last moment.'
+
+[Sidenote: Bernard de Mandeville (1670?-1733).]
+
+Bernard de Mandeville gained much notoriety by his _Fable of the Bees,
+or Private Vices, Public Benefits_ (1723). The book opens with a poem in
+doggrel verse called _The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves turned honest_, the
+purport of which is to show that as the bees became virtuous, they
+ceased to be successful. He closes with the moral that
+
+    'To enjoy the world's conveniences,
+    Be famed in war, yet live in ease,
+    Without great vices is a vain
+    Utopia, seated in the brain.
+    Fraud, Luxury, and Pride must live,
+    While we the benefits receive.'
+
+In the prose which follows the fable, Mandeville may at least claim the
+credit of being outspoken, and he does not scruple to say that modesty
+is a sham and that what seems like virtue is nothing but self-love. 'I
+often,' he says, 'compare the virtues of good men to your large china
+jars; they make a fine show, but look into a thousand of them, and you
+will find nothing in them but dust and cobwebs.'
+
+While declaring that he is far from encouraging vice, he regards it as
+essential to the well-being of society. The degradation of the race
+excites his amusement, and the fact that he cannot see a way of escape
+from it, causes no regret. Shaftesbury's arguments excited the mirth of
+a man who believed neither in present nor future good 'Two systems,' he
+says, 'cannot be more opposite than his lordship's and mine. His
+notions, I confess, are generous and refined. They are a high compliment
+to human kind, and capable, by the help of a little enthusiasm, of
+inspiring us with the most noble sentiments concerning the dignity of
+our exalted nature. What pity it is that they are not true.'
+
+The author of the _Fable of the Bees_ writes coarsely for coarse
+readers, and the arguments by which he supports his graceless theory
+merit the infamy generally awarded to them.[57] The book was attacked by
+Warburton and Law, and with much force and humour by Berkeley, in the
+second Dialogue of _Alciphron_. But the bishop, to use a homely phrase,
+does not hit the right nail on the head. Instead of arguing that virtue
+and goodness are realities, while evil, being unreal and antagonistic to
+man's nature, is an enemy to be fought against and conquered, Berkeley
+takes a lower ground, and is content to show in his reply to Mandeville
+that virtue is more profitable to a state than vice. He annihilates many
+of Mandeville's arguments in a masterly style, but it was left to the
+author of the _Serious Call_ to strike at the root of Mandeville's
+fallacy, and to show how the seat of virtue, if I may apply Hooker's
+noble words with regard to law, 'is the bosom of God, her voice the
+harmony of the world; all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the
+very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from
+her power.'
+
+[Sidenote: Lord Bolingbroke (1678-1751).]
+
+The life of Henry St. John was a mass of contradictions. He was a
+brilliant politician who affected to be a wise statesman, a traitor to
+his country while pretending to be a patriot, an orator whose lips
+distilled honied phrases which his actions belied, a man of insatiable
+ambition who masked as a philosopher, a profligate without shame, a
+faithless friend, and an unscrupulous opponent. Blessed with every charm
+of manner, features, and voice, with a taste for literature and a large
+faculty of acquisition, he was a slave to the meanest vices. A Secretary
+of State at thirty-two, no man probably ever entered upon public life
+with brighter prospects, and the secret of all his failures was due to
+the want of character. 'Few people,' says Lord Hervey, 'ever believed
+him without being deceived or trusted him without being betrayed; he was
+one to whom prosperity was no advantage, and adversity no instruction.'
+
+It is said that his genius as an orator was of a high order and this we
+can believe the more readily since the style of his works is distinctly
+oratorical. In speech so much depends upon voice and manner that it is
+possible for a shallow thinker to be an extremely attractive speaker;
+Bolingbroke's speeches have not been preserved, and we may therefore
+continue, if we please, to hold with Pitt, that they are the most
+desirable of all the lost fragments of literature; his writings, far
+more showy than solid, do not convey a lofty impression of intellectual
+power. Obvious truths and well-worn truisms are uttered in high-sounding
+words, but in no department of thought can it be said that Bolingbroke
+breaks new ground. Much that he wrote was for the day and died with it,
+and if his more ambitious efforts, written with an eye to posterity,
+cannot justly be described as unreadable, they contain comparatively
+little which makes them worthy to be read.
+
+His defence of his conduct in _A Letter to Sir William Windham_, written
+in 1717, but not published until after the author's death, though
+worthless as a defence, is a fine piece of special pleading in
+Bolingbroke's best style. It could deceive no one acquainted with the
+part played by the author before the death of Queen Anne, and afterwards
+in exile, but it afforded him an opportunity for attacking his former
+colleague, Oxford, with all the weapons available by an unscrupulous and
+powerful assailant. He declares in this letter that he preferred exile
+rather than to make common cause with the man whom he abhorred. Writing
+of Oxford as a colleague in the government of the country he observes in
+a skilfully turned passage:
+
+    'The ocean which environs us is an emblem of our government; and
+    the pilot and the minister are in similar circumstances. It
+    seldom happens that either of them can steer a direct course,
+    and they both arrive at their port by means which frequently
+    seem to carry them from it. But as the work advances the conduct
+    of him who leads it on with real abilities clears up, the
+    appearing inconsistencies are reconciled, and when it is once
+    consummated, the whole shows itself so uniform, so plain, and so
+    natural, that every dabbler in politics will be apt to think he
+    could have done the same. But on the other hand the man who
+    proposes no such object, who substitutes artifice in the place
+    of ability, who, instead of leading parties and governing
+    accidents, is eternally agitated backwards and forwards by both,
+    who begins every day something new, and carries nothing on to
+    perfection, may impose awhile on the world: but a little sooner
+    or a little later the mystery will be revealed, and nothing will
+    be found to be couched under it but a thread of pitiful
+    expedients, the ultimate end of which never extended farther
+    than living from day to day. Which of these pictures resembles
+    Oxford most you will determine.'
+
+It has been said with somewhat daring exaggeration, that Burke never
+produced anything nobler than this passage, and the writer regards the
+whole composition of the _Letter to Windham_ as almost faultless.[58]
+
+That it is Bolingbroke's masterpiece may be readily admitted, but in
+this _Letter_, as elsewhere, the merits of Bolingbroke's style are those
+of the popular orator who conceals repetitions, contradictory
+statements, and emptiness of thought under a dazzling display of
+rhetoric. That he had splendid gifts and exhibited an extraordinary
+ingenuity of resource was acknowledged by friend and foe. At one time
+taking a distinguished part in European affairs, at another artfully
+intriguing, sometimes posing as a moralist and philosopher while a slave
+to debauchery, and at other times affecting a love of retirement while a
+slave to ambition--Bolingbroke acted a part which made him one of the
+most conspicuous figures of the time. He knew how to fascinate men of
+greater genius than he possessed, and how to guide men intellectually
+his superiors. The witchcraft of his wit and the charm of his manners no
+longer disturb the judgment. As a statesman Bolingbroke is now
+comparatively despised, as a man of letters he is generally regarded as
+a brilliant pretender, and if his name survives in the history of
+literature it is chiefly due to the friendship of Pope. Unfortunately
+the memory of this celebrated friendship is associated with one of the
+most ignoble acts of Bolingbroke's life. When Pope lay dying,
+Bolingbroke wept over his friend exclaiming, 'O great God, what is man!'
+and Spence relates that upon telling his lordship how Pope whenever he
+was sensible said something kindly of his friends as if his humanity
+outlasted his understanding, Bolingbroke replied, '"It has so! I never
+in my life knew a man that had so tender a heart for his particular
+friends or a more general friendship for mankind. I have known him these
+thirty years, and value myself more for that man's love than"--sinking
+his head and losing himself in tears.' His sorrow was speedily changed
+to anger. Pope, no doubt in admiration of his friend's genius, had
+privately printed 1,500 copies of his _Patriot King_, one of
+Bolingbroke's ablest but most sophistical works. The philosopher had
+only allowed a few copies to be printed for his friends, and the
+discovery of Pope's conduct roused his indignation. In 1749 he put a
+corrected copy of the work into Mallet's hands for publication with an
+advertisement in which Pope is treated with contempt. He had not the
+courage to assail the memory of his friend openly, and hired an
+unprincipled man to do it. The poet had acted trickily, after his wonted
+habit, though in all likelihood with the design of doing Bolingbroke a
+service. It was a fault to be forgiven by a friend, but Bolingbroke,
+after nursing his anger for five years, gave vent to it in this
+contemptible and underhand way. He died two years afterwards, and in
+1754 the posthumous publication of Bolingbroke's _Philosophical
+Writings_ by Mallet, aroused a storm of indignation in the country,
+which his debauchery and political immorality had failed to excite.
+Johnson's saying on the occasion is well-known:
+
+'Sir, he was a scoundrel and a coward; a scoundrel for charging a
+blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward because he had not
+resolution to fire it off himself, but left half-a-crown to a beggarly
+Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death.'
+
+The most noteworthy estimate of Bolingbroke's character made in our day
+comes from the pen of Mr. John Morley,[59] who describes as follows his
+position as a man of letters. 'He handled the great and difficult
+instrument of written language with such freedom and copiousness, such
+vivacity and ease, that in spite of much literary foppery and falsetto,
+he ranks in all that musicians call execution, only below the three or
+four highest masters of English prose. Yet of all the characters in our
+history Bolingbroke must be pronounced to be most of a charlatan; of all
+the writing in our literature, his is the hollowest, the flashiest, the
+most insincere.' This is true. By his 'execution,' consummate though it
+be, he is unable to conceal his insincerity and shallowness.
+'Bolingbroke,' said Lord Shelburne, was 'all surface,' and in that
+sentence his character is written.
+
+'People seem to think,' said Carlyle, 'that a style can be put off or
+put on, not like a skin, but like a coat. Is not a skin verily a product
+and close kinsfellow of all that lies under it,--exact type of the
+nature of the beast, not to be plucked off without flaying and death?'
+
+Two years after the publication of the _Philosophical Writings_, Edmund
+Burke, then a young man of twenty-four, published _A Vindication of
+Natural Society_, in a _Letter to Lord----. By a late noble writer_, in
+which Lord Bolingbroke's style is imitated, and his arguments against
+revealed religion applied to exhibit 'the miseries and evils arising to
+mankind from every species of Artificial Society.' So close is the
+imitation of Bolingbroke's style and mode of argument in this piece of
+irony, that it was for a time believed to be a genuine production, and
+Mallet found it necessary to disavow it publicly.
+
+Of Bolingbroke's Works, the _Dissertation on Parties_ appeared in 1735.
+_Letters on Patriotism_, and _Idea of a Patriot King_, in 1749; _Letters
+on the Study of History_, in 1752; _Letter to Sir W. Windham_, 1753, and
+the _Philosophical Writings_, as already stated, in 1754.
+Chronologically, therefore, he would belong to the Handbook which deals
+with the latter half of the century, were it not that his most important
+works were posthumous, and that Bolingbroke's intimate relations with
+Pope place him among the most conspicuous figures belonging to Pope's
+age.
+
+[Sidenote: George Berkeley (1685-1753).]
+
+Among the men of high intellect who flourished in the age of Pope,
+George Berkeley is one of the most distinguished. Born in 1685 of poor
+parents, in a cottage near Dysert Castle, in Kilkenny, he went up to
+Trinity College, Dublin, in 1700, and there, first as student, and
+afterwards as tutor, he remained for thirteen years. In the course of
+them he was ordained, and gained a fellowship. In 1709 he published his
+_Essay on Vision_, and in the following year the _Principles of Human
+Knowledge_, works which thus early made him famous as a philosopher, and
+a puzzle to many who failed to understand his 'new principle' with
+regard to the existence of matter.
+
+In 1712 Berkeley visited England, probably for the first time, and was
+introduced to the London wits. Already in these youthful days there was
+in him much of that magic power which some men exercise unconsciously
+and irresistibly. Swift felt the spell, called Berkeley a great
+philosopher, and spoke of him to all the Ministers; while Atterbury,
+upon being asked what he thought of him, exclaimed: 'So much
+understanding, so much knowledge, so much innocence, and such humility,
+I did not think had been the portion of any but angels till I saw this
+gentleman.' An incident occurred, it is conjectured during the course of
+this visit, which led to memorable results. He dined once with Swift at
+Mrs. Vanhomrigh's, and met her daughter Hester. Many years later,
+_Vanessa_ destroyed the will she had made in Swift's favour, and left
+half of her property to Berkeley. While in London the future bishop was
+warmly welcomed by Steele, and wrote several essays for him in the
+_Guardian_ against the Freethinkers, and especially against Anthony
+Collins (1676-1729), whose arguments in his _Discourse on Freethinking_
+(1713) are ridiculed in the _Scriblerus Memoirs_. Collins, it may be
+observed here, wrote a treatise several years later on the _Grounds of
+the Christian Religion_ (1724) which called forth thirty-five answers.
+During this visit Berkeley also published one of his most original
+works, _Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous_, a book marked by that
+consummate beauty of style for which he is distinguished.
+
+In November, 1713, the Earl of Peterborough was sent on an embassage to
+the King of Sicily, and on Swift's recommendation took Berkeley with him
+as his chaplain and secretary. Ten months were spent on this occasion in
+France and Italy. Another continental tour followed, in the course of
+which Berkeley wrote to Arbuthnot of his ascent of Vesuvius, and to Pope
+of his life at Naples. Five years were spent abroad, and he returned to
+England to learn of the failure of the South Sea Scheme. In his _Essay
+towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain_ (1721), the main argument
+is the obvious one, that national salvation is only to be secured by
+individual uprightness. He deplores 'the trifling vanity of apparel'
+which we have learned from France, advocates the revival of sumptuary
+laws, considers that we are 'doomed to be undone' by luxury, and by the
+want of public spirit, and declares that 'neither Venice nor Paris, nor
+any other town in any part of the world ever knew such an expensive
+ruinous folly as our masquerade.'
+
+In the summer of this year he was again in London, and Pope asked him to
+spend a week in his 'Tusculum.' One promotion followed another until
+Berkeley became Dean of Derry, with an income of from £1,500 to £2,000 a
+year. He did not hold this dignified position long, having conceived the
+magnificent but Utopian idea of founding a Missionary College in the
+Bermudas--the 'Summer Isles' celebrated in the verse of Waller and of
+Marvell--for the conversion of America.
+
+And now Berkeley exhibited his amazing power of influencing other men.
+The members of the Scriblerus Club laughed at the Dean's project, but so
+powerful was his eloquence, that 'those who came to scoff remained to
+subscribe.' Moreover, with Sir Robert Walpole as Prime Minister, he
+actually obtained a grant from the State of £20,000 in order to carry
+out the project, the king gave a charter, and to crown all, Sir Robert
+put his own name down for £200 on the list of subscribers. 'The scheme,'
+says Mr. Balfour, 'seems now so impracticable that we may well wonder
+how any single person, let alone the representatives of a whole nation,
+could be found to support it. In order that religion and learning might
+flourish in America, the seeds of them were to be cast in some rocky
+islets severed from America by nearly six hundred miles of stormy ocean.
+In order that the inhabitants of the mainland and of the West Indian
+colonies might equally benefit by the new university, it was to be
+placed in such a position that neither could conveniently reach it.'[60]
+Berkeley, who had recently married, left England for Rhode Island, where
+he stayed for about three years and wrote _Alciphron_ (1732), in which
+he attacks the freethinkers under the title of _Minute Philosophers_.
+Then on learning from Walpole that the promised money 'would most
+undoubtedly be paid as soon as suits public convenience' which would be
+never, he returned to England, and through the Queen's influence was
+made Bishop of Cloyne. In that diocese eighteen years of his life were
+spent. In the course of them he published the _Querist_ (1735-1737), an
+_Essay on the Social State of Ireland_ (1744), and, in the same year,
+_Siris_, which contains the bishop's famous recipe for the use of tar
+water followed by much philosophical disquisition. The remedy, which was
+afterwards praised by the poet Dyer in _The Fleece_, became instantly
+popular. 'We are now mad about the water,' Horace Walpole wrote; 'the
+book contains every subject from tar water to the Trinity; however, all
+the women read it, and understand it no more than if it were
+intelligible.' Editions of _Siris_ followed each other in rapid
+succession, and it was translated into French and German. The work is
+that of an enthusiast, and it should be read not for its argument, but
+for its wealth of suggestiveness, and for what Mr. Balfour calls 'a
+certain quality of moral elevation and speculative diffidence alien both
+to the literature and the life of the eighteenth century.' Berkeley had
+himself the profoundest faith in the panacea which he advocated. 'From
+my representing tar water,' he writes, 'as good for so many things,
+some, perhaps, many conclude it is good for nothing. But charity
+obligeth me to say what I know, and what I think, howsoever it may be
+taken. Men may conjecture and object as they please, but I appeal to
+time and experience.'
+
+In his latter days Berkeley, feeling his health failing, desired to
+resign his bishopric and retire to Oxford, and there--while still bishop
+of Cloyne, for the king would not accept his resignation--the
+philosopher, who was blest, to use Shakespeare's fine epithet, with a
+'tender-hefted nature,' passed away in 1753, leaving behind him one of
+the most fragrant of memories.
+
+That Berkeley was a philosophical thinker from his earliest manhood is
+evident from his _Commonplace Book_ published for the first time in the
+Clarendon Press edition of his works (vol. iv., pp. 419-502).
+
+He delighted in recondite thought as much as most young men delight in
+action, and as a philosopher he is said to have commenced his studies
+with Locke, whose famous _Essay_ appeared in 1690. Of Plato, too,
+Berkeley was an ardent admirer, and the spirit of Plato pervades his
+works. His _Essay towards a New Theory of Vision_ contains some
+intimations of the famous metaphysical theory which was developed a
+little later in the _Treatise on Human Knowledge_.
+
+A good deal of foolish ridicule was excited by this book. Berkeley was
+supposed to maintain the absurd paradox that sensible things do not
+exist at all. The reader will remember how Dr. Johnson undertook to
+refute the postulate by striking his foot against a stone, while James
+Beattie (1735-1803), the poet and moral philosopher, in a volume for
+which he was rewarded with a pension of £200 a year, denounced
+Berkeley's philosophy as 'scandalously absurd.' 'If,' he writes, 'I
+were permitted to propose one clownish question, I would fain ask ...
+Where is the harm of my believing that if I were to fall down yonder
+precipice and break my neck, I should be no more a man of this world? My
+neck, Sir, may be an idea to you, but to me it is a reality, and a very
+important one too. Where is the harm of my believing that if in this
+severe weather I were to neglect to throw (what you call) the idea of a
+coat over the ideas of my shoulders, the idea of cold would produce the
+idea of such pain and disorder as might possibly terminate in my real
+death? What great offence shall I commit against God or man, church or
+state, philosophy or common sense if I continue to believe that material
+food will nourish me, though the idea of it will not, that the real sun
+will warm and enlighten me, though the liveliest idea of him will do
+neither; and that if I would obtain here peace of mind and
+self-approbation, I must not only form ideas of compassion, justice and
+generosity, but also really exert those virtues in external
+performance?'[61]
+
+Beattie continues in this foolish strain to throw contempt upon a system
+which he had not taken the trouble to understand, and upon one of the
+sanest and noblest of English philosophers, and he does so without a
+thought that the absurdity is due to his own ignorance and not to the
+theory of Berkeley. The author of the _Minstrel_ was an honest man and a
+respectable poet, but he prided himself too much on what he called
+common sense, and failed to see that in the search after truth other and
+even higher faculties may be also needed. Moreover, Berkeley, so far
+from being an enemy to common sense, endeavours, as he says, to
+vindicate it, although in so doing, he 'may perhaps be obliged to use
+some _ambages_ and ways of speech not common.' A significant passage may
+be quoted from the _Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous_ (1713)
+in illustration of his method and style so far indeed as a short extract
+can illustrate an argument sustained by a long course of reasoning.
+
+    '_Phil._ As I am no sceptic with regard to the nature of things,
+    so neither am I as to their existence. That a thing should be
+    really perceived by my senses, and at the same time not really
+    exist is to me a plain contradiction; since I cannot prescind or
+    abstract even in thought, the existence of a sensible thing from
+    its being perceived. Wood, stones, fire, water, flesh, iron, and
+    the like things, which I name and discourse of, are things that
+    I know. And I should not have known them but that I perceived
+    them by my senses; and things perceived by the senses are
+    immediately perceived; and things immediately perceived are
+    ideas; and ideas cannot exist without the mind; their existence
+    therefore consists in being perceived; when therefore they are
+    actually perceived there can be no doubt of their existence....
+    I might as well doubt of my own being, as of the being of those
+    things I actually see and feel.
+
+    '_Hyl._ Not so fast, _Philonous_; you say you cannot conceive
+    how sensible things should exist without the mind. Do you not?
+
+    '_Phil._ I do.
+
+    '_Hyl._ Supposing you were annihilated, cannot you conceive it
+    possible that things perceivable by sense may still exist?
+
+    '_Phil._ I can; but then it must be in another mind. When I deny
+    sensible things an existence out of the mind, I do not mean my
+    mind in particular, but all minds. Now, it is plain they have an
+    existence exterior to my mind; since I find them by experience
+    to be independent of it. There is therefore some other mind
+    wherein they exist, during the intervals between the times of my
+    perceiving them; as likewise they did before my birth, and
+    would do after my supposed annihilation. And as the same is true
+    with regard to all other finite created spirits, it necessarily
+    follows there is an _omnipresent, eternal Mind_, which knows and
+    comprehends all things, and exhibits them to our view in such a
+    manner, and according to such rules, as He Himself hath
+    ordained, and are by us termed the _Laws of Nature_.'
+
+    'Truth is the cry of all,' says Berkeley in the final paragraph
+    of _Siris_, 'but the game of a few. Certainly, where it is the
+    chief passion, it doth not give way to vulgar cares and views,
+    nor is it contented with a little ardour, active perhaps to
+    pursue, but not so fit to weigh and revise. He that would make a
+    real progress in knowledge, must dedicate his age as well as
+    youth, the latter growth as well as firstfruits at the altar of
+    truth.'
+
+Elsewhere in this famous treatise he writes:
+
+    'It cannot be denied that with respect to the universe of things
+    we in this mortal state are like men educated in Plato's cave,
+    looking on shadows with our backs turned to the light. But
+    though our light be dim and our situation bad, yet if the best
+    use be made of both, perhaps something may be seen. Proclus, in
+    his commentary on the theology of Plato, observes there are two
+    sorts of philosophers. The one placed body first in the order of
+    beings, and made the faculty of thinking depend thereupon,
+    supposing that the principles of all things are corporeal; that
+    body most really or principally exists, and all other things in
+    a secondary sense and by virtue of that. Others making all
+    corporeal things to be dependent upon soul or mind, think this
+    to exist in the first place, and primary senses and the being of
+    bodies to be altogether derived from, and presuppose that of the
+    mind.'
+
+This was Berkeley's creed, and his great aim throughout is to prove the
+phenomenal nature of the things of sense, or in other words the
+non-existence of independent matter. He makes, he says, not the least
+question that the things we see and touch really exist, but what he does
+question is the existence of matter apart from its perception to the
+mind. Hobbes said that the body accounted for the mind, and that matter
+was the deepest thing in the universe, while to Berkeley the only true
+reality consists in what is spiritual and eternal.
+
+'The great idealist,' says an able writer, 'certainly never denied the
+existence of matter in the sense in which Johnson understood it. As the
+touched, the seen, the heard, the smelled, the tasted, he admitted and
+maintained its existence as readily and completely as the most
+illiterate and unsophisticated of mankind,' and he adds that the
+peculiar endowment for which Berkeley was distinguished 'far beyond his
+predecessors and contemporaries, and far beyond almost every philosopher
+who has succeeded him, was the eye he had _for facts_, and the singular
+pertinacity with which he refused to be dislodged from his hold upon
+them.'[62]
+
+Pope's age produced a few great masters of style, and among them
+Berkeley holds an undisputed place. He succeeded, too, in the most
+difficult department of intellectual labour, since to express abstruse
+thought in language as beautiful as it is clear is the rarest of gifts.
+
+'His works are beyond dispute the finest models of philosophic style
+since Cicero. Perhaps they surpass those of the orator, in the wonderful
+art by which the fullest light is thrown on the most minute and
+evanescent parts of the most subtle of human conceptions.'[63]
+
+[Sidenote: William Law (1686-1761).]
+
+William Law was born in 1686 at King's Cliffe in Northamptonshire, and
+entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge, as a Sizar in 1705. He obtained a
+Fellowship, and received holy orders in 1711, but having made a speech
+offensive to the heads of houses, he was degraded. Law believed in the
+divine right of kings, and on the death of Queen Anne, declared his
+principles as a non-juror. In 1717 he published his first controversial
+work, _Three Letters to the Bishop of Bangor_; Hoadly, the famous
+bishop, having, in his opponent's judgment, uttered lax and
+latitudinarian views with regard to the Church of which he was one of
+the chief pastors. These _Letters_ have been highly praised for wit as
+well as for argument, and Dean Hook, writing of the Bangorian
+Controversy in his _Church Dictionary_, states that 'Law's _Letters_
+have never been answered and may, indeed, be regarded as unanswerable.'
+Law was also the most powerful assailant of Warburton's _Divine
+Legation_, which he opposed with a burning zeal that was not always
+wise. But as a controversialist he was an infinitely stronger man than
+his opponent, and unlike Warburton, he never debased controversy by
+scurrility, which the bishop generally found a more potent weapon than
+argument.
+
+On the publication, in 1723, of Dr. Mandeville's _Fable of the Bees_, it
+was vigorously attacked by Law. In this masterly pamphlet, instead of
+attempting to refute the physician by showing that virtue is more
+profitable to the State than vice, and that, therefore, private vices
+are not public benefits, Law takes a higher ground, and asserts that
+morality is not a question of profit and loss, but of conscience.
+Mandeville maintains that man is a mere animal governed by his passions;
+his opponent, on the other hand, argues that man is created in the image
+of God, that virtue 'is a law to which even the divine nature is
+subject,' and that human nature is fitted to rise to the angels, while
+Mandeville would lower it to the brutes.
+
+John Sterling, writing to F. D. Maurice of the first section of Law's
+remarks, says: 'I have never seen in our language the elementary
+grounds of a rational ideal philosophy, as opposed to empiricism, stated
+with nearly the same clearness, simplicity, and force,' and it was at
+Sterling's suggestion that Maurice published a new edition of Law's
+argument with an introductory essay (1844).
+
+The following passage from the _Remarks on the Fable of the Bees_ will
+illustrate Law's method as a polemic:
+
+    'Deists and freethinkers are generally considered as
+    unbelievers; but upon examination they will appear to be men of
+    the most resigned and implicit faith in the world; they would
+    believe _transubstantiation_, but that it implies a believing in
+    God; for they never resign their reason, but when it is to yield
+    to something that opposes salvation. For the Deist's creed has
+    as many articles as the Christian's, and requires a much greater
+    suspension of our reason to believe them. So that if to believe
+    things upon no authority, or without any reason, be an argument
+    of credulity, the freethinker will appear to be the most easy,
+    credulous creature alive. In the first place, he is to believe
+    almost all the same articles to be false which the Christian
+    believes to be true.
+
+    'Now, it may easily be shown that it requires stronger acts of
+    faith to believe these articles to be false, than to believe
+    them to be true. For, taking faith to be an assent of the mind
+    to some proposition, of which we have no certain knowledge, it
+    will appear that the Deist's faith is much stronger, and has
+    more of credulity in it, than the Christian's. For instance, the
+    Christian believes the resurrection of the dead, because he
+    finds it supported by such evidence and authority as cannot
+    possibly be higher, supposing the thing was true; and he does no
+    more violence to his reason in believing it, than in supposing
+    that God may intend to do some things, which the reason of man
+    cannot conceive how they will be effected.
+
+    'On the contrary, the Deist believes there will be no
+    resurrection. And how great is his faith, for he pretends to no
+    evidence or authority to support it; it is a pure naked assent
+    of his mind to what he does not know to be true, and of which
+    nobody has, or can give him, any full assurance. So that the
+    difference between a Christian and a Deist does not consist in
+    this, that the one assents to things unknown, and the other does
+    not; but in this, that the Christian assents to things unknown
+    on account of evidence; the other assents to things unknown
+    without any evidence at all. Which shows that the Christian is
+    the rational believer and the Deist the blind bigot.'
+
+It is probable that Law, like other writers on the orthodox side, did
+not sufficiently take into account the service rendered by the Deists in
+arousing a spirit of inquiry. Free-thinking is right thinking, and 'it
+was a result of the Deistic controversy, which went far to make up many
+evils in it, that in the end it widened and enlarged Christian
+thought.'[64]
+
+The author's next and weakest work, _On the Unlawfulness of Stage
+Entertainments_ (1726), is mentioned elsewhere.[65]
+
+In the same year he published _Christian Perfection_, a profoundly
+earnest but puritanically narrow work, in which our earthly life is
+regarded simply as the road to another. 'There is nothing that deserves
+a serious thought,' he writes, 'but how to get out of the world and make
+it a right passage to our eternal state.' No man ever practised what he
+preached with more sincerity and persistency than William Law, but it
+can hardly be doubted that he narrowed the range of his influence by the
+views he expressed with regard to culture and to all human learning. He
+forgot that, without the logic, the wit, the irony, the singular force
+and lucidity of style displayed in his own writings, he would have
+lost the power as a religious teacher which he was so eager to exercise.
+
+Literature _quâ_ literature Law regarded with contempt, and he is said
+to have looked upon the study even of Milton as waste of time. Yet his
+biographer states what seems likely enough, considering the fine
+qualities of Law's own writings, that 'no author was ever a favourite
+with him, unless he was a man of literary merit.'
+
+In 1727, and probably before that date, Law held the position of tutor
+to Edward Gibbon, whose famous son, the historian, in his
+_Autobiography_, gives to him the high praise of having left in the
+family 'the reputation of a worthy and pious man, who believed all that
+he professed, and practised all that he enjoined.'
+
+Law accompanied his pupil to Cambridge, and it is conjectured that
+during this residence at the university he wrote what Gibbon justly
+called his 'master work,' _A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life_
+(1729), the most impressive book of its class produced in the eighteenth
+century. The historian's father was a man of feeble character. He left
+Cambridge without a degree, and went on his travels, the tutor meanwhile
+remaining in the family house at Putney, where he seems to have gathered
+round him a number of disciples.
+
+The _Serious Call_ had an immediate and strong influence on many
+thoughtful men, and Law's book stimulated in no common measure the
+religious life of the country. John Wesley spoke of it as a treatise
+hardly to be excelled in the English tongue 'either for beauty of
+expression, or for justness and depth of thought.' Whitefield, Venn, and
+Thomas Scott, the commentator, acknowledged their indebtedness to the
+work, and Dr. Johnson, speaking of his youthful days, said: 'I became a
+sort of lax _talker_ against religion, for I did not much _think_
+against it; and this lasted till I went to Oxford, when I took up Law's
+_Serious Call to a Holy Life_, expecting to find it a dull book (as such
+books generally are), but I found Law quite an over-match for me; and
+this was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest.' The first Lord
+Lyttelton, the historian and friend of Thomson, is said to have taken up
+the book one night at bed-time, and to have read it through before he
+went to bed; but, perhaps, the most unimpeachable evidence in its favour
+comes from the pen of Gibbon, who writes: 'Mr. Law's precepts are rigid,
+but they are founded on the Gospel. His satire is sharp, but it is drawn
+from the knowledge of human life, and many of his portraits are not
+unworthy of the pen of La Bruyère. If he finds a spark of piety in his
+reader's mind he will soon kindle it to a flame.'
+
+Law's art as a portrait painter will be seen in the following sketch of
+Flavia:
+
+    '_Flavia_ would be a miracle of piety if she was but half so
+    careful of her soul as she is of her body. The rising of a
+    _pimple_ on her face, the sting of a gnat, will make her keep
+    her room two or three days, and she thinks they are very rash
+    people that do not take care of things in time. This makes her
+    so over careful of her health that she never thinks she is well
+    enough, and so over indulgent that she never can be really well.
+    So that it costs her a great deal in sleeping draughts and
+    waking draughts, in spirits for the head, in drops for the
+    nerves, in cordials for the stomach, and in saffron for her tea.
+
+    'If you visit _Flavia_ on the Sunday, you will always meet good
+    company, you will know what is doing in the world, you will hear
+    the last lampoon, be told who wrote it, and who is meant by
+    every name that is in it. You will hear what plays were acted
+    that week, which is the finest song in the opera, who was
+    intolerable at the last assembly, and what games are most in
+    fashion. _Flavia_ thinks they are atheists who play at cards on
+    the Sunday, but she will tell you the nicety of all the games,
+    what cards she held, how she played them, and the history of all
+    that happened at play, as soon as she comes from church. If you
+    would know who is rude and ill-natured, who is vain and foppish,
+    who lives too high and who is in debt; if you would know what is
+    the quarrel at a certain house, or who and who are in love; if
+    you would know how late Belinda comes home at night, what
+    clothes she has bought, how she loves compliments, and what a
+    long story she told at such a place; if you would know how cross
+    Lucius is to his wife, what ill-natured things he says to her,
+    when nobody hears him; if you would know how they hate one
+    another in their hearts though they appear so kind in public;
+    you must visit _Flavia_ on the Sunday. But still she has so
+    great a regard for the holiness of the Sunday, that she has
+    turned a poor old widow out of her house as a _profane wretch_,
+    for having been found once mending her clothes on the Sunday
+    night.'
+
+Between the years 1733-37, owing to his acquaintance with the writings
+of the famous mystic, Jacob Boehme, Law became a mystic himself. The
+'blessed Jacob' as he calls him exercised an influence which colours all
+his later writings and lasted till his death. In 1740 he retired to his
+native village and to solitude; but after a while two wealthy and devout
+ladies, one of them a widow, the other the historian's aunt, Miss Hester
+Gibbon, joined him in his retreat and devoted to charitable objects
+their labours and their fortunes. 'Out of a joint income of not less
+than three thousand pounds a year, only about three hundred pounds were
+spent upon the frugal expenses of the household and the simple personal
+wants of the three inhabitants. The whole of the remainder was spent
+upon the poor.'[66] Report says, let us hope it may be scandal, that
+after the master's death the love of earthly vanities revived in two of
+his pupils. His favourite niece had a new dress every month, and Miss
+Gibbon 'appeared resplendent in yellow stockings.' This is not the place
+to follow Law's self-denying career, neither are we concerned with the
+volumes which contain his later views. Admirably written though they be,
+these works do not belong to the field of literature. Law lived in
+vigour both of mind and body to a good old age, and died in 1761.
+
+[Sidenote: Joseph Butler (1692-1752).]
+
+Joseph Butler, whose _Sermons_ (1726), and _Analogy of Religion Natural
+and Revealed to the Constitution and Course of Nature_ (1736), are among
+the highest contributions to theology produced in the last century,
+called the imagination 'a forward, delusive faculty,' and he could have
+boasted that it was a faculty of which no trace is to be found in his
+works. Moreover, he is generally regarded as wholly destitute of style,
+and in a sense this is true, for Butler is so intent upon what he has to
+say that he cares little how he says it. His sense of beauty if he
+possessed it, was absorbed in a supreme allegiance to truth, and his
+life was that of a Christian philosopher intent upon one object. His
+sermons, preached at the Rolls Chapel, which contain the germ of his
+philosophy, are too closely packed with argument and too recondite in
+thought to fit them for pulpit discourses. The _Analogy_, which occupied
+seven years of Butler's life, is better known and more generally
+interesting. 'There is,' he says, 'a much more exact correspondence
+between the natural and the moral world than we are apt to take notice
+of.' His aim is to show that the difficulties which meet us in
+Revelation are to be found also in nature, that as our happiness or
+misery in this world largely depends upon conduct, so it is reasonable
+to suppose, apart from what Revelation teaches, that we are also in a
+state of probation with regard to a future life. As youth is an
+education for mature age, so may the whole of our earthly life be an
+education for a future existence.
+
+    'And if we were not able at all to discern how or in what way
+    the present life could be our preparation for another, this
+    would be no objection against the credibility of its being so.
+    For we do not discern how food and sleep contribute to the
+    growth of the body; nor could have any thought that they would
+    before we had experience. Nor do children at all think on the
+    one hand that the sports and exercises, to which they are so
+    much addicted, contribute to their health and growth; nor, on
+    the other, of the necessity which there is for their being
+    restrained in them; nor are they capable of understanding the
+    use of many parts of discipline, which, nevertheless, they must
+    be made to go through in order to qualify them for the business
+    of mature age. Were we not able, then, to discover in what
+    respects the present life could form us for a future one, yet
+    nothing would be more supposable than that it might, in some
+    respects or other, from the general analogy of Providence. And
+    this, for aught I see, might reasonably be said, even though we
+    should not take in the consideration of God's moral government
+    over the world. But, take in this consideration, and
+    consequently, that the character of virtue and piety is a
+    necessary qualification for the future state, and then we may
+    distinctly see how and in what respects the present life may be
+    a preparation for it.
+
+Butler's style is uniform throughout, and if it have no other merit, may
+be praised for honesty. It is wholly free from the artifices of the
+rhetorician; if it is wanting in charm, it is never weak; if it is
+sometimes obscure, it must be remembered that the author does not write
+for readers who find it a trouble to think. The bishop's obscurity was
+not due to negligence. 'Confusion and perplexity in writing,' he says,
+'is indeed without excuse; because anyone may, if he pleases, know
+whether he understands and sees through what he is about; and it is
+unpardonable for a man to lay his thoughts before others when he is
+conscious that he himself does not know whereabouts he is, or how the
+matter before him stands. It is coming abroad in disorder, which he
+ought to be dissatisfied to find himself in at home.'
+
+Butler weighed his thoughts rather than his words in an age when many
+distinguished writers were tempted to regard form as of more consequence
+than substance. It must be admitted, however, that if the ideal of fine
+literature be the expression of beautiful and richly suggestive thoughts
+in a style elevated by the imagination, and by a sense of rhythmical
+harmony, Bishop Butler's place is not among men of letters. His profound
+sense of the seriousness of life limited his range; but as a thinker,
+what he lost in versatility he probably gained in depth. The _Analogy_
+is a striking instance of a great work wholly without imagination, while
+full of the intellectual life which sustains the student's attention.
+There is not a dull page in the book, or one in which the author's
+meaning cannot be grasped by thoughtful readers. The work is full of
+weighty sayings on the power of conscience, the rule of right which a
+man has within him, the force of habit, the necessity of action in
+relation to belief, and the uselessness of passive impressions. It has
+been said that the defect of the eighteenth century theology 'was not in
+having too much good sense, but in having nothing besides,' and the
+straining after good sense, so prominent in Pope's age, affected alike,
+men of letters, philosophers, and theologians. The virtue was carried to
+excess and is conspicuous in Butler. He has his weaknesses both as a
+philosopher and a theologian, but the reader of the _Analogy_ and of the
+three sermons on Human Nature, will be conscious that he is in the
+presence of a great mind.
+
+[Sidenote: William Warburton (1698-1779).]
+
+William Warburton, Pope's commentator, was born at Newark-upon-Trent in
+1698, and died as Bishop of Gloucester in 1779. The main argument of his
+principal work, _The Divine Legation of Moses_ (1738-41), is based upon
+the astounding paradox that the legation of Moses must have been divine
+because he never invoked the promises or threatenings of a future state.
+The book is remarkable for its arrogance and lack of 'sweet
+reasonableness.' It claims no attention from the student of English
+literature, neither would Warburton himself were it not for his
+association with Pope. Allusion has been already made to Crousaz's
+hostile criticism of the _Essay on Man_ (1737) on the ground that it led
+to fatalism, and was destructive of the foundations of natural religion.
+Warburton, who had previously denounced the 'rank atheism' of the poem,
+now endeavoured to defend it, and how effectually he did so in Pope's
+judgment is seen in his grateful acknowledgment of the critic's labours.
+'I know I meant just what you explain,' he wrote, 'but I did not explain
+my own meaning as well as you. You understand me as well as I do myself,
+but you express me better than I could express myself.'
+
+Dr. Conyers Middleton's estimate of what Warburton had done for Pope is
+more accurate: 'You have evinced the orthodoxy of Mr. Pope's
+principles,' he says, 'but, like the old commentators on his _Homer_,
+will be thought, perhaps, in some places to have provided a meaning for
+him that he himself never dreamt of.'[67]
+
+The poet and Warburton met for the first time in 1740, and the
+bookseller, Dodsley, who was present at the interview, was astonished at
+the compliments which Pope lavished on his apologist. Henceforth,
+until the poet's death, Warburton, who, according to Bishop Hurd, 'found
+an image of himself in his new acquaintance,' became his counsellor and
+supporter, and among other achievements added, as Ricardus Aristarchus,
+to the confusion of the _Dunciad_. Ultimately, as Pope's annotator, he
+produced much laborious and comparatively worthless criticism, and
+contrived by his immense fighting qualities as a critic and polemic to
+make a considerable noise in the world. One incident in the friendship
+of the poet and of the divine is worth recording. In 1741 Pope and
+Warburton were at Oxford together, and while there the Vice-Chancellor
+offered to confer on the poet the degree of D.C.L., and on Warburton
+that of D.D. Some hesitation, however, on the part of the university
+having occurred with regard to the latter, Pope wrote to his friend
+saying, 'As for mine I will die before I receive one, in an art I am
+ignorant of, at a place where there remains any scruple of bestowing one
+on you, in a science of which you are so great a master. In short I will
+be doctored with you, or not at all.'
+
+Warburton's stupendous self-assertion concealed to some extent his heavy
+style and poverty of thought. His aim was to startle by paradoxes, since
+he could not convince by argument. No one could call an opponent names
+in the Billingsgate style more effectively, and every man who ventured
+to differ from him was either a knave or a fool. 'Warburton's stock
+argument,' it has been said, 'is a threat to cudgel anyone who disputes
+his opinion.' He was a laborious student, and the mass of work he
+accomplished exhibits his robust energy, but he has left nothing which
+lives in literature or in theology. He was, however, a man of various
+acquisitions, and won, for that reason, the praise of Dr. Johnson. 'The
+table is always full, sir. He brings things from the north and the
+south and from every quarter. In his _Divine Legation_ you are always
+entertained. He carries you round and round without carrying you forward
+to the point, but then you have no wish to be carried forward.'
+
+Bentley's more concise description of Warburton's attainments deserves
+to be recorded. He was, he says, 'a man of monstrous appetite, but bad
+digestion.'
+
+Warburton's _Shakespeare_ appeared in 1747, his _Pope_ in 1751. It
+cannot be said that either poet has cause to be grateful to his
+commentator. Of his _Shakespeare_ a few words may be appropriately said
+here. In this pretentious and untrustworthy edition, Warburton accuses
+Theobald of plagiarism, treats him with contempt, and then uses his text
+to print from. In his Preface he declares that his own Notes 'take in
+the whole compass of Criticism,' and he professes to restore the poet's
+genuine Text. Yet, as the editors of the _Cambridge Shakespeare_
+observe, there is no trace, so far as they have discovered, 'of his
+having collated for himself either the earlier Folios or any of the
+Quartos.' Warburton professed to observe the severe canons of literal
+criticism, and this suggested the title to Thomas Edwards of a volume in
+which the critic's editorial pretensions are attacked with some humour
+and much justice.[68]
+
+We may add that Bishop Hurd, Warburton's most intimate friend, edited
+his works in seven volumes (1788), and six years later, by way of
+preface to a new edition, published an _Account of the Life, Writings,
+and Character of the Author_.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[57] Readers who remember Mr. Browning's estimate of 'sage Mandeville'
+in his _Parleyings with Certain Persons_ may deem this criticism unjust;
+but the De Mandeville who speaks in that poem is the creation of the
+poet's imagination, or rather he is Mr. Browning himself.
+
+[58] _Bolingbroke: a Historical Study_, p. 133. By J. Churton Collins.
+
+[59] _Walpole_, p. 79. By John Morley. Macmillan.
+
+[60] _Works of George Berkeley._ Edited by George Sampson. With
+introduction by the Rt. Hon. Arthur J. Balfour, M.P. Vol. i., p. xxxi
+(London, 1897).
+
+[61] _An Essay on Truth_, 2nd edit., p. 298. 1771.
+
+[62] _Blackwood's Magazine_, June, 1842.
+
+[63] Sir James Macintosh, _Encyclopædia Britannica_.
+
+[64] _The English Church and its Bishops._ By Charles J. Abbey. Vol. i.,
+p. 236.
+
+[65] See p. 194.
+
+[66] _The Life and Opinions of the Rev. William Law, M.A._ By J. H.
+Overton, M.A. P. 243.
+
+[67] Middleton's _Miscellaneous Works_, vol. i., p. 402.
+
+[68] The first edition of Edwards's work was entitled _Supplement_ to
+Mr. Warburton's edition of _Shakespeare_, 1747. The third edition (1750)
+was called _The Canons of Criticism and Glossary_ by Thomas Edwards. Of
+this volume seven editions were published. Edwards, who was born in
+1699, died in 1757.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX OF MINOR POETS AND PROSE WRITERS.
+
+
+JOHN ARMSTRONG (1709-1779), a Scotchman by birth, practised in London as
+a physician after some surgical experience in the navy. Believing any
+subject suitable for poetry, he wrote in blank verse, reminding one of
+Thomson, _The Art of Preserving Health_ (1744), a poem containing some
+powerful passages, and many which are better fitted for a medical
+treatise than for poetry. An earlier and licentious poem _The Economy of
+Love_, which injured him in his profession, was 'revised and corrected
+by the author' in 1768.
+
+If bulk were a sign of merit SIR RICHARD BLACKMORE (1650-1729) would not
+rank with the minor poets. He wrote several long and wearisome epics,
+his best work in Dr. Johnson's judgment being _The Creation_ (1712),
+which was praised by Addison in the _Spectator_ as 'one of the most
+useful and noble productions in our English verse,' a judgment the
+modern reader is not likely to endorse.
+
+HENRY BROOKE (1706-1783), an Irishman, was the author of a poem entitled
+_Universal Beauty_ (1735). Four years later he published _Gustavus
+Vasa_, a tragedy, which was not allowed to be acted, the sentiments
+being too liberal for the government. His _Fool of Quality_ (1766) a
+novel in five volumes, delighted John Wesley, and in our day, Charles
+Kingsley, who praises its 'broad and genial humanity.' Brooke was a
+follower of William Law, whose mysticism is to be seen in the story.
+
+WILLIAM BROOME (1689-1745) is chiefly known from his association with
+Pope in the translation of the _Odyssey_, of which enough has been said
+elsewhere (p. 38). His name suggested the following epigram to Henley:
+
+    'Pope came off clean with Homer; but they say
+    _Broome_ went before and kindly swept the way.'
+
+He entered holy orders, had two livings in Suffolk and one in Norfolk,
+and married a wealthy widow. His verses are mechanically correct, but
+are empty of poetry.
+
+JOHN BYROM (1691-1763), the friend and disciple of William Law, the
+author of the _Serious Call_, is best remembered for his system of
+shorthand. In a characteristic, copious, and not very attractive
+journal, he describes, for the consolation of his fellow mortals, how he
+makes resolutions and breaks them. Byrom wrote rhyme with ease and on
+subjects with which poetry has nothing to do. His most successful
+achievement was a pastoral, _Colin and Phoebe_, which appeared in the
+_Spectator_ (Vol. viii., No. 603). It was written in honour of the
+daughter of Dr. Bentley, Master of Trinity, 'not,' it has been said,
+'because he wished to win her affections, but because he desired to
+secure her father's interest for the Fellowship for which he was a
+candidate.' The plan was successful. The one verse of Byrom's that every
+one has read is the happy epigram:
+
+    'God bless the King!--I mean the faith's defender--
+    God bless (no harm in blessing!) the Pretender!
+    But who Pretender is, or who is King--
+    God bless us all!--that's quite another thing.'
+
+SAMUEL CLARKE (1675-1729), a man of large attainments in science and
+divinity, was the favourite theologian of Queen Caroline, who admired
+his latitudinarian views, and delighted in his conversation. His works,
+edited by Bishop Hoadly, were published in 1738 in four folio volumes.
+In 1704 he delivered the Boyle lectures on _The Being and Attributes of
+God_, and in 1705 _On Natural and Revealed Religion_. His _Scripture
+Doctrine of the Trinity_ (1712) was condemned by convocation. In defence
+of Sir Isaac Newton, Clarke had a controversy with Leibnitz, and having
+published the correspondence dedicated it to the Queen. His sermons, Mr.
+Leslie Stephen says, are 'for the most part not sermons at all, but
+lectures upon metaphysics.' In Addison's judgment Clarke was one of the
+most accurate, learned, and judicious writers the age had produced.
+
+ELIJAH FENTON (1683-1730) wrote poems and _Mariamne_ a tragedy, in
+which, according to his friend Broome, 'great Sophocles revives and
+reappears.' It was acted with applause, and brought nearly one thousand
+pounds to its author. His name is now chiefly known as having assisted
+Pope in his translation of the _Odyssey_.
+
+RICHARD GLOVER (1712-1785), the son of a London merchant, was himself a
+merchant of high reputation in the city. He also 'cultivated the Muses,'
+and his _Leonidas_ (1737), an elaborate poem in blank verse, preferred
+by some critics of the day to _Paradise Lost_, passed through several
+editions and was praised by Fielding and by Lord Chatham. Power is
+visible in this epic, which displays also a large amount of knowledge,
+but the salt of genius is wanting, and the poem, despite many estimable
+qualities, is now forgotten. _Leonidas_ was followed by _Boadicea_
+(1758), and _The Atheniad_, published after his death in 1788. Glover
+was a politician as well as a verseman. His party feeling probably
+inspired _Admiral Hosier's Ghost_ (1739), a ballad still remembered and
+preserved in anthologies.
+
+MATTHEW GREEN (1696-1737) is the author of _The Spleen_, an original and
+brightly written poem. _The Grotto_, printed but not published in 1732,
+is also marked by freshness of treatment. Green's poems, written in
+octosyllabic metre, were published after his death.
+
+JAMES HAMMOND (1710-1742) produced many forlorn elegies on a lady who
+appears to have scorned him, and who lived in 'maiden meditation' for
+nearly forty years after the poet's death. His love is said to have
+affected his mind for a time. 'Sure Hammond has no right,' says
+Shenstone, 'to the least inventive merit. I do not think that there is a
+single thought in his elegies of any eminence that is not literally
+translated.'
+
+NATHANIEL HOOKE (1690-1763), the author of a _Roman History_, is better
+known as the editor of _An Account of the conduct of the Dowager Duchess
+of Marlborough, from her first coming to Court in the year 1710, in a
+letter from herself to Lord ---- in 1742_. The duchess is said to have
+dictated this letter from her bed, and to have been so eager for its
+completion that she insisted on Hooke's not leaving the house till he
+had finished it. He was munificently rewarded for his labour by a
+present of £5,000. It was Hooke, a zealous Roman Catholic, who, when
+Pope was dying, asked him if he should not send for a priest, and
+received the poet's hearty thanks for putting him in mind of it.
+
+JOHN HUGHES (1677-1719) was the author of poems, an opera, a masque,
+several translations, and a tragedy, _The Siege of Damascus_, which was
+well received, and kept its place on the stage for some years. He died
+on the first night's performance of the play. Several articles in the
+_Tatler_ and _Spectator_ are from his pen. In 1715 he published an
+edition of Spenser in six volumes. Hughes received warm praise from
+Steele, and enjoyed also the friendship of Addison.
+
+CONYERS MIDDLETON (1683-1750) is now chiefly known for an extravagantly
+eulogistic life of _Cicero_ (1741), in which, as Macaulay observes, he
+'resorted to the most disingenuous shifts, to unpardonable distortions
+and suppressions of facts.' The book is written in a forcible and lively
+style. A man of considerable learning, Middleton was a violent
+controversialist, who liked better to attack and to defend than to dwell
+in the serene atmosphere of literature or of practical divinity. He
+assailed the famous Richard Bentley with such rancour that he had to
+apologize and was fined £50 by the Court of King's Bench. Middleton was
+a doctor of divinity, but his controversial works, while never directly
+attacking the chief tenets of the religion he professed, lean far more
+to the side of the Deists than to the orthodox creed, and, indeed, it
+would not be uncharitable to class him among them. He appears, like
+Swift, to have chiefly regarded the Christian religion as an institution
+of service to the stability of the State. Of the _Miscellaneous Works_
+which were published after his death in five volumes, the most elaborate
+and the most provocative of disputation is _A Free Inquiry into the
+Miraculous Powers which are supposed to have subsisted in the Christian
+Church through several successive centuries_ (1749). Middleton was
+educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1734 was elected
+librarian of the University.
+
+RICHARD SAVAGE (1698-1743), whose fate is one of the most melancholy in
+the annals of versemen, lives in the admirable though neither impartial
+nor wholly accurate biography of Dr. Johnson. In 1719 he produced _Love
+in a Veil_, a comedy from the Spanish; and in 1723 his tragedy _Sir
+Thomas Overbury_ was acted, but with little success. In the same year he
+published _The Bastard_, a poem which is said to have driven his mother
+out of society. _The Wanderer_, in five cantos, appeared in 1729, and
+was regarded by the author as his masterpiece. It has some vigorous
+lines and several descriptive passages that are not conventional. Savage
+died in prison at Bristol, a city which recalls the equally painful
+story of Chatterton.
+
+LEWIS THEOBALD (1688-1744), the original hero of the _Dunciad_, was a
+dramatist and translator, but is chiefly known as the author of
+_Shakespeare Restored; or specimens of blunders committed or unamended
+in Pope's edition of the poet_ (1726). This was followed two years later
+by _Proposals for Publishing Emendations and Remarks on Shakespeare_,
+and in 1733 by his edition of the dramatist in seven volumes. 'Theobald
+as an editor,' say the editors of the _Cambridge Shakespeare_, 'is
+incomparably superior to his predecessors and to his immediate successor
+Warburton, although the latter had the advantage of working on his
+materials. He was the first to recall a multitude of readings of the
+first Folio unquestionably right, but unnoticed by previous editors.
+Many most brilliant emendations ... are due to him.'
+
+WILLIAM WALSH (1663-1708) has chronologically little claim to be noticed
+here, for his poems were published before the beginning of the century,
+but he is to be remembered as the early friend and wise counsellor of
+Pope, and also as the author, I believe, of the only English sonnet
+between Milton's in 1658, and Gray's, on Richard West, in 1742.
+
+ANNE FINCH, Countess of Winchelsea (1660-1720), published a volume of
+verse in 1713 under the title of _Miscellany Poems on Several Occasions,
+Written by a Lady_. The book contains a _Nocturnal Reverie_, which has
+some lines showing a close and faithful observation of rural sounds and
+sights, as for example:
+
+    'When the loosed horse, now as his pasture leads,
+    Comes slowly grazing through the adjoining meads,
+    Whose stealing pace and lengthened shade we fear,
+    Till torn-up forage in his teeth we hear;
+    When nibbling sheep at large pursue their food,
+    And unmolested kine rechew the cud;
+    When curlews cry beneath the village walls,
+    And to her straggling brood the partridge calls.'
+
+The _Nocturnal Reverie_, however, is an exception to the general
+character of Lady Winchelsea's poems, which consist chiefly of odes
+(including the inevitable Pindaric), fables, songs, affectionate
+addresses to her husband, poetical epistles, and a tragedy,
+_Aristomenes; or the Royal Shepherd_. The _Petition for an Absolute
+Retreat_ is one of the best pieces in the volume. It displays great
+facility in versification, and a love of country delights.
+
+THOMAS YALDEN (1670-1736), born in Exeter, and educated at Magdalen
+College, Oxford, entered into holy orders (1711), and was appointed
+lecturer of moral philosophy. 'Of his poems,' writes Dr. Johnson, 'many
+are of that irregular kind which, when he formed his poetical character,
+was supposed to be Pindaric.' Pindarics were indeed the bane of the age.
+Every minor poet, no matter however feeble his poetical wings might be,
+endeavoured to fly with Pindar. Like Gay, Yalden tried his skill as a
+writer of fables.
+
+    NOTE.
+
+    _Mrs. Veal's Ghost_ (see pp. 186-187). A curious discovery, made
+    by Mr. G. A. Aitken (see _Nineteenth Century_, January, 1895),
+    makes it certain, he thinks, that 'the whole narrative is
+    literally true.' He even hopes that the receipt for scouring
+    Mrs. Veal's gown may some day be found. Mr. Aitken seems to
+    infer that Defoe's other tales will also turn out to be true
+    histories, but Defoe avers, with all the seriousness he expends
+    on Mrs. Veal, that he witnessed the great Plague of London,
+    which it is needless to say he did not.
+
+
+
+
+CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.
+
+
+=1667.=       =Swift born.=
+=1672.=       =Steele born.=
+=1672.=       =Addison born.=
+ 1674.        Milton died.
+=1688.=       =Gay born.=
+=1688.=       =Pope born.=
+ 1688.        Bunyan died.
+ 1690.        Locke's _Essay Concerning Human Understanding_.
+ 1694.        Voltaire born.
+ 1699.        Racine died.
+=1700.=       =Thomson born.=
+=1700.=       =Dryden died.=
+ 1700.        Fénelon's _Télémaque_.
+ 1703.        John Wesley born.
+ 1704.        Locke died.
+=1704.=       =Addison's= _Campaign_.
+=1704.=       =Swift's= _Tale of a Tub_ and _Battle of the Books_.
+ 1707.        Fielding born.
+ 1709.        Johnson born.
+=1709.=       =Pope's= _Pastorals_.
+=1709-1711.=  _The Tatler._
+=1710.=       =Berkeley's= _Principles of Human Knowledge_.
+=1711.=       =Pope's= _Essay on Criticism_.
+1711-1712,}   _The Spectator._
+and 1714. }
+ 1711.        Hume born.
+=1712.=       =Pope's= _Rape of the Lock_.
+ 1712.        Rousseau born.
+=1713.=       =Addison's= _Cato_.
+ 1713.        Sterne born.
+=1714.=       =Mandeville's= _Fable of the Bees_.
+=1715.=       =Gay's= _Trivia_.
+=1715-1720.=  =Pope's= _Translation of Homer's Iliad_.
+ 1715.        Wycherley died.
+=1718.=       =Prior's= _Poems on Several Occasions_ =(folio)=.
+=1719-1720.=  =Defoe's= _Robinson Crusoe_ =(first part)=.
+=1719.=       =Addison died.=
+=1721.=       =Prior died.=
+ 1721.        Smollett born.
+=1723-1725.=  =Pope's= _Translation of Homer's Odyssey_.
+=1724.=       =Swift's= _Drapier's Letters_.
+ 1724.        Kant born.
+ 1724.        Klopstock born.
+=1725-1730.=  =Thomson's= _Seasons_.
+=1725.=       =Ramsay's= _Gentle Shepherd_.
+=1725.=       =Young's= _Universal Passion_.
+=1726.=       =Swift's= _Gulliver's Travels_.
+=1727.=       =Gay's= _Fables_.
+=1728.=       =Pope's= _Dunciad_.
+=1728.=       =Gay's= _Beggar's Opera_.
+ 1728.        Goldsmith born.
+=1729.=       =Law's= _Serious Call_.
+ 1729.        Burke born.
+ 1729.        Lessing born.
+=1729.=       =Steele died.=
+=1731.=       =Defoe died.=
+ 1731.        Cowper born.
+=1732-1735.=  =Pope's= _Moral Essays_.
+=1732-1734.=  =Pope's= _Essay on Man_.
+=1732.=       =Gay died.=
+=1733-1737.=  =Pope's= _Imitations of Horace_.
+=1735.=       =Pope's= _Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot_.
+=1736.=       =Butler's= _Analogy of Religion_.
+ 1737.        Gibbon born.
+=1738.=       =Hume's= _Treatise of Human Nature_.
+=1740.=       =Cibber's= _Apology for his Life_.
+ 1740.        Richardson's _Pamela_.
+ 1742.        Fielding's _Joseph Andrews_.
+=1742.=       =Pope's= _Dunciad_ =(fourth book added)=.
+=1742.=       =Young's= _Night Thoughts_.
+=1743.=       =Blair's= _Grave_.
+=1744.=       =Akenside's= _Pleasures of Imagination_.
+=1744.=       =Pope died.=
+=1745.=       =Swift died.=
+=1748.=       =Thomson died.=
+ 1748.        Hume's _Inquiry concerning Human Understanding_.
+ 1748.        Richardson's _Clarissa Harlowe_.
+ 1748.        Smollett's _Roderick Random_.
+ 1749.        Goethe born.
+ 1749.        Fielding's _Tom Jones_.
+
+
+ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WRITERS
+
+ADDISON, JOSEPH                         1672-1719
+AKENSIDE, MARK                          1721-1770
+ARBUTHNOT, JOHN                         1667-1735
+ARMSTRONG, JOHN                         1709-1779
+ATTERBURY, FRANCIS                      1662-1732
+BENTLEY, RICHARD                        1662-1742
+BERKELEY, GEORGE                        1685-1753
+BINNING, LORD                           1696-1732
+BLACKMORE, SIR RICHARD                  1650-1729
+BLAIR, ROBERT                           1699-1746
+BOLINGBROKE, LORD                       1678-1751
+BOYLE, CHARLES                          1676-1731
+BROOKE, HENRY                           1706-1783
+BROOME, WILLIAM                         1689-1745
+BUTLER, JOSEPH                          1692-1752
+BYROM, JOHN                             1691-1763
+CHESTERFIELD, LORD                      1694-1773
+CIBBER, COLLEY                          1671-1757
+CLARKE, SAMUEL                          1675-1729
+COLLINS, ANTHONY                        1676-1729
+CRAWFORD, ROBERT                       1695?-1732
+DEFOE, DANIEL                           1661-1731
+DENNIS, JOHN                          1657-1733-4
+DORSET, EARL OF                       1637-1705-6
+DYER, JOHN                             1698?-1758
+EDWARDS, THOMAS                         1699-1757
+FENTON, ELIJAH                          1683-1730
+GARTH, SIR SAMUEL                    1660-1717-18
+GAY, JOHN                               1685-1732
+GLOVER, RICHARD                         1712-1785
+GREEN, MATTHEW                          1696-1737
+HALIFAX, CHARLES MONTAGUE, EARL OF      1661-1715
+HAMILTON, WILLIAM (OF BANGOUR)          1704-1754
+HAMMOND, JAMES                          1710-1742
+HILL, AARON                             1684-1749
+HOOKE, NATHANIEL                        1690-1763
+HUGHES, JOHN                            1677-1719
+KING, ARCHBISHOP                        1650-1729
+LAW, WILLIAM                            1686-1761
+LILLO, GEORGE                           1693-1739
+LYTTELTON, GEORGE, LORD                 1708-1773
+MALLET, DAVID                           1700-1765
+MANDEVILLE, BERNARD DE                 1670?-1733
+MIDDLETON, CONYERS                      1683-1750
+MONTAGU, LADY MARY WORTLEY              1689-1762
+PARNELL, THOMAS                         1679-1718
+PHILIPS, AMBROSE                        1671-1749
+PHILIPS, JOHN                           1676-1708
+POPE, ALEXANDER                         1688-1744
+PRIOR, MATTHEW                          1664-1721
+RAMSAY, ALLAN                           1686-1758
+ROWE, NICHOLAS                          1673-1718
+SAVAGE, RICHARD                         1698-1743
+SHAFTESBURY, LORD                       1671-1713
+SHENSTONE, WILLIAM                      1714-1764
+SOMERVILLE, WILLIAM                     1692-1742
+SPENCE, JOSEPH                          1698-1768
+STEELE, SIR RICHARD                     1672-1729
+SWIFT, JONATHAN                         1667-1745
+THEOBALD, LEWIS                         1688-1744
+THOMSON, JAMES                          1700-1748
+TICKELL, THOMAS                         1686-1740
+WALSH, WILLIAM                          1663-1708
+WARBURTON, WILLIAM                      1698-1779
+WARDLAW, LADY                           1677-1727
+WATTS, ISAAC                            1674-1748
+WESLEY, CHARLES                         1708-1788
+WINCHELSEA, COUNTESS OF                 1660-1720
+YALDEN, THOMAS                          1670-1736
+YOUNG, EDWARD                           1684-1765
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+Addison, Joseph, 4, 5, 15, 16, 19, 20, 35, 59, 62, 125-136, 145, 146.
+
+_Addison, Address to Mr._, 112.
+
+_Admiral Hosier's Ghost_, 244.
+
+_Agamemnon_, 88.
+
+Akenside, Mark, 117.
+
+_Alciphron_, 216, 224.
+
+_Alfred, Masque of_, 88, 119.
+
+_Alma_, 67, 71.
+
+_Ambitious Step-mother, the_, 103.
+
+_Amyntor and Theodora_, 119.
+
+_Analogy of Religion_, 236.
+
+_Appius and Virginia_, 191, 193.
+
+Arbuthnot, John, 45, 49, 175-179.
+
+_Arbuthnot, Epistle to Dr._, 59.
+
+Armstrong, John, 242.
+
+_Art of Political Lying, the_, 177.
+
+_Art of Preserving Health, the_, 242.
+
+_Atheniad, the_, 244.
+
+Atterbury, Bishop, 45, 70, 207-212.
+
+Atticus, character of, 59.
+
+Augustan Age, origin of the term, 10.
+
+
+_Baucis and Philemon_, 157.
+
+_Bangor, three Letters to the Bishop of_, 230.
+
+Bangorian Controversy, the, 9.
+
+_Bathos, treatise on the_, 39.
+
+Bathurst, Lord, 46, 49.
+
+_Battle of Blenheim, the_, 192.
+
+_Battle of the Books, the_, 160.
+
+_Beggar's Opera, the_, 73, 74.
+
+Bentley, Richard, 36, 48, 160, 207, 208, 243.
+
+_Bentley's Dissertations, Examination of_, 208.
+
+Berkeley, Bishop, 46, 215, 221-229.
+
+Bickerstaff, Isaac, 161;
+  _Lucubrations of_ 140, 141.
+
+Binning, Lord, 121.
+
+_Black-eyed Susan_, 74.
+
+Blackmore, Sir Richard, 47, 242.
+
+Blair, Robert, 84.
+
+_Blenheim_, 101.
+
+Blount, Martha and Teresa, 44, 56.
+
+_Boadicea_, 244.
+
+Boehme, Jacob, 235.
+
+Boileau and Pope compared, 4, 47;
+  his _Art Poétique_, 29.
+
+Bolingbroke, Lord, 8, 44, 51, 52, 59, 216-221.
+
+Boyle, Charles, 160, 207, 208.
+
+_Braes of Yarrow, the_, 121.
+
+Bribery, prevalence of, 19.
+
+_Britannia_ (Thomson's), 87;
+  (Mallet's), 119.
+
+Brooke, Henry, 242.
+
+Broome, William, 38, 243.
+
+_Brothers, the_, 79.
+
+Buckingham, Duke of, 57, 70.
+
+_Busiris_, 79.
+
+Butler, Bishop, 236.
+
+Byrom, John, 243.
+
+
+_Cadenus and Vanessa_, 154, 165.
+
+_Campaign, the_, 126.
+
+_Captain Singleton_, 188.
+
+_Careless Husband, the_, 196, 197.
+
+Caroline, Queen, 9.
+
+_Castle of Indolence, the_, 93.
+
+_Cato_, 128, _et seq._
+
+Chandos, Duke of, 57.
+
+_Characteristics of Men, Manners, etc._, 19, 52, 212.
+
+Charke, Mrs., _Narrative of her Life_, 11.
+
+_Chase, the_, 112.
+
+Chesterfield, Lord, 202-204.
+
+_Chit-Chat_, 144.
+
+_Christian Hero, the_, 137.
+
+_Christianity, argument against abolishing_, 161.
+
+_Christian Perfection_, 232.
+
+_Christian Religion, Grounds of the_, 222.
+
+Cibber, Colley, 48, 196-198;
+  _Apology for the Life of_, 198.
+
+_Cider_, 101.
+
+Clarke, Dr. Samuel, 9, 243.
+
+_Colin and Lucy_, 110.
+
+_Colin and Phoebe_, 243.
+
+Collier, Jeremy, 137.
+
+Collins, Anthony, 222.
+
+_Colonel Jack_, 187, 188.
+
+_Conscious Lovers, the_, 137.
+
+_Contentment, Hymn to_, 107.
+
+_Conversion of St. Paul, Dissertation on the_, 205.
+
+_Coriolanus_, 88.
+
+_Country Mouse and City Mouse, the_, 66.
+
+_Country Walk, the_, 114.
+
+Craggs, James, 45, 56.
+
+Crawford, Robert, 121.
+
+_Creation, the_, 242.
+
+_Crisis, the_, 143, 144.
+
+_Criticism, the Essay on_, 29, 191.
+
+_Criticism in Poetry, grounds of_, 192.
+
+Crousaz, M., 54, 238.
+
+Cruelty of the age, 18.
+
+Curll, Edmund, 42.
+
+
+Defoe, Daniel, 180-191.
+
+Delany, Mrs., _Life and Correspondence of_, 12, 164.
+
+Dennis, John, 191-196.
+
+_Dialogues of the Dead_, 205.
+
+_Dispensary, the_, 96.
+
+_Distrest Mother, the_, 98.
+
+_Divine Legation of Moses, the_, 230, 239.
+
+Dorset, Earl of, 65.
+
+_Drapier's Letters_, 170.
+
+Drelincourt's _Christian's Defence, etc._, 187.
+
+Dryden, John, death of, 1;
+  and Pope, 28, 58.
+
+_Dryden, Ode to_, 193.
+
+_Drummer, the_, 134.
+
+Drunkenness, prevalence of, 17.
+
+Duelling, 13.
+
+_Dunciad, the_, 39, 48, _et seq._, 240.
+
+Dyer, John, 113, 224.
+
+
+_Edward and Eleanora_, 88.
+
+Edwards, Thomas, 241.
+
+_Edwin and Emma_, 118.
+
+_Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady_, 33.
+
+_Eloisa to Abelard_, 33.
+
+_Elvira_, 119.
+
+_English Convocation, Rights, Powers and Privileges of_, 208.
+
+_Englishman, the_, 144.
+
+_English Poets, Account of the greatest_, 131.
+
+_Epistle to a Friend in Town_, 114.
+
+_Epistles of Phalaris, Dissertations on the_, 160, 208.
+
+_Essay on Man, the_, 51, 238.
+
+_Eurydice_, 119.
+
+Eusden, Lawrence, 47.
+
+_Evergreen, the_, 120.
+
+_Examiner, the_, 162.
+
+_Excursion, the_, 118.
+
+
+_Fable of the Bees, the_, 214, 230;
+  _Remarks on the_, 231.
+
+_Fables_ (Gay's), 73.
+
+_Fair Penitent, the_, 103.
+
+_Fatal Curiosity, the_, 138.
+
+Fenton, Elijah, 38, 244.
+
+_Fleece, the_, 113, 224.
+
+_Fool of Quality, the_, 243.
+
+_Force of Religion, the_, 78.
+
+_Freedom of Wit and Humour, the_, 213.
+
+_Freeholder, the_, 132.
+
+_Freethinking, Discourse on_, 222.
+
+French Literature, influence of, 3, 4, 5.
+
+French Customs, 14.
+
+_Funeral, the_, 137.
+
+
+Gambling, 21, 22.
+
+Garth, Sir Samuel, 96.
+
+Gay, John, 40, 49, 72-76.
+
+_Gentle Shepherd, the_, 120.
+
+_George Barnwell_, 138.
+
+_Gideon_, 104.
+
+Glover, Richard, 244.
+
+_God, the Being and Attributes of_, 244.
+
+Granville, George, Lord Lansdowne, 40.
+
+_Grave, the_, 84.
+
+Green, Matthew, 245.
+
+_Grongar Hill_, 113.
+
+_Grotto, the_, 244.
+
+_Grub Street Journal, the_, 51.
+
+_Grumbling Hive, the_, 214.
+
+_Guardian, the_, 125, 142.
+
+_Gulliver's Travels_, 167.
+
+_Gustavus Vasa_, 243.
+
+
+Halifax, Montague, Earl of, 65, 66.
+
+Hamilton, William, of Bangour, 121.
+
+Hammond, James, 245.
+
+_Health, an Eclogue_, 108.
+
+_Henry and Emma_, 67.
+
+_Hermit, the_, 107.
+
+Hervey, Lord, 47, 59, 61.
+
+Hill, Aaron, 104-106, 195.
+
+Hoadly, Bishop, 9, 230.
+
+Homer, Pope's Translation of, 34, _et seq._, 206, 243, 244.
+  Tickell's translation, 35, 111.
+
+Hooke, Nathaniel, 245.
+
+Horace, _Ars Poetica_, 29.
+
+_Horace, Imitations from_, 55, 59, 60.
+
+Hughes, John, 40, 245.
+
+_Human Knowledge, Treatise on_, 221, 225.
+
+_Hylas and Philonous, Dialogue between_, 222, 227.
+
+_Hymn to Contentment_, 107.
+
+_Hymn to the Naiads_, 118.
+
+
+_Imperium Pelagi_, 76.
+
+_Instalment, the_, 79.
+
+_Iphigenia_, 193.
+
+_Italy, Letter from_, 131.
+
+_Italy, Remarks on Several Parts of_, 126.
+
+
+_Jane Shore_, 103.
+
+_John Bull, History of_, 177.
+
+Johnson, Esther, 152, 164, 166, 172.
+
+_Judgment Day, the_, 104.
+
+_Judgment of Hercules, the_, 116.
+
+
+_Kensington Gardens_, 111.
+
+King, _on the Origin of Evil_, 52.
+
+
+_Lady Jane Grey_, 103.
+
+_Lansdowne, Epistle to Lord_, 77.
+
+_Last Day, the_, 77.
+
+Law, William, 194, 230-236, 243.
+
+_Law, Elegy in Memory of William_, 85.
+
+Leibnitz, _Essais de Théodicée_, 52.
+
+_Leonidas_, 244.
+
+_Liberty Asserted_, 193.
+
+Lillo, George, 138.
+
+_Love in a Veil_, 246.
+
+_Lover, the_, 144.
+
+_Love's Last Shift_, 196.
+
+_Lying Lover, the_, 137.
+
+Lyttelton, George, Lord, 204.
+
+
+Mallet, David, 88, 118, 219, 220.
+
+_Man, Allegory on_, 107.
+
+Mandeville, Bernard de, 214, 230.
+
+_Mariamne_, 244.
+
+Marlborough, Duchess of, 13, 57.
+
+_Marlborough, Duchess of, Account of the Conduct of_, 245.
+
+Marriages in the Fleet, 11, 12.
+
+_Mathematical Learning, Essay on the Usefulness of_, 175.
+
+_Memoirs of a Cavalier_, 188.
+
+_Merope_, 106.
+
+Middleton, Conyers, 246.
+
+_Modest Proposal, etc._, 172, 184.
+
+Mohocks, the, 11.
+
+_Moll Flanders_, 188, 190.
+
+Montagu, Lady M. W., 14, 42, 44, 57, 198-202.
+
+Montague, Charles, Earl of Halifax, 65, 66.
+
+_Monument, the_, 192.
+
+_Moral Essays, the_, 55, _et seq._
+
+_Moralties or Essays, Letters, etc._, 206.
+
+_Mrs. Veal, Apparition of_, 186.
+
+
+_Namur, Taking of_, 70.
+
+_Night Piece on Death_, 107, 108.
+
+_Night Thoughts_, 76, 81.
+
+_Northern Star, the_, 104.
+
+
+_Ocean_, 76.
+
+_Ode on St. Cecilia's day_, 40.
+
+Opera, Italian, 127.
+
+Oxford, Harley, Earl of, 49.
+
+
+_Parallel in the Manner of Plutarch_, 206.
+
+Parnell, Thomas, 107.
+
+_Parties, Dissertation on_, 221.
+
+Partridge, John, 161.
+
+Party feeling, excess of, 19, 20.
+
+_Pastoral Ballad_, 116.
+
+_Pastorals_ (Pope's), 29, 191;
+  (Philips'), 98.
+
+_Patriotism, Letters on_, 221.
+
+_Patriot King, the_, 219, 221.
+
+Patronage of Literature, 5, 6.
+
+_Peace of Ryswick, the_, 126.
+
+_Persian Tales, the_, 100.
+
+Peterborough, Earl of, 45.
+
+_Phalaris, Dissertation on the Epistle of_, 160, 208.
+
+Philips, Ambrose, 11, 98.
+
+Philips, John, 101.
+
+_Plague, History of the_, 189.
+
+_Pleasures of Imagination, the_, 117.
+
+_Plot and No Plot, a_, 193.
+
+_Poetry, Rhapsody on_, 157.
+
+_Polly_, 74.
+
+_Polymetis_, 206.
+
+Pope, Alexander, a representative poet, 27;
+  his life, 28-64;
+  and Dennis, 191, 195;
+  and Cibber, 96;
+  and Lady M. W. Montagu, 14, 42, 44, 57, 199;
+  and Spence, 205;
+  and Arbuthnot, 209.
+
+_Pope, Epistle to_, 81.
+
+_Pope's Translation of Homer_, Spence's Essay on, 206.
+
+Pope, Mrs., 44, 59.
+
+Prior, Matthew, 5, 65-72.
+
+_Progress of Wit, the_, 105.
+
+_Projects, Essay on_, 182.
+
+_Prospect of Peace, the_, 109.
+
+_Public Spirit of the Whigs, the_, 143.
+
+
+_Querist, the_, 224.
+
+
+Ramsay, Allan, 120.
+
+_Rape of the Lock, the_, 31.
+
+_Reader, the_, 144.
+
+Religion, Condition of, 9.
+
+_Religion, Natural and Revealed_, 244.
+
+_Religious Courtship, the_, 189.
+
+_Remarks on Several Parts of Italy_, 126.
+
+_Revenge, the_, 79.
+
+_Review, the_ (Defoe's), 185.
+
+_Rise of Women, the_, 108.
+
+_Robinson Crusoe_, 180, 187, 189.
+
+_Rosamond_, 128.
+
+Roscommon's _Essay on Translated Verse_, 29.
+
+Rowe, Nicholas, 102.
+
+_Roxana_, 188, 189.
+
+_Royal Convert, the_, 103.
+
+_Ruin of Great Britain, Essay towards Preventing the_, 223.
+
+_Ruins of Rome, the_, 115.
+
+_Rule Britannia_, 95.
+
+
+Savage, Richard, 246.
+
+_Schoolmistress, the_, 115, 116.
+
+_Scriblerus, Martin, Memoirs of_, 178, 222.
+
+_Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, the_, 244.
+
+_Seasons, the_, 86, 87, 88-92.
+
+_Sentiments of a Church of England Man_, 162.
+
+_Serious Call_, 216, 233.
+
+Shaftesbury, Lord, 19, 52, 212-215.
+
+Shakespeare, Pope and Theobald's Editions of, 39;
+  Rowe's Edition, 132;
+  Warburton's Edition, 241.
+
+Sheffield, John, Earl of, 29, 40.
+
+Shenstone, William, 115, 205.
+
+_Shepherd's Week, the_, 73.
+
+_Shortest Way with Dissenters, the_, 184.
+
+_Siege of Damascus, the_, 245.
+
+_Siris_, 224, 228.
+
+_Sir Thomas Overbury_, 246.
+
+Social Condition of the time, 10.
+
+_Social State of Ireland, Essay on the_, 224.
+
+_Solomon_, 67, 71.
+
+Somerville, William, 40, 112.
+
+_Sophonisba_, 87.
+
+South Sea Company, the, 21.
+
+_Spectator, the_, 11, 14, 16, 19, 20, 98, 117, 125, 127, 128, 141, 142.
+
+Spence, Joseph, 59, 205.
+
+_Spleen, the_, 244.
+
+_Splendid Shilling, the_, 101.
+
+_Stage defended from Scripture, etc., the_, 194.
+
+_Stage Entertainments, Absolute Unlawfulness of_, 194, 232.
+
+Steele, Sir Richard, 125, 136-150.
+
+_Stella, Journal to_, 164, 166.
+
+_Study of History, Letters on the_, 221.
+
+Swift, Jonathan, 34, 42, 44, 48, 49, 50, 51, 62, 151-175.
+
+_Swift, on the Death of Dr._, 154.
+
+
+_Tale of a Tub, the_, 153, 158, 209.
+
+_Tales of the Genii_, 206.
+
+_Tamerlane_, 103.
+
+_Tancred and Sigismunda_, 88.
+
+_Tatler, the_, 125, 140, 148, 162.
+
+_Tea Table, the_, 144.
+
+_Tea Table Miscellany, the_, 120.
+
+Temple, Sir William, 152, 160, 208.
+
+_Temple of Fame, the_, 33.
+
+_Tender Husband, the_, 137.
+
+_Theatre, the_, 144.
+
+Theobald, Lewis, 39, 47, 48.
+
+_Theory of Vision, Essay towards a new_, 221, 225.
+
+Thomson, James, 44, 47, 85-95.
+
+Tickell, Thomas, 35, 109-111, 135.
+
+_Tour through Great Britain_, 190.
+
+_Town Talk_, 144.
+
+_Trivia_, 11, 73.
+
+_True Born Englishman, the_, 184.
+
+Trumbull, Sir William, 29, 34.
+
+
+_Ulysses_, 103.
+
+_Ungrateful Nanny_, 121.
+
+_Universal Passion_, 80.
+
+
+Vanhomrigh, Hester, 164, 222.
+
+_Verbal Criticism_, 118.
+
+Vida's _Scacchia Ludus_, 32.
+
+_Vision of Mirza, the_, 146.
+
+_Voltaire_, 5, 41.
+
+
+Walpole, Sir Robert, 6, 8, 21, 41, 79.
+
+Walsh, William, 28, 247.
+
+_Wanderer, the_, 247.
+
+Warburton, Bishop, 55, 56, 62, 230, 239-241.
+
+Wardlaw, Lady, 120.
+
+Warton, Joseph, 63.
+
+Watts, Isaac, 131.
+
+_Welcome from Greece, a_, 75.
+
+Welsted, Leonard, 47.
+
+Wesley, Charles, 131.
+
+Wesley, John, 67.
+
+_Whig Examiner, the_, 162.
+
+_William and Margaret_, 118.
+
+Winchelsea, Countess of, 247.
+
+_Windham, Sir W., Letter to_, 217, 221.
+
+_Windsor Forest_, 30.
+
+Women, position of, 14, 15.
+
+Wood's Halfpence, 169, 170.
+
+_World, the_, 203.
+
+Wycherley, William, 28.
+
+
+Yalden, Thomas, 248.
+
+Young, Edward, 15, 76-83.
+
+
+_Zara_, 106.
+
+
+
+
+HANDBOOKS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
+
+
+EDITED BY PROFESSOR HALES
+
+"The admirable series of handbooks edited by Professor Hales is rapidly
+taking shape as one of the best histories of our literature that are at
+the disposal of the student.... [When complete] there is little doubt
+that we shall have a history of English literature which, holding a
+middle course between the rapid general survey and the minute
+examination of particular periods, will long remain a standard
+work."--_Manchester Guardian._
+
+_Crown 8vo, 5s. net each._
+
+THE AGE OF ALFRED (664-1154). By F. J. SNELL, M.A.
+
+THE AGE OF CHAUCER (1346-1400). By F. J. SNELL, M.A., with an
+    Introduction by PROFESSOR HALES. 3rd edition.
+
+THE AGE OF TRANSITION (1400-1580). By F. J. SNELL, M.A. In 2 vols.
+    Vol. I.: The Poets. Vol. II.: The Dramatists and Prose Writers.
+    With an Introduction by PROFESSOR HALES. 3rd edition.
+
+THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE (1579-1631). By THOMAS SECCOMBE and J. W.
+    ALLEN. In 2 vols. Vol. I.: Poetry and Prose, with an
+    Introduction by PROFESSOR HALES. Vol. II: Drama. 7th edition.
+
+THE AGE OF MILTON (1632-1660). By the REV. J. H. B. MASTERMAN, M.A.,
+    with an Introduction, etc., by J. BASS MULLINGER, M.A. 8th
+    edition.
+
+THE AGE OF DRYDEN (1660-1700). By RICHARD GARNETT, C.B., LL.D. 8th
+    edition.
+
+THE AGE OF POPE (1700-1744). By JOHN DENNIS. 11th edition.
+
+THE AGE OF JOHNSON (1744-1798). By THOMAS SECCOMBE. 7th edition.
+
+THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH (1798-1832). By PROFESSOR C. H. HERFORD,
+    Litt.D. 12th edition.
+
+THE AGE OF TENNYSON (1830-1870). By PROFESSOR HUGH WALKER, M.A. 9th
+    edition.
+
+
+OPINIONS OF THE PRESS
+
+
+THE AGE OF CHAUCER
+
+"This little monograph may lay fair claim to be regarded as complete,
+acute, stimulating, and scholarly."--_School World._
+
+"The book is thoroughly up-to-date, an important consideration in
+dealing with Middle English literature, and does not lose itself in too
+minute a consideration of those works which are only of philological and
+not of literary value. The accounts of the W. Midland alliterative
+poetry, of the development of prose, and the work of the poet Gower, are
+specially good. The treatment of Chaucer is thorough and
+scholarly."--_University Correspondent._
+
+"An admirable handbook, dealing in a lucid style and in a highly
+critical spirit with one of the most important periods in the history of
+English literature."--_Westminster Review._
+
+
+THE AGE OF DRYDEN
+
+"This scholarly little volume from the learned pen of Dr. Garnett....
+Within the limits of his space Dr. Garnett surveys the several
+departments of literature in this period with singular comprehensiveness,
+broad sympathy, and fine critical sagacity."--_Times._
+
+"The series which Professor Hales is editing aims at being that very
+difficult and important something between the text-book for schools and
+the gracefully allusive literary essay. Dr. Garnett has done his part of
+the work admirably. Most readable is his book, written with a fine sense
+of proportion, and containing many independent judgements, yet even, so
+far as minor names and dates and facts are concerned, complete enough
+for all save a searcher after minutiae."--_Bookman._
+
+"Though planned on the scale of the manual, this book is actually the
+first attempt worth naming to grasp in one separate review the
+literature of the last forty years of the seventeenth century, a time
+which, as Dr. Garnett well says, 'with all its defects, had a faculty
+for producing masterpieces.' Dr. Garnett's name is a warrant for his
+acquaintance not only with the masterpieces but with much besides, and
+with more than all that need be named in the kind of survey he
+undertakes."--_Manchester Guardian._
+
+
+THE AGE OF POPE
+
+"A 'handbook' is scarcely a fair description of so readable and
+companionable a volume, which aims not only at giving accurate
+information, but at directing the reader's steps 'through a country
+exhaustless in variety and interest.'"--_Spectator._
+
+"The biographical portion of Mr. Dennis's book is really admirable. The
+accuracy of the details and the knowledge exhibited by the author of the
+social and political life of the period show how thoroughly he has
+mastered his subject."--_Westminster Review._
+
+"Mr. Dennis writes freely and simply, and with a thorough knowledge of
+the period with which he deals, and goes straight to the point without
+revelling in circumambient fancies. The result of this is that in 250
+pages of good print we have as concise a history of Queen Anne
+literature as we could wish."--_Cambridge Review._
+
+"An excellent little volume."--_Athenæum._
+
+
+THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE
+
+"Both volumes are excellently done, with knowledge, judgement, and a
+pleasant touch of vivacity. It is no easy matter to make a text-book
+both informing and readable; but here the feat is accomplished. I have
+read 'The Age of Shakespeare' with unflagging interest and pleasure....
+Everywhere one has the restful sensation of dealing with men of
+competent scholarship and sound critical instinct. Especially valuable,
+to my thinking, is the chronological table of the chief publications of
+each year from 1579 to 1630."--Mr. William Archer in the _Morning
+Leader_.
+
+"These two volumes are, in short, a notable accession to the useful
+series to which they belong, and they constitute a luminous aid to the
+interpretation alike of the scope and quality of the literary activity
+which has rendered the 'Age of Shakespeare' classic in the annals of
+English literature."--_Standard._
+
+"The book is a well-informed and well-connected and intelligent
+exposition of its subject. It is more than a mere handbook. It is a
+_history_, though on a small scale."--_Journal of Education._
+
+
+THE AGE OF MILTON
+
+"A very readable and serviceable manual of English literature during the
+central years of the seventeenth century."--_Glasgow Herald._
+
+"Mr. Masterman has written a book which combines the preciseness of a
+text-book with the fullness of thought of a monograph. Indeed, this
+compact little work will be studied with as much earnestness by the
+student as it will be read with pleasure by the lover of _belles
+lettres_.... We lay down the book delighted with what we have
+read."--_Birmingham Daily Gazette._
+
+"A work which reflects the utmost credit on its author ... luminous and
+at the same time impartial."--_Westminster Review._
+
+"This excellent epitome ... very happily indicates the golden afterglow
+of the Elizabethan sun."--_Daily Chronicle._
+
+
+THE AGE OF JOHNSON
+
+"The uniform excellence of Mr. Seccombe's manual of English literary
+history from 1748 to 1798 affords scarcely any opening for detailed
+criticism. Little can be said, except that everything is just as it
+ought to be: the arrangement perfect, the length of the notices justly
+proportioned, the literary judgements sound and illuminating; while the
+main purpose of conveying information is kept so steadily in view that,
+while the book is worthy of a place in the library, the student could
+desire no better guide for an examination."--_Bookman._
+
+"He has knowledge, he is eminently careful, and, best of all in a
+handbook-maker of this kind, he is judicial. We like Mr. Seccombe's
+arrangement. There is a capital introduction, solid and grave rather
+than brilliant, on which the student may stand in confidence before he
+dives off into the stream of his tutor's survey. Briefly, we have here a
+thorough, almost encyclopaedic, review of a great literary
+period--stimulating to the younger student, and to his elder refreshing
+by its perception."--_Outlook._
+
+"This book is one of the best of its kind, and we heartily recommend it
+to our readers."--_Journal of Education._
+
+"The young student could not read a better book to get a comprehensive
+and yet detailed account of the literary history of the latter half of
+the eighteenth century."--_Morning Post._
+
+
+THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH
+
+"It is an admirable little work all the way through and one which the
+ripest students of the period may read with interest and
+profit."--_Guardian._
+
+"The desiderated text-book of the period 1798 to 1830 A.D. is no longer
+to seek. More than that, it has been written by the one Englishman most
+competent to deal with it. Whatever Professor Herford does he does well;
+but he has given us nothing at once so good and so helpful as this
+book."--_University Correspondent._
+
+"The introductory essay on Romanticism in our literature is an admirable
+piece of work, full of suggestive thought, but Professor Herford is at
+his best--and a very fine best it is--in his brief summaries of the
+lives and works of individual writers. His Cobbett, his Lamb, and
+others that might be instanced, are veritable gems of biographical and
+critical compression presented with true literary finish."--_Literary
+World._
+
+"A book which is remarkable for freshness and distinction of style,
+philosophic grasp of first principles, and critical insight.... When we
+add that the book is also conspicuous for delicacy of literary
+appreciation and ripe judgement, both of men and movements, we have said
+enough to show that we consider its claims are unusual."--_Speaker._
+
+
+THE AGE OF TENNYSON
+
+"A capital little handbook of modern English literature."--_Times._
+
+"An instructive and readable manual ... an admirable first text-book on
+the subject."--_Scotsman._
+
+"Professor Walker has done his allotted task with singular skill,
+wonderful judiciousness, critical insight, adequate knowledge and
+mastery of facts, keen discernment of qualities and effectiveness of
+grouping.... We have read no review of the whole of the Tennysonian age
+so genuinely fresh in matter, method, style, critical canons, and
+selectedness of phrase. As a small book on a great subject, it is a
+special treasure."--_Educational News._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+UNIFORM WITH THE HANDBOOKS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
+
+_Fourth Edition Enlarged. 725 pages. Small Crown 8vo. 6s. net._
+
+INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE
+
+BY
+
+HENRY S. PANCOAST
+
+"Seems to me to fulfil better, on the whole, than any other
+'Introduction' known to me, the real requirements of such a book as
+distinguished from a 'Sketch' or a 'Summary.' It rightly does not
+attempt to be cyclopaedic, but isolates a number of figures of
+first-rate importance, and deals with these in a very attractive way.
+The directions for reading are also excellent."--Professor C. H.
+HERFORD, Litt.D.
+
+LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
+YORK HOUSE, PORTUGAL STREET, W.C.
+
+
+LITERATURE OF THE AGE OF POPE.
+
+PUBLISHED BY
+
+G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
+
+=ADDISON'S= WORKS. With the Notes of Bishop Hurd, a short Memoir,
+    and a Portrait of Addison after G. Kneller, and 8 Plates of
+    Medals and Coins. Edited by H. G. Bohn. 6 vols. Small post 8vo.
+    3_s._ 6_d._ each.                        [_Bohn's Standard Library._
+
+    This is the most complete edition of Addison's Works ever
+    issued. It contains much new matter, and upwards of 100 Letters
+    not before published. A very full Index (108 pages) is appended
+    to the 6th vol.
+
+Vol. I.--Plays--Poems--Poemata--Dialogues on Medals--Remarks on Italy.
+
+    II.--Tatler and Spectator.
+
+   III.--Spectator.                                     [_Out of print._
+
+    IV.--Spectator--Guardian--Lover--State of the War--Trial of Count
+         Tariff--Whig Examiner--Freeholder.
+
+     V.--Freeholder--Christian Religion--Drummer, or Haunted
+         House--Various short Pieces hitherto unpublished--Letters.
+
+    VI.--Letters--Poems--Translations--Official Documents--Addisoniana.
+
+THE MISCELLANEOUS WORKS OF ADDISON. Edited by the late A.
+    Guthkelch, M.A. 2 vols. Vol. I, Poems and Plays. Vol. II,
+    Prose. Large Post 8vo, 10_s._ 6_d._ net each.
+
+=BERKELEY'S= WORKS. Edited by George Sampson. With a Biographical
+    Introduction by the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, M.P. 3 vols. Small
+    post 8vo. 6_s._ each.               [_Bohn's Philosophical Library._
+
+=BUTLER'S= ANALOGY OF RELIGION, Natural and Revealed, to the
+    Constitution and Course of Nature; together with Two
+    Dissertations on Personal Identity and on the Nature of Virtue,
+    and Fifteen Sermons. Edited, with Analytical Introductions,
+    Explanatory Notes, a short Memoir, and a Portrait. Small post
+    8vo. 6_s._                               [_Bohn's Standard Library._
+
+=DEFOE'S= NOVELS and MISCELLANEOUS WORKS. With Prefaces and Notes,
+    including those attributed to Sir W. Scott. 7 vols. Small post
+    8vo. 6_s._ each.                         [_Bohn's Standard Library._
+
+Vol. I.--Life, Adventures and Piracies of Capt. Singleton, and Life of
+         Colonel Jack. With Portrait of Defoe.          [_Out of print._
+
+    II.--Memoirs of a Cavalier, Memoirs of Captain Carleton, Dickory
+         Cronke, &c.
+
+   III.--Life of Moll Flanders, and the History of the Devil.
+                                                        [_Out of print._
+
+    IV.--Roxana, or the Fortunate Mistress; and Life of Mrs. Christian
+         Davies.                                        [_Out of print._
+
+     V.--History of the Great Plague of London, 1665 (to which is added
+         the Fire of London, 1666, by an anonymous writer)--The Storm
+         (1703)--and the True-born Englishman.          [_Out of print._
+
+    VI.--Life and Adventures of Duncan Campbell--New Voyage round the
+         World, and Tracts relating to the Hanoverian Accession.
+
+   VII.--Robinson Crusoe. With a Short Biographical Account of Defoe.
+
+=MONTAGU=, THE LETTERS AND WORKS OF LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU.
+    Edited by her great-grandson, Lord Wharncliffe, with Additions
+    and Corrections derived from Original Manuscripts, Illustrative
+    Notes, and a Memoir by W. Moy Thomas. New edition, revised,
+    with 5 Portraits. 2 vols. Small post 8vo. 6_s._ each.
+                                                 [_Vol. I out of print._
+                                             [_Bohn's Standard Library._
+
+=PARNELL'S= POETICAL WORKS. Edited, with Memoir, by G. A. Aitken.
+    Fcap. 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._ net.                       [_Aldine Edition._
+
+=POPE'S= POETICAL WORKS. Edited by G. R. Dennis, with Memoir by John
+    Dennis. 3 vols. Fcap. 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._ net each.
+                                                      [_Aldine Edition._
+
+---- HOMER'S ILIAD. With Introduction and Notes by the Rev. J. S.
+    Watson, M.A. Illustrated by the entire Series of Flaxman's
+    Designs. Small post 8vo. 6_s._
+
+---- HOMER'S ODYSSEY. With Introduction and Notes by the Rev. J. S.
+    Watson, M.A. With the entire Series of Flaxman's Designs. Small
+    post 8vo. 6_s._
+
+---- LIFE OF POPE, including many of his Letters. By Robert
+    Carruthers. With numerous Illustrations. Small post 8vo. 6_s._
+
+=PRIOR'S= POETICAL WORKS. Edited, with Memoir, by Reginald Brimley
+    Johnson. 2 vols. Fcap. 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._ net each.
+                                                      [_Aldine Edition._
+
+=SWIFT'S= PROSE WORKS. Edited by Temple Scott. With a Biographical
+    Introduction by the Right Hon. W. E. H. Lecky, M.P., and a
+    Bibliography by the Editor. With Portraits and other
+    Illustrations. 12 vols. Small post 8vo. 6_s._ each.
+                                             [_Bohn's Standard Library._
+
+   Vol. I.--Edited by Temple Scott. With a Biographical Introduction by
+            the Right Hon. W. E. H. Lecky, M.P. Containing:--A Tale of a
+            Tub, The Battle of the Books, and other early works. With
+            _Portrait_ and Facsimiles.
+
+       II.--The Journal to Stella. Edited by Frederick Ryland, M.A. With
+            _2 Portraits of Stella_, and a Facsimile of one of the
+            Letters.
+
+III. & IV.--Writings on Religion and the Church. Edited by Temple Scott.
+            With Portraits and Facsimiles of title-pages.
+
+        V.--Historical and Political Tracts (English). Edited by Temple
+            Scott. With Portrait and Facsimiles of title-pages.
+
+       VI.--The Drapier's Letters. Edited by Temple Scott. With
+            Portrait, reproduction of Wood's Coinage, and Facsimiles of
+            title-pages.
+
+      VII.--Historical and Political Tracts (Irish). Edited by Temple
+            Scott. With Portrait and Facsimiles of title-pages.
+
+     VIII.--Gulliver's Travels. Edited by G. Ravenscroft Dennis. With
+            the original Portrait and Maps.
+
+       IX.--Contributions to the 'Examiner,' 'Tatler,' 'Spectator,' etc.
+            Edited by Temple Scott.
+
+        X.--Historical Writings. Edited by Temple Scott. With Portrait.
+
+       XI.--Literary Essays. Edited by Temple Scott. With Portrait.
+
+      XII.--Index and Bibliography.
+
+POEMS. Edited by W. Ernst Browning. 2 vols. 6_s._
+
+=SWIFT'S= POETICAL WORKS. Edited, with Memoir, by the Rev. John
+    Mitford, M.A. Fcap. 8vo. 3 vols. 3_s._ 6_d._ net each.
+                                 [_Aldine Edition. Vol. I out of print._
+
+LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
+YORK HOUSE, PORTUGAL STREET, KINGSWAY, W.C.
+
+
+PRINTED BY
+
+THE LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS, LIMITED
+
+LONDON AND NORWICH
+
+
+TRANSCRIBERS' NOTES
+
+General: Corrections to punctuation have not been individually noted.
+
+General: Bold text in the original is marked with ==. Italic text is
+marked with __
+
+Pages 57, 159: Variable hyphenation of death-bed as in the original.
+
+Pages 222, 232, 257: Variable hyphenation of Free(-)thinking as in the
+original.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Age of Pope, by John Dennis
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30421 ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Age of Pope, by John Dennis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Age of Pope
+       (1700-1744)
+
+Author: John Dennis
+
+Release Date: November 7, 2009 [EBook #30421]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AGE OF POPE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Brownfox and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HANDBOOKS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
+
+EDITED BY PROFESSOR HALES.
+
+_Crown 8vo, 5s. net each._
+
+
+THE AGE OF ALFRED (664-1154). By F. J. SNELL, M.A.
+
+THE AGE OF CHAUCER (1346-1400). By F. J. SNELL, M.A. With an
+    Introduction by Professor HALES. _3rd Edition, revised._
+
+THE AGE OF TRANSITION (1400-1580). By F. J. SNELL, M.A. 2 vols. Vol. I.
+    The Poets. Vol. II. The Dramatists and Prose Writers. With an
+    Introduction by Professor HALES. _3rd Edition._
+
+THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE (1579-1631). By THOMAS SECCOMBE and J. W. ALLEN.
+    With an Introduction by Professor HALES. 2 vols. Vol. I. Poetry and
+    Prose. Vol. II. The Drama. _8th Edition, revised._
+
+THE AGE OF MILTON (1632-1660). By the Rev. J. H. B. MASTERMAN, M.A. With
+    Introduction, etc., by J. BASS MULLINGER, M.A. _8th Edition,
+    revised._
+
+THE AGE OF DRYDEN (1660-1700). By R. GARNETT, C.B., LL.D. _8th Edition._
+
+THE AGE OF POPE (1700-1748). By JOHN DENNIS. _11th Edition._
+
+THE AGE OF JOHNSON (1748-1798). By THOMAS SECCOMBE. _7th Edition,
+    revised._
+
+THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH (1698-1832) By Professor C. H. HERFORD, Litt.D.
+    _12th Edition._
+
+THE AGE OF TENNYSON (1830-1870). By Professor HUGH WALKER. _9th
+    Edition._
+
+LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
+
+
+
+
+HANDBOOKS
+
+OF
+
+ENGLISH LITERATURE
+
+EDITED BY PROFESSOR HALES
+
+THE AGE OF POPE
+
+
+
+
+LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS LTD.
+
+PORTUGAL STREET, KINGSWAY, W.C.
+
+CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL & CO.
+
+NEW YORK: HARCOURT BRACE & CO.
+
+BOMBAY: A. H. WHEELER & CO.
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+AGE OF POPE
+
+(1700-1744)
+
+BY
+
+JOHN DENNIS
+
+AUTHOR OF "STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE" ETC.
+
+_ELEVENTH EDITION_
+
+[Illustration]
+
+LONDON
+G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
+1921
+
+
+
+
+First Published, 1894.
+
+Reprinted, 1896, 1899, 1901, 1906, 1908, 1909,
+           1913, 1917, 1918, 1921.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The _Age of Pope_ is designed to form one of a series of Handbooks,
+edited by Professor Hales, which it is hoped will be of service to
+students who love literature for its own sake, instead of regarding it
+merely as a branch of knowledge required by examiners. The period
+covered by this volume, which has had the great advantage of Professor
+Hales's personal care and revision, may be described roughly as lying
+between 1700, the year in which Dryden died, and 1744, the date of
+Pope's death.
+
+I believe that no work of the class will be of real value which gives
+what may be called literary statistics, and has nothing more to offer.
+Historical facts and figures have their uses, and are, indeed,
+indispensable; but it is possible to gain the most accurate knowledge of
+a literary period and to be totally unimpressed by the influences which
+a love of literature inspires. The first object of a guide is to give
+accurate information; his second and larger object is to direct the
+reader's steps through a country exhaustless in variety and interest. If
+once a passion be awakened for the study of our noble literature the
+student will learn to reject what is meretricious, and will turn
+instinctively to what is worthiest. In the pursuit he may leave his
+guide far behind him; but none the less will he be grateful to the
+pioneer who started him on his travels.
+
+If the _Age of Pope_ proves of help in this way the wishes of the writer
+will be satisfied. It has been my endeavour in all cases to acknowledge
+the debt I owe to the authors who have made this period their study; but
+it is possible that a familiar acquaintance with their writings may have
+led me occasionally to mistake the matter thus assimilated for original
+criticism. If, therefore--to quote the phrase of Pope's enemy and my
+namesake--I have sometimes borrowed another man's 'thunder,' the fault
+of having 'made a sinner of my memory' may prove the reader's gain, and
+will, I hope, be forgiven.
+
+J. D.
+
+HAMPSTEAD,
+_August, 1894_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+INTRODUCTION                                                          1
+
+
+                          PART I. THE POETS.
+
+CHAP.
+
+  I. ALEXANDER POPE                                                  27
+
+ II. MATTHEW PRIOR--JOHN GAY--EDWARD YOUNG--ROBERT BLAIR--JAMES
+     THOMSON                                                         65
+
+III. SIR SAMUEL GARTH--AMBROSE PHILIPS--JOHN PHILIPS--NICHOLAS
+     ROWE--AARON HILL--THOMAS PARNELL--THOMAS TICKELL--WILLIAM
+     SOMERVILLE--JOHN DYER--WILLIAM SHENSTONE--MARK AKENSIDE--DAVID
+     MALLET--SCOTTISH SONG-WRITERS                                   96
+
+
+                      PART II. THE PROSE WRITERS.
+
+ IV. JOSEPH ADDISON--SIR RICHARD STEELE                             125
+
+  V. JONATHAN SWIFT--JOHN ARBUTHNOT                                 151
+
+ VI. DANIEL DEFOE--JOHN DENNIS--COLLEY CIBBER--LADY MARY WORTLEY
+     MONTAGU--EARL OF CHESTERFIELD--LORD LYTTELTON--JOSEPH SPENCE   180
+
+VII. FRANCIS ATTERBURY--LORD SHAFTESBURY--BERNARD DE
+     MANDEVILLE--LORD BOLINGBROKE--GEORGE BERKELEY--WILLIAM
+     LAW--JOSEPH BUTLER--WILLIAM WARBURTON                          207
+
+INDEX OF MINOR POETS AND PROSE WRITERS                              242
+
+CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE                                                 249
+
+ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WRITERS                                        253
+
+INDEX                                                               255
+
+
+
+
+THE AGE OF POPE.
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+I.
+
+The death of John Dryden, on the first of May, 1700, closed a period of
+no small significance in the history of English literature. His faults
+were many, both as a man and as a poet, but he belongs to the race of
+the giants, and the impress of greatness is stamped upon his works. No
+student of Dryden can fail to mark the force and sweep of an intellect
+impatient of restraint. His 'long-resounding march' reminds us of a
+turbulent river that overflows its banks, and if order and perfection of
+art are sometimes wanting in his verse, there is never the lack of
+power. Unfortunately many of the best years of his life were devoted to
+a craft in which he was working against the grain. His dramas, with one
+or two noble exceptions, are comparative failures, and in them he too
+often
+
+    'Profaned the God-given strength, and marred the lofty line.'
+
+In two prominent respects his influence on his successors is of no
+slight significance. As a satirist Pope acknowledged the master he was
+unable to excel, and so did many of the eighteenth century versemen, who
+appear to have looked upon satire as the beginning and the end of
+poetry. Moreover Dryden may be regarded, without much exaggeration, as
+the father of modern prose. Nothing can be more lucid than his style,
+which is at once bright and strong, idiomatic and direct. He knows
+precisely what he has to say, and says it in the simplest words. It is
+the form and not the substance of Dryden's prose to which attention is
+drawn here. There is a splendour of imagery, a largeness of thought, and
+a grasp of language in the prose of Hooker, of Jeremy Taylor, and of
+Milton which is beyond the reach of Dryden, but he has the merit of
+using a simple form of English free from prolonged periods and classical
+constructions, and fitted therefore for common use. The wealthy baggage
+of the prose Elizabethans and their immediate successors was too
+cumbersome for ordinary travel; Dryden's riches are less massive, but
+they can be easily carried, and are always ready for service.
+
+In these respects he is the literary herald of a century which, in the
+earlier half at least, is remarkable in the use it makes of our mother
+tongue for the exercise of common sense. The Revolution of 1688 produced
+a change in English politics scarcely more remarkable than the change
+that took place a little later in English literature and is to be seen
+in the poets and wits who are known familiarly as the Queen Anne men. It
+will be obvious to the most superficial student that the gulf which
+separates the literary period, closing with the death of Milton in 1674,
+from the first half of the eighteenth century, is infinitely wider than
+that which divides us from the splendid band of poets and prose writers
+who made the first twenty years of the present century so famous. There
+is, for example, scarcely more than fifty years between the publication
+of Herrick's _Hesperides_ and of Addison's _Campaign_, between the _Holy
+Living_ of Taylor and the _Tatler_ of Steele, and less than fifty years
+between _Samson Agonistes_, which Bishop Atterbury asked Pope to polish,
+and the poems of Prior. Yet in that short space not only is the form of
+verse changed but also the spirit.
+
+Speaking broadly, and allowing for exceptions, the literary merits of
+the Queen Anne time are due to invention, fancy, and wit, to a genius
+for satire exhibited in verse and prose, to a regard for correctness of
+form and to the sensitive avoidance of extremes. The poets of the period
+are for the most part without enthusiasm, without passion, and without
+the 'fine madness' which, as Drayton says, should possess a poet's
+brain. Wit takes precedence of imagination, nature is concealed by
+artifice, and the delight afforded by these writers is not due to
+imaginative sensibility. Not even in the consummate genius of Pope is
+there aught of the magical charm which fascinates us in a Wordsworth and
+a Keats, in a Coleridge and a Shelley. The prose of the age, masterly
+though it be, stands also on a comparatively low level. There is much in
+it to attract, but little to inspire.
+
+The difference between the Elizabethan and Jacobean authors, and the
+authors of the Queen Anne period cannot be accounted for by any single
+cause. The student will observe that while the inspiration is less, the
+technical skill is greater. There are passages in Addison which no
+seventeenth century author could have written; there are couplets in
+Pope beyond the reach of Cowley, and that even Dryden could not rival.
+In these respects the eighteenth century was indebted to the growing
+influence of French literature, to which the taste of Charles II. had in
+some degree contributed. One notable expression of this taste may be
+seen in the tragedies in rhyme that were for a time in vogue, of which
+the plots were borrowed from French romances. These colossal fictions,
+stupendous in length and heroic in style, delighted the young English
+ladies of the seventeenth century, and were not out of favour in the
+eighteenth, for Pope gave a copy of the _Grand Cyrus_ to Martha Blount.
+
+The return, as in Addison's _Cato_, to the classical unities, so
+faithfully preserved in the French drama, was another indication of an
+influence from which our literature has never been wholly free. That
+importations so alien to the spirit of English poetry should tend to the
+degeneration of the national drama was inevitable. For a time, however,
+the study of French models, both in the drama and in other departments
+of literature, may have been productive of benefit. Frenchmen knew
+before we did, how to say what they wanted to say in a lucid style.
+Dryden, who was open to every kind of influence, bad as well as good,
+caught a little of their fine tact and consummate workmanship without
+lessening his own originality; so also did Pope, who, if he was
+considerably indebted to Boileau, infinitely excelled him. That, in M.
+Taine's judgment, would have been no great difficulty. 'In Boileau,' he
+writes, 'there are, as a rule, two kinds of verse, as was said by a man
+of wit (M. Guillaume Guizot); most of which seem to be those of a sharp
+school-boy in the third class; the rest those of a good school-boy in
+the upper division.' And Mr. Swinburne, who holds a similar opinion of
+the famous French critic's merit, observes, that while Pope is the
+finest, Boileau is 'the dullest craftsman of their age and school.'[1]
+
+With the author of the _Lutrin_ Addison, unlike Pope, was personally
+acquainted. Boileau praised his Latin verses, and although his range was
+limited, like that of all critics lacking imagination, Addison, then a
+comparatively youthful scholar, was no doubt flattered by his
+compliments and learnt some lessons in his school. Prior, who acquired a
+mastery of the language, was also sensitive to French influence, and
+shows how it affected him by irony and satire. It would be difficult to
+estimate with any measure of accuracy the effect of French literature on
+the Queen Anne authors. There is no question that they were considerably
+attracted by it, but its sway was, I think, never strong enough to
+produce mere imitative art. While the most illustrious of these men
+acknowledged some measure of fealty to our 'sweet enemy France,' they
+were not enslaved by her, and French literature was but one of several
+influences which affected the literary character of the age. If
+Englishmen owed a debt to France the obligation was reciprocal. Voltaire
+affords a prominent illustration of the power wielded by our literature.
+He imitated Addison, he imitated, or caught suggestions from Swift, he
+borrowed largely from Vanbrugh, and although, in his judgment of English
+authors, he made many critical blunders, they were due to a want of
+taste rather than to a want of knowledge.
+
+A striking contrast will be seen between the position of literary men in
+the reign of Queen Anne and under her Hanoverian successors. Literature
+was not thriving in the healthiest of ways in the earlier period, but
+from the commercial point of view it was singularly prosperous. Through
+its means men like Addison and Prior rose to some of the highest offices
+in the service of their country. Tickell became Under-Secretary of
+State. Steele held three or four official posts, and if he did not
+prosper like some men of less mark, had no one but himself to blame.
+Rowe, the author of the _Fair Penitent_, was for three years of Anne's
+reign Under-Secretary, and John Hughes, the friend of Addison, who is
+poet enough to have had his story told by Johnson, had 'a situation of
+great profit' as Secretary to the Commissions of the Peace. Prizes of
+greater or less value fell to some men whose abilities were not more
+than respectable, but under Walpole and the monarch whom he served
+literature was disregarded, and the Minister was content to make use of
+hireling writers for whatever dirty work he required; spending in this
+way, it is said, £50,000 in ten years.
+
+It was far better in the long run for men of letters to be free from the
+servility of patronage, but there was a wearisome time, as Johnson and
+Goldsmith knew to their cost, during which authors lost their freedom in
+another way, and became the slaves of the booksellers. It is pleasant to
+observe that the last noteworthy act of patronage in the century was one
+that did honour to the patron without lessening the dignity and
+independence of the recipient. Literature owes much to the noblest of
+political philosophers for discovering and fostering the genius of one
+of the most original of English poets, and every reader of Crabbe will
+do honour to the generous friendship of Edmund Burke.
+
+
+II.
+
+The lowest stage in our national history was reached in the Restoration
+period. The idealists, who had aimed at marks it was not given to man to
+reach, were superseded by men with no ideal, whether in politics or
+religion. The extreme rigidity in morals enjoined by State authority in
+Cromwell's days, when theological pedantry discovered sin in what had
+hitherto been regarded as innocent, led, among the unsaintly mass of
+the people, to a hypocrisy even more corrupting than open vice, and the
+advent of the most publicly dissolute of English kings opened the
+floodgates of iniquity. The unbridled vice of the time is displayed in
+the Restoration dramatists, in the Grammont memoirs, in the diary of
+Pepys, and also in that of the admirable John Evelyn, 'faithful among
+the faithless.' Charles II. was considered good-natured because his
+manners, unlike those of his father, were sociable, and unrestrained by
+Court etiquette. Londoners liked a monarch who fed ducks in St. James's
+Park before breakfast; but an easy temper did not prevent the king from
+sanctioning the most unjust and cruel laws, and it allowed him to sell
+Dunkirk and basely to accept a pension from France. The corruption of
+the age pervaded politics as well as society, and the self-sacrificing
+spirit which is the salt of a nation's life seemed for the time extinct
+among public men.
+
+When Dutch men-of-war appeared at the Nore the confusion was great, but
+there were few resources and few signs of energy in the men to whom the
+people looked for guidance. A man conversant with affairs expressed to
+Pepys his opinion that nothing could be done with 'a lazy Prince, no
+Council, no money, no reputation at home or abroad,' and Pepys also
+gives the damning statement which is in harmony with all we know of the
+king, that he 'took ten times more care and pains in making friends
+between my Lady Castlemaine and Mrs. Stewart, when they have fallen out,
+than ever he did to save his kingdom.'
+
+There was nothing in the brief reign of James, a reign for ever made
+infamous by the atrocious cruelty of Jeffreys, that calls for comment
+here, but the Revolution, despite the undoubted advantages it brought
+with it, among which must be mentioned the abolition of the censorship
+of the press, brought also an element of discord and of political
+degradation. The change was a good one for the country, but it caused a
+large number of influential men to renounce on oath opinions which they
+secretly held, and it led, as every reader of history knows, to an
+unparalleled amount of double-dealing on the part of statesmen, which
+began with the accession of William and Mary and did not end until the
+last hopes of the Jacobites were defeated in 1746. The loss of principle
+among statesmen, and the bitterness of faction, which seemed to increase
+in proportion as the patriotic spirit declined, had a baleful influence
+on the latter days of the seventeenth century and on the entire period
+covered by the age of Pope. The low tone of the age is to be seen in the
+almost universal corruption which prevailed, in the scandalous
+tergiversation of Bolingbroke, and in the contempt for political
+principle openly avowed by Walpole, who, as Mr. Lecky observes, 'was
+altogether incapable of appreciating as an element of political
+calculation the force which moral sentiments exercise upon mankind.'[2]
+
+The enthusiasm and strong passions of the first half of the seventeenth
+century, which had been crushed by the Restoration, were exchanged for a
+state of apathy that led to self-seeking in politics and to scepticism
+in religion. There was a strong profession of morality in words, but in
+conduct the most open immorality prevailed. Virtue was commended in the
+bulk of the churches, while Christianity, which gives a new life and aim
+to virtue, was practically ignored, and the principles of the Deists,
+whose opinions occupied much attention at the time, were scarcely more
+alien to the Christian revelation than the views often advocated in the
+national pulpits. The religion of Christ seems to have been regarded as
+little more than a useful kind of cement which held society together.
+The good sense advocated so constantly by Pope in poetry was also
+considered the principal requisite in the pulpit, and the careful
+avoidance of religious emotion in the earlier years of the century led
+to the fervid and too often ill-regulated enthusiasm that prevailed in
+the days of Whitefield and Wesley. At the same time there appears to
+have been no lack of religious controversy. 'The Church in danger' was a
+strong cry then, as it is still. The enormous excitement caused in 1709
+by Sacheverell's sermon in St. Paul's Cathedral advocating passive
+obedience, denouncing toleration, and aspersing the Revolution
+settlement, forms a striking chapter in the reign of Queen Anne.
+Extraordinary interest was also felt in the Bangorian controversy raised
+by Bishop Hoadly, who, in a sermon preached before the king (1717), took
+a latitudinarian view of episcopal authority, and objected to the entire
+system of the High Church party.
+
+Queen Caroline, whose keen intellect was allied to a coarseness which
+makes her a representative of the age, was considerably attracted by
+theological discussion. She obtained a bishopric for Berkeley,
+recommended Walpole to read Butler's _Analogy_, which was at one time
+her daily companion at the breakfast-table, and made the preferment of
+its author one of her last requests to the king. She liked well to
+reason with Dr. Samuel Clarke, 'of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and
+Fate,' and wished to make him Archbishop of Canterbury, but was told
+that he was not sufficiently orthodox. Theology was not disregarded
+under the first and second Georges; it was only religion that had fallen
+into disrepute. The law itself was calculated to excite contempt for the
+most solemn of religious services. 'I was early,' Swift writes to
+Stella, 'with the Secretary (Bolingbroke), but he was gone to his
+devotions and to receive the sacrament. Several rakes did the same. It
+was not for piety, but for employment, according to Act of Parliament.'
+
+A glance at some additional features in the social condition of the age
+will enable us to understand better the character of its literature.
+
+
+III.
+
+It is a platitude to say that authors are as much affected as other men
+by the atmosphere which they breathe. Now and then a consummate man of
+genius seems to stand so much above his age as for all high purposes of
+art to be untouched by it. Like Milton as a poet, though not as a prose
+writer, his 'soul is like a star and dwells apart;' but in general,
+imaginative writers, are intensely affected by the society from which
+they draw many of their intellectual resources. In the so-called
+'Augustan age'[3] this influence would have been felt more strongly than
+in ours, since the range of men of letters was generally restricted to
+what was called the Town. They wrote for the critics in the
+coffee-houses, for the noblemen from whom they expected patronage, and
+for the political party they were pledged to support.
+
+England during the first half of the eighteenth century was in many
+respects uncivilized. London was at that time separated from the country
+by roads that were often impassable and always dangerous. Travellers had
+to protect themselves as they best could from the attacks of highwaymen,
+who infested every thoroughfare leading from the metropolis, while the
+narrow area of the city was guarded by watchmen scarcely better fitted
+for its protection than Dogberry and Verges. Readers of the _Spectator_
+will remember how when Sir Roger de Coverley went to the play, his
+servants 'provided themselves with good oaken plants' to protect their
+master from the Mohocks, a set of dissolute young men, who, for sheer
+amusement, inflicted the most terrible punishments on their victims.
+Swift tells Stella how he came home early from his walk in the Park to
+avoid 'a race of rakes that play the devil about this town every night,
+and slit people's noses,' and he adds, as if party were at the root of
+every mischief in the country, that they were all Whigs. 'Who has not
+trembled at the Mohock's name?' is Gay's exclamation in his _Trivia_;
+and in that curious poem he also warns the citizens not to venture
+across Lincoln's Inn Fields in the evening. Colley Cibber's brazen-faced
+daughter, Mrs. Charke, in the _Narrative_ of her life, describes also
+with sufficient precision the dangers of London after dark.
+
+The infliction of personal injury was not confined to the desperadoes of
+the streets. Men of letters were in danger of chastisement from the
+poets or politicians whom they criticised or vilified. De Foe often
+mentions attempts upon his person. Pope, too, was threatened with a rod
+by Ambrose Philips, which was hung up for his chastisement in Button's
+Coffee-house; and at a later period, when his satires had stirred up a
+nest of hornets, the poet was in the habit of carrying pistols, and
+taking a large dog for his companion when walking out at Twickenham.
+
+Weddings within the liberties of the Fleet by sham clergymen, or
+clergymen confined for debt, were the source of numberless evils. Every
+kind of deception was practised, and the victims once in the clutches of
+their reverend captors had to pay heavily for the illegal ceremony.
+Ladies were trepanned into matrimony, and Smollett in his _History_
+observes, that the Fleet parsons encouraged every kind of villainy. It
+is astonishing that so great an evil in the heart of London should have
+been allowed to exist so long, and it was not until the Marriage Act of
+Lord Hardwicke in 1753, which required the publication of banns, that
+the Fleet marriages ceased. On the day before the Act came into
+operation three hundred marriages are said to have taken place.[4]
+
+Marriages of a more lawful kind were generally conducted on business
+principles. Young women were expected to accept the husband selected for
+them by their parents or guardians, and the main object considered was
+to gain a good settlement. It was for this that Mary Granville, who is
+better known as Mrs. Delany, was sacrificed at seventeen to a gouty old
+man of sixty, and when he died she was expected to marry again with the
+same object in view. Mrs. Delany detested, with good cause, the
+commercial estimate of matrimony. Writing, in 1739, to Lady
+Throckmorton, she says, 'Miss Campbell is to be married to-morrow to my
+Lord Bruce. Her father can give her no fortune; she is very pretty,
+modest, well-behaved, and just eighteen, has two thousand a year
+jointure, and four hundred pin-money; _they say_ he is cross, covetous,
+and threescore years old, and this unsuitable match is the _admiration
+of the old and the envy of the young_! For my part I _pity her_, for if
+she has any notion of social pleasures that arise from true esteem and
+sensible conversation, how miserable must she be.'[5]
+
+Girls dowered with beauty or with fortune were not always suffered to
+marry in this humdrum fashion. Abduction was by no means an imaginary
+peril. Mrs. Delany tells the story of a lady in Ireland, from whom she
+received the relation, who was entrapped in her uncle's house, carried
+off by four men in masks, and treated in the most brutal manner. And in
+1711 the Duke of Newcastle, having become acquainted with a design for
+carrying off his daughter by force, was compelled to ask for a guard of
+dragoons.
+
+Duelling, against which Steele, De Foe, and Fielding inveighed with
+courage and good sense, was a danger to which every gentleman was liable
+who wore a sword. Bullies were ready to provoke a quarrel, the slightest
+cause of offence was magnified into an affair of honour, and the lives
+of several of the most distinguished men of the century were imperilled
+in this way. 'A gentleman,' Lord Chesterfield writes, 'is every man who,
+with a tolerable suit of clothes, a sword by his side, and a watch and
+snuffbox in his pockets, asserts himself to be a gentleman, swears with
+energy that he will be treated as such, and that he will cut the throat
+of any man who presumes to say the contrary.'
+
+The foolish and evil custom died out slowly in this kingdom. Even a
+great moralist like Dr. Johnson had something to say in its defence, and
+Sir Walter Scott, who might well have laughed to scorn any imputation of
+cowardice, was prepared to accept a challenge in his old age for a
+statement he had made in his _Life of Napoleon_.
+
+Ladies had a different but equally doubtful mode of asserting their
+gentility. On one occasion the Duchess of Marlborough called on a lawyer
+without leaving her name. 'I could not make out who she was,' said the
+clerk afterwards, 'but she swore so dreadfully that she must be a lady
+of quality.'
+
+There was a fashion which our wits followed at this time that was not
+of English growth, namely, the tone of gallantry in which they addressed
+ladies, no matter whether single or married. Their compliments seemed
+like downright love-making, and that frequently of a coarse kind, but
+such expressions meant nothing, and were understood to be a mere
+exercise of skill. Pope used them in writing to Judith Cowper, whom he
+professes to worship as much as any female saint in heaven; and in much
+ampler measure when addressing Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, but neither
+lady would have taken this amatory politeness seriously. Thus he writes
+after an evening spent in Lady Mary's society: 'Books have lost their
+effect upon me; and I was convinced since I saw you, that there is
+something more powerful than philosophy, and since I heard you, that
+there is one alive wiser than all the sages.' He tells her that he hates
+all other women for her sake; that none but her guardian angels can have
+her more constantly in mind; and that the sun has more reason to be
+proud of raising her spirits 'than of raising all the plants and
+ripening all the minerals in the earth.' He will fly to her in Italy at
+the least notice and 'from thence,' he adds, 'how far you might draw me
+and I might run after you, I no more know than the spouse in the song of
+Solomon.'
+
+This was the foible of an age in which women were addressed as though
+they were totally devoid of understanding; and Pope, as might have been
+expected, carried the folly to excess.
+
+Against another French custom Addison protests in the _Spectator_,
+namely, that of women of rank receiving gentlemen visitors in their
+bedrooms. He objects also to other foreign habits introduced by
+'travelled ladies,' and fears that the peace, however much to be
+desired, may cause the importation of a number of French fopperies. But
+the proneness to follow the lead of France in matters of fashion is a
+folly not confined to the belles and beaux of the last century.
+
+If a chivalric regard for women be an indication of high civilization,
+that sign is but faintly visible in the reigns of Anne and of the first
+Georges. Sir Richard Steele paid a noble tribute to Lady Elizabeth
+Hastings when he said that to know her was a liberal education, but his
+contemporaries usually treat women as pretty triflers, better fitted to
+amuse men than to elevate them. Young takes this view in his _Satires_:
+
+    'Ladies supreme among amusements reign;
+    By nature born to soothe and entertain.
+    Their prudence in a share of folly lies;
+    Why will they be so weak as to be wise?'
+
+and Chesterfield, writing to his son, treats women with similar
+contempt.... 'A man of sense,' he says, 'only trifles with them, plays
+with them, humours and flatters them as he does with a sprightly,
+forward child; but he neither consults them about, nor trusts them with,
+serious matters, though he often makes them believe that he does both,
+which is the thing in the world that they are proud of.... No flattery
+is either too high or too low for them. They will greedily swallow the
+highest and gratefully accept of the lowest.'
+
+Nearly twenty years passed, and then Chesterfield wrote in the same
+contemptuous way of women in a letter to his godson, a 'dear little boy'
+of ten.
+
+'In company every woman is every man's superior, and must be addressed
+with respect, nay, more, with flattery, and you need not fear making it
+too strong ... it will be greedily swallowed.'
+
+Even Addison, while trying to instruct the 'Fair Sex' as he likes to
+call them, apparently regarded its members as an inferior order of
+beings. He delights to dwell upon their foibles, on their dress, and on
+the thousand little artifices practised by the flirt and the coquette.
+Here is the view the Queen Anne moralist takes of the 'female world' he
+was so eager to improve:
+
+'I have often thought there has not been sufficient pains in finding out
+proper employments and diversions for the fair ones. Their amusements
+seem contrived for them, rather as they are women, than as they are
+reasonable creatures; and are more adapted to the sex than to the
+species. The toilet is their great scene of business, and the right
+adjustment of their hair the principal employment of their lives. The
+sorting of a suit of ribands is considered a very good morning's work;
+and if they make an excursion to a mercer's or a toy-shop, so great a
+fatigue makes them unfit for anything else all the day after. Their more
+serious occupations are sewing and embroidery, and their greatest
+drudgery the preparations of jellies and sweetmeats. This I say is the
+state of ordinary women; though I know there are multitudes of those
+that move in an exalted sphere of knowledge and virtue, that join all
+the beauties of the mind to the ornaments of dress, and inspire a kind
+of awe and respect as well as of love into their male beholders.'
+
+The qualification made at the end of this description does not greatly
+lessen the significance of the earlier portion, which is Addison's
+picture, as he is careful to tell us of 'ordinary women.' Much must be
+allowed for the exaggeration of a humourist, but the frivolity of women
+is a theme upon which Addison harps continually. Indeed, were it not for
+this weakness in the 'feminine world' half his vocation as a moralist in
+the _Spectator_ would be gone, and if the general estimate in his Essays
+of the women with whom he was acquainted be to any extent a correct one,
+the derogatory language used by men of letters, and especially by
+Swift, Prior, Pope, and Chesterfield may be almost forgiven.
+
+It was the aim of Addison and Steele to represent, and in some degree to
+caricature, the follies of fashionable life in the Town. That life had
+also its vices, which, if less unblushingly displayed than under the
+'merry Monarch,' were visible enough. 'In the eighteenth century,' says
+Victor Hugo, in his epigrammatic way, 'the wife bolts out her husband.
+She shuts herself up in Eden with Satan. Adam is left outside.'
+
+Drunkenness was a habit familiar to the fine gentlemen of the town and
+to men occupying the highest position in the State. Harley went more
+than once into the queen's presence in a half-intoxicated condition;
+Carteret when Secretary of State, if Horace Walpole may be credited, was
+never sober; Bolingbroke, who practised every vice, is said to have been
+a 'four-bottle man;' and Swift found it perilous to dine with Ministers
+on account of the wine which circulated at their tables. 'Prince
+Eugene,' he writes, 'dines with the Secretary to-day with about seven or
+eight general officers or foreign Ministers. They will be all drunk I am
+sure.' Pope's frail body could not tolerate excess, and he is said to
+have hastened his end by good living. His friend Fenton 'died of a great
+chair and two bottles of port a day.' Parnell, who seems to have been in
+many respects a man of high character, is said to have shortened his
+life by intemperance; and Gay, who was cossetted like a favourite lapdog
+by the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, died from indolence and good
+living.
+
+It may be questioned whether there is a single Wit of the age who did
+not love port too well, like Addison and Fenton, or suffer from
+'carnivoracity' like Arbuthnot. Every section of English society was
+infected with the 'devil drunkenness,' and the passion for gin created
+by the encouragement of home distilleries produced a state of crime,
+misery, and disease in London and in the country which excited public
+attention. 'Small as is the place,' writes Mr. Lecky, 'which this fact
+occupies in English history, it was probably, if we consider all the
+consequences that have flowed from it, the most momentous in that of the
+eighteenth century--incomparably more so than any event in the purely
+political or military annals of the country.'[6]
+
+The cruelty of the age is seen in a contempt for the feelings of others,
+in the brutal punishments inflicted, in the amusements then popular, and
+in a general contempt for human suffering. Public executions were so
+frequent that they were disregarded; and criminals of any note, like Dr.
+Dodd, were exhibited in their cells for the gaolers' benefit prior to
+execution; mad people in Bedlam, chained in their cells, also formed one
+of the sights of London. As late as 1735 men were pressed to death who
+refused to plead on a capital charge; and women were publicly flogged,
+and were also burnt at the stake by a law that was not repealed until
+1794. Of the heads on Temple Bar, daily exposed to Johnson's eyes in his
+beloved Fleet Street, we are reminded by an apposite quotation of
+Goldsmith; and Samuel Rogers, the banker-poet, who died as recently as
+1855, remembered having seen one there in his childhood. The public
+exhibition of offenders in the pillory was not calculated to refine the
+manners of the people. It afforded a cruel entertainment to the mob, who
+may be said to have baited these poor victims as they were accustomed to
+bait bulls and bears. Every kind of offensive missile was thrown at
+them, and sometimes the strokes proved deadly.
+
+Men who could thus torture a human being were not likely to abstain
+from cruelty to the lower animals. The poets indeed protested then, as
+poets had done before, and always have done since, against the unmanly
+treatment of the dumb fellow-creatures committed to our care, but their
+voices were little heeded, and even the Prince of Wales visited
+Hockley-in-the-Hole, in disguise, to witness the torturing of bulls.
+'The gladiatorian and other sanguinary sports,' says the author of the
+_Characteristics_, 'which we allow our people, discover sufficiently our
+national taste. And the baitings and slaughters of so many sorts of
+creatures, tame as well as wild, for diversion merely, may witness the
+extraordinary inclination we have for amphitheatrical spectacles.'[7]
+
+The majesty of the law was maintained by disembowelling traitors, by
+cutting off the ears, or branding the cheeks of political offenders, and
+by the penalties inflicted on Roman Catholics, and on Protestant
+dissenters. Men who deemed themselves honourable gained power through
+bribery and intrigue. It was through a king's mistress and a heavy bribe
+that Bolingbroke was enabled to return from exile; Chesterfield
+intrigued against Newcastle with the Duchess of Yarmouth; and clergymen
+eager for promotion had no scruple in paying court to women who had lost
+their virtue.
+
+Never, unless perhaps during the Civil War, was the spirit of party more
+rampant in the country. Patriotism was a virtue more talked about than
+felt, and in the cause of faction private characters were assailed and
+libels circulated through the press. Addison, who did more than any
+other writer to humanize his age, saw the evil of the time and struck a
+blow at it with his inimitable humour. The _Spectator_ discovers, on his
+journey to Sir Roger de Coverley's house, that the knight's Toryism
+grew with the miles that separated him from London:
+
+'In all our journey from London to his house we did not so much as bait
+at a Whig inn; or if by chance the coachman stopped at a wrong place,
+one of Sir Roger's servants would ride up to his master full speed, and
+whisper to him that the master of the house was against such an one in
+the last election. This often betrayed us into hard beds and bad cheer;
+for we were not so inquisitive about the inn as the innkeeper; and
+provided our landlord's principles were sound did not take any notice of
+the staleness of his provisions. This I found still the more
+inconvenient, because the better the host was, the worse generally were
+his accommodations; the fellow knowing very well that those who were his
+friends would take up with coarse diet and hard lodging. For these
+reasons, all the while I was upon the road, I dreaded entering into an
+house of anyone that Sir Roger had applauded for an honest man.'[8]
+
+Against the party zeal of female politicians Addison indulges frequently
+in humorous sallies. He assures them that it gives an ill-natured cast
+to the eye, and flushes the cheeks worse than brandy. Party rage, he
+says, is a male vice, and is altogether repugnant 'to the softness, the
+modesty, and those other endearing qualities which are natural to the
+fair sex.'
+
+'When I have seen a pretty mouth uttering calumnies and invectives, what
+would I not have given to have stopt it? how have I been troubled to see
+some of the finest features in the world grow pale and tremble with
+party rage. Camilla is one of the greatest beauties in the British
+nation, and yet values herself more upon being the virago of one party
+than upon being the toast of both. The dear creature about a week ago
+encountered the fierce and beautiful Penthesilea across a tea-table; but
+in the height of her anger, as her hand chanced to shake with the
+earnestness of the dispute, she scalded her fingers, and spilt a dish of
+tea upon her petticoat. Had not this accident broke off the debate,
+nobody knows where it would have ended.'
+
+The coffee-houses in which men aired their wit and discussed the news of
+the day were wholly dominated by party. 'A Whig,' says De Foe, 'will no
+more go to the Cocoa Tree or Ozinda's than a Tory will be seen at the
+coffee-house of St. James's.' Swift declared that the Whig and Tory
+animosity infected even the dogs and cats. It was inevitable that it
+should also infect literature. Books were seldom judged on their merits,
+the praise or blame being generally awarded according to the political
+principles of their authors. An impartial literary journal did not exist
+in the days when Addison 'gave his little senate laws' at Button's, and
+perhaps it does not exist now, but if critical injustice be done in our
+day it is rarely owing to political causes.
+
+One of the most prominent vices of the time was gambling, which was
+largely encouraged by the public lotteries, and practised by all classes
+of the people. This evil was exhibited on a national scale by the
+establishment of the South Sea Company, which exploded in 1720, after
+creating a madness for speculation never known before or since. Even men
+who like Sir Robert Walpole kept their heads, and saw that the bubble
+would soon burst, invested in stock. Pope had his share in the
+speculation, and might, had he 'realized' in time, have been the 'lord
+of thousands;' in the end, however, he was a gainer, though not to a
+large extent. His friend Gay was less fortunate. He won £20,000, kept
+the stock too long and was reduced to beggary. The South Sea Bubble and
+the Mississippi scheme of Law which burst in the same year and ruined
+tens of thousands of French families, afford illustrations on a gigantic
+scale of the prevailing passion for speculation and for gambling.
+
+'The Duke of Devonshire lost an estate at a game of basset. The fine
+intellect of Chesterfield was thoroughly enslaved by the vice. At Bath,
+which was then the centre of English fashion, it reigned supreme; and
+the physicians even recommended it to their patients as a form of
+distraction. In the green-rooms of the theatres, as Mrs. Bellamy assures
+us, thousands were often lost and won in a single night. Among
+fashionable ladies the passion was quite as strong as among men, and the
+professor of whist and quadrille became a regular attendant at their
+levees. Miss Pelham, the daughter of the prime minister, was one of the
+most notorious gamblers of her time, and Lady Cowper speaks in her
+_Diary_ of sittings at Court, of which the lowest stake was 200 guineas.
+The public lotteries contributed very powerfully to diffuse the taste
+for gambling among all classes.'[9]
+
+One of the most powerful exponents of the dark side of the century is
+Hogarth, who makes some of its worst features live before our eyes. So
+also do the novels of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett. Differing as
+their works do in character, they have the common merit of presenting in
+indelible lines a picture of the time in its social aspects. It may have
+been, as Stuart Mill asserts, an age of strong men, but it was an age of
+coarse vices, an age wanting in the refinements and graces of life; an
+age of cruel punishments, cruel sports, and of a political corruption
+extending through all the departments of the State.
+
+But it would be a narrow view of the age to dwell wholly on its gloomier
+features, which are always the easiest to detect. If the period under
+consideration had prominent vices, it had also distinguished merits.
+Under Queen Anne and her immediate successors, home-keeping Englishmen
+had more space to breathe in than they have now, and trade was not
+demoralized by excessive competition. No attempt was made to separate
+class from class, and population was not large enough to make the battle
+of life almost hopeless in the lowest section of the community. If there
+was less refinement than among ourselves, there was far less of nervous
+susceptibility, and the country was free from the half-educated class of
+men and women who know enough to make them dissatisfied, without
+attaining to the larger knowledge which yields wisdom and content. To
+say that the age was better than our own would be to deny a thousand
+signs of material and intellectual progress, but it had fewer dangers to
+contend with, and if there was far less of wealth in the country the
+people were probably more satisfied with their lot.[10]
+
+To glance at the century as a whole does not fall within my province,
+but I may be permitted to observe that in the course of it science and
+invention made rapid strides; that under the inspiring sway of Handel
+the power of music was felt as it was never felt before; that in the
+latter half of the period the Novel, destined to be one of the noblest
+fruits of our imaginative literature, attained a robust life in the
+hands of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett; and that, with Reynolds and
+Gainsborough, with Romney and Wilson, a glorious school of landscape and
+portrait painters arose, which is still the pride of England. It will
+be remembered, too, that many of the great charitable institutions which
+make our own age illustrious, had their birth in the last. The military
+genius of England was displayed in Marlborough and in Clive, her mercy
+in John Howard, her spirit of enterprise in Cook, her self-sacrifice in
+Wesley and Whitefield, her statesmanship in Walpole, in Chatham, and in
+William Pitt. In oratory as everyone knows, the eighteenth century was
+surpassingly great, and never before or since has the country produced a
+political philosopher of the calibre of Burke. What England reaped in
+literature during the period of which Pope has been selected as the most
+striking figure, it will be my endeavour to show in the course of these
+pages.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] M. Sainte-Beuve, the greatest of French critics, frankly
+acknowledges his indebtedness to Boileau, whom he styles Louis the
+Fourteenth's 'Contrôleur Général du Parnasse.' 'S'il m'est permis de
+parler pour moi-même,' he writes, 'Boileau est un des hommes qui m'ont
+le plus occupé depuis que je fais de la critique, et avec qui j'ai le
+plus vécu en idée.'--_Causeries du Lundi_, tome sixième, p. 495.
+
+[2] Lecky's _England_, vol. i. p. 373.
+
+[3] The epithet is used in the Preface to the First Edition of Waller's
+_Posthumous Poems_, which Mr. Gosse believes was written by Atterbury,
+and he considers that this is the original occurrence of the
+phrase.--_From Shakespeare to Pope_, p. 248.
+
+[4] Messrs. Besant and Rice's novel, _The Chaplain of the Fleet_, gives
+a vivid picture of the life led in the Fleet, and also of the period.
+
+[5] _Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Delany_, vol. ii. p. 55.
+
+[6] Lecky's _England_, vol. i. p. 479.
+
+[7] Shaftesbury's _Characteristics_, vol. i. p. 270.
+
+[8] _Spectator_, No. 126.
+
+[9] Lecky's _England_, vol. i. p. 522.
+
+[10] According to Hallam the thirty years which followed the Treaty of
+Utrecht 'was the most prosperous season that England had ever
+experienced.'--_Const. Hist._ ii. 464.
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+THE POETS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ALEXANDER POPE.
+
+
+It is not unreasonable to call the period we are considering 'the Age of
+Pope.' He is the representative poet of his century. Its literary merits
+and defects are alike conspicuous in his verse, and he stands
+immeasurably above the numerous versifiers who may be said to belong to
+his school. Savage Landor has observed that there is no such thing as a
+school of poetry, and this is true in the sense that the essence of this
+divine art cannot be transmitted, but the form of the art may be, and
+Pope's style of workmanship made it readily imitable by accomplished
+craftsmen. Although he affected to call poetry an idle trade he devoted
+his whole life to its pursuit, and there are few instances in literature
+in which genius and unwearied labour have been so successfully united.
+It is to Pope's credit, that, with everything against him in the race of
+life, he attained the goal for which he started in his youth. The means
+he employed to reach it were frequently perverse and discreditable, but
+the courage with which he overcame the obstacles in his path commands
+our admiration.
+
+[Sidenote: Alexander Pope (1688-1744).]
+
+Alexander Pope was born in London on May 21st, 1688. He was the only son
+of his father, a merchant or tradesman, and a Roman Catholic at a time
+when the members of that church were proscribed by law. The boy was a
+cripple from his birth, and suffered from great bodily weakness both in
+youth and manhood. Looking back upon his life in after years he called
+it a 'long disease.' The elder Pope seems to have retired from business
+soon after his son's birth, and at Binfield, nine miles from Windsor,
+twenty-seven years of the poet's life were spent. As a 'papist' Pope was
+excluded from the Universities and from every public career, but even
+under happier circumstances his health would have condemned him to a
+secluded life. He gained some instruction from the family priest, and
+also went for a short time to school, but for the most part he was
+self-educated, and studied so severely that at seventeen his life was
+probably saved by the sound advice of Dr. Radcliffe to read less and to
+ride on horseback every day. The rhyming faculty was very early
+developed, and to use his own phrase he 'lisped in numbers.' As a boy he
+felt the magic of Spenser, whose enchanting sweetness and boundless
+wealth of imagination have been now for three hundred years a joy to
+every lover of poetry. Something, too, he learned from Waller and from
+Sandys, both of whom, but especially the former, had been of service in
+giving smoothness to the iambic distich, in which all of Pope's best
+poems are written. Dryden, however, whom when a little boy he saw at
+Will's coffee-house--'_Virgilium tantum vidi_' records the memorable
+day--was the poet whose influence he felt most powerfully. Like Gray
+several years later, he declared that he learnt versification wholly
+from his works. From 'knowing Walsh,' the best critic in the nation in
+Dryden's opinion, the youthful Pope received much friendly counsel; and
+he had another wise friend in Sir William Trumbull, formerly Secretary
+of State, who recognized his genius, and gave him as warm a friendship
+as an old man can offer to a young one. The dissolute Restoration
+dramatist, Wycherley, was also his temporary companion. The old man, if
+Pope's story be true, asked him to correct his poems, which are indeed
+beyond correction, as the youthful critic appears to have hinted, and
+the two parted company.
+
+The _Pastorals_, written, according to Pope's assertion, at the age of
+sixteen, were published in 1709, and won an amount of praise
+incomprehensible in the present day. Mr. Leslie Stephen has happily
+appraised their value in calling them 'mere school-boy exercises.' Not
+thus, however, were they regarded by the poet, or by the critics of his
+age, yet neither he nor they could have divined the rapid progress of
+his fame, and that in about six years' time he would be regarded as the
+greatest of living poets. The _Essay on Criticism_, written, it appears,
+in 1709, was published two years later, and received the highest honour
+a poem could then have. It was praised by Addison in the _Spectator_ as
+'a very fine poem,' and 'a masterpiece in its kind.' The 'kind,'
+suggested by the _Ars Poetica_ of Horace, and the _Art Poétique_ of
+Boileau--translated with Dryden's help by Sir William Soame--suited the
+current taste for criticism and argument in rhyme, which had led
+Roscommon to write an _Essay on Translated Verse_, and Sheffield an
+_Essay on Poetry_. The _Essay on Criticism_ is a marvellous production
+for a young man who had scarcely passed his maturity when it was
+published. To have written lines and couplets that live still in the
+language and are on everyone's lips is an achievement of which any poet
+might be proud, and there are at least twenty such lines or couplets in
+the poem.
+
+In 1713 _Windsor Forest_ appeared. Through the most susceptible years of
+life the poet had lived in the country, but Nature and Pope were not
+destined to become friends; he looked at her 'through the spectacles of
+books' and his description of natural objects is invariably of the
+conventional type. Although never a resident in London he was unable in
+the exercise of his art to breathe any atmosphere save that of the town,
+and might have said, in the words of Lessing to his friend Kleist, 'When
+you go to the country I go to the coffee-house.'[11]
+
+The use, or as it would be more correct to say the abuse, of classical
+mythology in the description of rural scenes had the sanction of great
+names, and Pope was not likely to reject what Spenser and Milton had
+sanctioned. Gods and goddesses therefore play a conspicuous part in his
+description of the Forest. The following lines afford a fair
+illustration of the style throughout, and the sole merit of the poem is
+the smoothness of versification in which Pope excelled.
+
+    'Not proud Olympus yields a nobler sight,
+    Though gods assembled grace his towering height,
+    Than what more humble mountains offer here,
+    When in their blessings all those gods appear.
+    See Pan with flocks, with fruits Pomona crowned,
+    Here blushing Flora paints th' enamelled ground,
+    Here Ceres' gifts in waving prospect stand,
+    And nodding tempt the joyful reaper's hand;
+    Rich Industry sits smiling on the plains,
+    And peace and plenty tell a Stuart reigns.
+
+Pope, who was never known to laugh, was a great wit, but his sense of
+humour was small, and the descent from these deities to Queen Anne
+savours not a little of bathos.
+
+In 1712 Pope had published _The Rape of the Lock_, which Addison justly
+praised as 'a delicious little thing.' At the same time he advised the
+poet not to attempt improving it, which he proposed to do, and Pope most
+unreasonably attributed this advice to jealousy. In 1714 the delightful
+poem appeared in its present form with the machinery of sylphs and
+gnomes adopted from the mysteries of the Rosicrucians. Pope styles it an
+heroi-comical poem, and judged in the light of a burlesque it is
+conceived and executed with an art that is beyond praise. Lord Petre, a
+Roman Catholic peer, had cut off a lock of Miss Arabella Fermor's hair,
+much to the indignation of her family and possibly of the young lady
+also. Pope wrote the poem to remove the discord caused by the fatal
+shears, but its publication, and two or three offensive allusions it
+contained, only served to add to Miss Fermor's annoyance. 'The
+celebrated lady herself,' the poet wrote, 'is offended, and which is
+stranger, not at herself but me. Is not this enough to make a writer
+never be tender of another's character or fame?' But Pope, whose praise
+of women is too often a libel upon them, was not as tender as he ought
+to have been of the lady's reputation.
+
+The offence felt by the heroine of the poem is now unheeded; the dainty
+art exhibited is a permanent delight, and our language can boast no more
+perfect specimen of the poetical burlesque than the _Rape of the Lock_.
+The machinery of the sylphs is managed with perfect skill, and nothing
+can be more admirable than the charge delivered by Ariel to the sylphs
+to guard Belinda from an apprehended but unknown danger. The concluding
+lines shall be quoted:
+
+    'Whatever spirit, careless of his charge,
+    His post neglects, or leaves the fair at large,
+    Shall feel sharp vengeance soon o'ertake his sins,
+    Be stopped in vials, or transfixed with pins;
+    Or plunged in lakes of bitter washes lie,
+    Or wedged, whole ages, in a bodkin's eye;
+    Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain,
+    While clogged he beats his silken wings in vain;
+    Or alum styptics, with contracting power,
+    Shrink his thin essence like a rivelled flower;
+    Or, as Ixion fixed, the wretch shall feel
+    The giddy motion of the whirling mill,
+    In fumes of burning chocolate shall glow,
+    And tremble at the sea that froths below!'
+
+Another striking portion of the poem is the description of the Spanish
+game of Ombre, imitated from Vida's _Scacchia Ludus_. 'Vida's poem,'
+says Mr. Elwin, 'is a triumph of ingenuity, when the intricacy of chess
+is considered, and the difficulty of expressing the moves in a dead
+language. Yet the original is eclipsed by Pope's more consummate
+copy.'[12]
+
+Many famous passages illustrative of Pope's art might be extracted from
+this poem, but it will suffice to give the portrait of Belinda:
+
+    'On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,
+    Which Jews might kiss and infidels adore;
+    Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose,
+    Quick as her eyes and as unfixed as those;
+    Favours to none, to all she smiles extends,
+    Oft she rejects, but never once offends.
+    Bright as the sun her eyes the gazers strike,
+    And, like the sun, they shine on all alike.
+    Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride,
+    Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide:
+    If to her share some female errors fall,
+    Look on her face and you'll forget them all.'
+
+The _Temple of Fame_, a liberal paraphrase of Chaucer's _House of Fame_,
+followed in 1715, and despite the praise of Steele, who declared that it
+had a thousand beauties, and of Dr. Johnson, who observes that every
+part is splendid, must be pronounced one of Pope's least attractive
+pieces. Two poems of the emotional and sentimental class, _Eloisa to
+Abelard_ and the _Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady_ (1717),
+are more worthy of attention. Nowhere, probably, in the language are
+finer specimens to be met with of rhetorical pathos, but poets like
+Burns, Cowper, Wordsworth, and Tennyson can touch the heart more deeply
+by a phrase or couplet than Pope is able to do by his elaborate
+representations of passion. The reader is not likely to be affected by
+the following response of Eloisa to an invitation from the spirit world:
+
+    'I come, I come! prepare your roseate bowers,
+    Celestial palms and ever-blooming flowers.
+    Thither, where sinners may have rest, I go,
+    Where flames refined in breasts seraphic glow;
+    Thou, Abelard! the last sad office pay,
+    And smooth my passage to the realms of day;
+    See my lips tremble and my eye-balls roll,
+    Suck my last breath and catch my flying soul!
+    Ah no--in sacred vestments may'st thou stand,
+    The hallowed taper trembling in thy hand,
+    Present the Cross before my lifted eye,
+    Teach me at once and learn of me to die.'
+
+The music or the fervour of the poem delighted Porson, famous for his
+Greek and his potations, and whether drunk or sober he would recite, or
+rather sing it, from the beginning to the end. The felicity of the
+versification is incontestable, but at the same time artifice is more
+visible than nature throughout the Epistle, and this is true also of
+_The Elegy_, a composition in which Pope's method of treating mournful
+topics is excellently displayed. The opening lines are suggested by Ben
+Jonson's _Elegy on the Marchioness of Winchester_, a lady whose death
+was also lamented by Milton. These we shall not quote, but take in
+preference a passage which is perhaps as graceful an expression of
+poetical rhetoric as can be found in Pope's verse.
+
+    'By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,
+    By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed,
+    By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned,
+    By strangers honoured, and by strangers mourned!
+    What though no friends in sable weeds appear,
+    Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year,
+    And bear about the mockery of woe,
+    To midnight dances and the public show?
+    What though no weeping Loves thy ashes grace,
+    Nor polished marble emulate thy face?
+    What though no sacred earth allow thee room,
+    Nor hallowed dirge be muttered o'er thy tomb?
+    Yet shall thy grave with rising flowers be drest,
+    And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast;
+    There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow,
+    There the first roses of the year shall blow;
+    While angels with their silver wings o'ershade
+    The ground, now sacred by thy reliques made.'
+
+For some years Pope had been brooding over and slowly labouring at a
+task which was destined to add greatly to his fame and also to his
+fortune.
+
+In 1708 his early friend, Sir William Trumbull, had advised him to
+translate the _Iliad_, and five years later the poet, following the
+custom of the age, invited subscriptions to the work, which was to
+appear in six volumes at the price of six guineas. About this time
+Swift, who by the aid of his powerful pen was assisting Harley and St.
+John to rule the country, made Pope's acquaintance, and ultimately
+became perhaps the most faithful of his friends. Swift, who was able to
+help everybody but himself, zealously promoted the poet's scheme, and
+was heard to say at the coffee-houses that 'the best poet in England Mr.
+Pope a Papist' had begun a translation of Homer which he should not
+print till he had a thousand guineas for him.
+
+He was not satisfied with this service, but introduced the poet to St.
+John, Atterbury, and Harley. The first volume of Pope's _Homer_ appeared
+in 1715, and in the same year Addison's friend Tickell published his
+version of the first book of the _Iliad_. Pope affected to believe that
+this was done at Addison's instigation.
+
+Already, as we have said, there had been a misunderstanding between the
+two famous wits, and Pope, whose irritable temperament led him into many
+quarrels and created a host of enemies, ceased from this time to regard
+Addison as a friend. Probably neither of them can be exempted from
+blame, and we can well believe that Addison, whose supremacy had
+formerly been uncontested, could not without some jealousy 'bear a
+brother near the throne,' but the chief interest of the estrangement to
+the literary student is the famous satire written at a later date, in
+which Addison appears under the character of Atticus.[13] It is
+necessary to add here that the whole story of the quarrel comes to us
+from Pope, who is never to be trusted, either in prose or verse, when he
+wishes to excuse himself at the expense of a rival.
+
+Pope had no cause for discontent at his position; not even the strife of
+parties stood in the way of his _Homer_, which was praised alike by Whig
+and Tory, and brought the translator a fortune. It has been calculated
+that the entire version of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, the payments for
+which covered eleven years, yielded Pope a clear profit of about £9,000,
+and it is said to have made at the same time the fortune of his
+publisher. Pope, I believe, was the first poet who, without the aid of
+patronage or of the stage, was able to live in comfort from the sale of
+his works.
+
+He knew how to value money, but fame was dearer to him than wealth, and
+of both he had now enough to satisfy his ambition. Posterity has not
+endorsed the general verdict of his contemporaries on his famous
+translation. He had to encounter indeed some severe comments, and
+Richard Bentley, the greatest classical scholar then living, must have
+vexed the sensitive poet when he told him that his version was a pretty
+poem but he must not call it Homer. By this criticism, however, as
+Matthew Arnold has observed, the work is judged in spite of all its
+power and attractiveness. Pope wants Homer's simplicity and directness,
+and his artifices of style are utterly alien to the Homeric spirit. Dr.
+Johnson quotes the judgment of critics who say that Pope's _Homer_
+'exhibits no resemblance of the original and characteristic manner of
+the Father of Poetry, as it wants his awful simplicity, his artless
+grandeur, his unaffected majesty,' and observes that this cannot be
+totally denied. He argues, however, that even in Virgil's time the
+demand for elegance had been so much increased that mere nature could be
+endured no longer, that every age improves in elegance, that if some
+Ovidian graces are, alas! not to be found in the English _Iliad_ 'to
+have added can be no great crime if nothing be taken away.' Johnson was
+not aware that to add 'poetical elegances' to the words and thoughts of
+a great poet is to destroy much of the beauty of his verse and many of
+its most striking characteristics. As well might he say that the beauty
+of a lovely woman can be enhanced by a profusion of trinkets, or that a
+Greek statue would be more worthy of admiration if it were elegantly
+dressed. Dr. Johnson says, with perfect truth, that Pope wrote for his
+own age, and it may be added that he exhibits extraordinary art in
+ministering to the taste of the age; yet it is hardly too much to affirm
+that in the exercise of his craft as a translator he is continually
+false to nature and therefore false to Homer.
+
+On the other hand his _Iliad_ if read as a story runs so smoothly, that
+the reader, and especially the young reader, is carried through the
+narrative without any sense of fatigue. It is not a little praise to say
+that it is a poem which every school-boy will read with pleasure, and in
+which every critical reader who is content to surrender his judgment for
+awhile, will find pleasure also. Mr. Courthope in his elaborate and
+masterly _Life of Pope_, which gives the coping stone to an exhaustive
+edition of the poet's works, praises a fine passage from the _Iliad_,
+which in his judgment attains perhaps the highest level of which the
+heroic couplet is capable, and 'I do not believe,' he adds, 'that any
+Englishman of taste and imagination can read the lines without feeling
+that if Pope had produced nothing but his translation of Homer, he would
+be entitled to the praise of a great original poet.'
+
+Pope's editor could not perhaps have selected a better illustration of
+his best manner than this speech of Sarpedon to Glaucus, which is
+parodied in the _Rape of the Lock_. The concluding lines shall be
+quoted.
+
+    'Could all our care elude the gloomy grave,
+    Which claims no less the fearful than the brave,
+    For lust of fame I should not vainly dare
+    In fighting fields, nor urge the soul to war,
+    But since, alas! ignoble age must come,
+    Disease, and death's inexorable doom;
+    The life which others pay let us bestow,
+    And give to fame what we to nature owe;
+    Brave though we fall, and honoured if we live,
+    Or let us glory gain, or glory give.'
+
+We may add that neither its false glitter nor Pope's inability--shared
+in great measure with every translator--to catch the spirit of the
+original, can conceal the sustained power of this brilliant work. Its
+merit is the more wonderful since the poet's knowledge of Greek was
+extremely meagre, and he is said to have been constantly indebted to
+earlier translations. Gibbon said that his _Homer_ had every merit
+except that of faithfulness to the original; and Pope, could he have
+heard it, might well have been satisfied with the verdict of Gray, a
+great scholar as well as a great poet, that no other version would ever
+equal his.
+
+All that has been hitherto said with regard to Pope and Homer relates to
+his version of the _Iliad_. On that he expended his best powers, and on
+that it is evident he bestowed infinite pains. The _Odyssey_, one of the
+most beautiful stories in the world, appears to have been taken up with
+a weary pen, and in putting it into English he sought the assistance of
+Broome and Fenton, two minor poets and Cambridge scholars. They
+translated twelve books out of the twenty-four, and so skilfully did
+they catch Pope's style that it is almost impossible to discern any
+difference between his work and theirs. The literary partnership led to
+one of Pope's discreditable manoeuvres, in which, strange to say, he
+was assisted by Broome, whom he induced to set his name to a falsehood.
+Pope as we have said, translated twelve books, while eight were allotted
+to Broome and four to Fenton. Yet he led Broome, unknown to his
+colleague, to ascribe only three books to himself and two to Fenton, and
+at the same time the poet, who confessed that he could 'equivocate
+pretty genteely,' stated the amount he had paid for Broome's eight books
+as if it had been paid for three. The story is disgraceful both to Pope
+and Broome, and why the latter should have practised such a deception is
+unaccountable. He was a beneficed clergyman and a man of wealth, so that
+he could not have lied for money even if Pope had been willing to bribe
+him. Fenton was indignant, as he well might be, but he was too lazy or
+too good-natured to expose the fraud. Broome had his deserts later on,
+but Pope, who ridiculed him in the _Dunciad_, and in his _Treatise on
+the Bathos_, was the last man in the world entitled to render them.
+
+The partnership in poetry which produced the _Odyssey_ was not a great
+literary success, and most readers will prefer the version of Cowper,
+whose blank verse, though out of harmony with the rapid movement of the
+_Iliad_ is not unfitted for the quieter beauties of the _Odyssey_.
+
+In 1721, prior to the publication of his version, the poet had agreed to
+edit an edition of Shakespeare, a task as difficult as any which a man
+of letters can undertake. Pope was not qualified to achieve it. He was
+comparatively ignorant of Elizabethan literature, the dry labours of an
+editor were not to his taste, and he lacked true sympathy with the
+genius of the poet. Failure was therefore inevitable, and Theobald, who
+has some solid merits as a commentator, found it easy to discern and to
+expose the errors of Pope. For doing so he was afterwards 'hitched' into
+the _Dunciad_, and made in the first instance its hero. The
+"Shakespeare" was published in 1725 in six volumes quarto. 'Its chief
+claim,' Mr. Courthope writes, 'to interest at the present day, is that
+it forms the immediate starting-point for the long succession of Pope's
+satires.... The vexation caused to the poet by the undoubted justice of
+many of Theobald's strictures procured for the latter the unwelcome
+honour of being recognized as the King of the Dunces, and coupled with
+Bentley's disparaging mention of the Translation of the _Iliad_ provoked
+the many contemptuous allusions to verbal criticism in Pope's later
+satires.'[14]
+
+A striking peculiarity of Pope's art may be mentioned here. He was able
+only to play on one instrument, the heroic couplet. When he attempted
+any other form of verse the result, if not total failure, was
+mediocrity. It was a daring act of Pope to suggest by his _Ode on St.
+Cecilia's Day_, a comparison with the _Alexander's Feast_ of Dryden. The
+performance is perfunctory rather than spontaneous, and the few lyrical
+efforts he attempted in addition, show no ear for music. The voice of
+song with which even the minor poets of the Elizabethan age were gifted
+was silent in England, though not in Scotland, during the first half of
+the eighteenth century, or if a faint note is occasionally heard, as in
+the lyrics of Gay, it is without the grace and joyous freedom of the
+earlier singers. Not that the lyrical form was wanting; many minor
+versifiers, like Hughes, Sheffield, Granville, and Somerville, wrote
+what they called songs, but unfortunately without an ear for singing.
+
+In this short summary and criticism of a poet's literary life it would
+be out of place to insert many biographical details, were it not that,
+in the case of Pope, the student who knows little or nothing of the man
+will fail to understand his poetry. A distinguished critic has said that
+the more we know of Pope's age the better shall we understand Pope. With
+equal truth it may be said that a familiarity with the poet's personal
+character is essential to an adequate appreciation of his genius. His
+friendships, his enmities, his mode of life at Twickenham, the entangled
+tale of his correspondence, his intrigues in the pursuit of fame, his
+constitutional infirmities, the personal character of his satires, these
+are a few of the prominent topics with which a student of the poet must
+make himself conversant. It may be well, therefore, to give the history
+in brief outline, and we have now reached the crisis in his fortunes
+which will conveniently enable us to do so.
+
+In 1716 Pope's family had removed from Binfield to Chiswick. A year
+later he lost his father, to whose memory he has left a filial tribute,
+and shortly afterwards he bought the small estate of five acres at
+Twickenham with which his name is so intimately associated. Before
+reaching the age of thirty Pope was regarded as the first of living
+poets. His income more than sufficed for all his wants. At Twickenham
+the great in intellect, and the great by birth, met around his table; he
+was welcomed by the highest society in the land, and although proud of
+his intimacy with the nobility, 'unplaced, unpensioned,' he was 'no
+man's heir or slave,' and jealously preserved his independence. 'Pope,'
+says Johnson, 'never set genius to sale, he never flattered those whom
+he did not love, or praised those whom he did not esteem,' and he was,
+we may add, in this respect a striking contrast to Dryden, who lavished
+his flatteries wholesale.
+
+With a mother to whom he was tenderly attached, with troops of friends,
+with an undisputed supremacy in the world of letters, and with a
+vocation that was the joy of his heart,--if possessions like these can
+confer happiness, Pope should have been a happy man.
+
+But his 'crazy carcass,' as the painter Jervas called it, was united to
+the most suspicious and irritable of temperaments, and the fine wine of
+his poetry was rarely free from bitterness in the cup. Pope could be a
+warm friend, but was not always a faithful one, and even women whose
+friendship he had enjoyed suffered from the venom of his satire. He was
+not a man to rise above his age, and it would be charitable to ascribe a
+portion of his grossness to it. Voltaire is said by his loose talk to
+have driven Pope's good old mother from the table at Twickenham;
+Walpole's language not only in his home at Houghton, but at Court, was
+insufferably coarse; and Pope wrote to ladies in language that must
+have disgusted modest women even in his free-speaking day. His foul
+lines on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, to whom he had formerly written in a
+most ridiculous strain of gallantry, and to whom he is said to have made
+love,[15] cannot easily be characterized in moderate language. Lady Mary
+had little delicacy herself, but the poet, who thought himself a
+gentleman, had no excuse for abusing her. Excuses indeed are not easily
+to be offered for Pope's moral defalcations. His life was a series of
+petty intrigues, trickeries, and deceptions. He could not, it has been
+said,--the conceit is borrowed from Young's _Satires_--'take his tea
+without a stratagem,' and knew how to utter the loftiest sentiments
+while acting the most contemptible of parts.
+
+The long and intricate deceptions which he practised to secure the
+publication of his letters, while so manipulating them as to enhance his
+credit, were suspected to some extent in his own age, and have been
+painfully laid bare in ours. It is an amazing story, which may be read
+at large in Mr. Dilke's _Papers of a Critic_, or in the elaborate
+narrative of Mr. Elwin in the first volume of his edition of _Pope_. It
+will be there seen how the poet compiled fictitious letters, suppressed
+passages, altered dates, manufactured letters out of other letters, and
+secretly enabled the infamous bookseller Curll to publish his
+correspondence surreptitiously in order that he might have the excuse
+for printing it himself in a more carefully prepared form. The worst
+feature of the miserable story is the poet's conduct with regard to
+Swift, his oldest and most faithful friend. On this subject the writer
+may be allowed to quote what he has said elsewhere.
+
+'Years before, Swift, who cared little for literary reputation, and
+never resorted to any artifice to promote it, had suspected Pope of a
+desire to make literary capital out of their correspondence, and the
+poet had excused himself according to his wonted fashion. After the
+publication by Curll, he begged Swift to return him his letters lest
+they should fall into the bookseller's hands. The Dean replied, no doubt
+to Pope's infinite chagrin, that they were safe in his keeping, as he
+had given strict orders in his will that his executors should burn every
+letter he might leave behind him. Afterwards he promised that Pope
+should eventually have them but declined giving them up during his
+lifetime. Hereupon Pope changed his tactics and begged that he might
+have the letters to print. The publication by Curll of two letters
+(probably another _ruse_ of Pope's) formed an additional ground for
+urging his request. All his efforts were unavailing until he obtained
+the assistance of Lord Orrery, to whom Swift was at length induced to
+deliver up the letters. There was a hiatus in the correspondence and
+Pope took advantage of this and of a blunder made by Swift, whose memory
+at the time was not to be trusted, to hint, what he dared not directly
+assert, that the bulk of the collection remained with the Dean, and that
+Swift's own letters had been returned to him. We have now irresistible
+proof that the Dublin edition of the letters was taken from an
+impression sent from England and sent by Pope. Nor was this all. The
+poet acted with still greater meanness, for he had the audacity to
+deplore the sad vanity of Swift in permitting the publication of his
+correspondence, and to declare that "no decay of body is half so
+miserable."'[16]
+
+That he had many fine qualities in spite of the littlenesses which mar
+his character one would be loath to doubt. Among his nobler traits was
+an ardent passion for literature, a courage which enabled him to face
+innumerable obstacles--'Pope,' says Mr. Swinburne, 'was as bold as a
+lion'--and a constant devotion to his parents, especially to his mother,
+who lived to a great age. There are no sincerer words in his letters
+than those which relate to Mrs. Pope. 'It is my mother only,' he once
+wrote, regretting his inability to leave home, 'that robs me of half the
+pleasure of my life, and that gives me the greatest at the same time,'
+and the lines expressing his affection for her are familiar to most
+readers. Truly does Johnson say that 'life has among its soothing and
+quiet comforts few things better to give than such a son.'
+
+Among his lady friends the dearest was Martha Blount, the younger of two
+beautiful sisters, of whom Gay sang as 'the fair-haired Martha and
+Teresa brown.' They came of an old Roman Catholic family residing at
+Mapledurham, and were little more than girls when Pope first knew them.
+With the elder sister he quarrelled, but Martha was faithful to him for
+life, and when he was dying it is said that her coming in 'gave a new
+turn of spirits or a temporary strength to him.' Swift, as we have said,
+was one of the warmest of Pope's friends, and his letters to the poet
+are by far the most attractive portion of the published correspondence.
+He visited him at Twickenham more than once, and on one occasion spent
+some months under his roof. Bolingbroke, his 'guide, philosopher, and
+friend,' who for a time lived near to him at Dawley, was a frequent
+guest, so also, in the days of their intimacy, was Lady Mary, who had a
+house at Twickenham. Thomson the poet, too, lived not far off, and was
+visited by his brother bard, whom Thomson's barber describes as 'a
+strange, ill-formed, little figure of a man,' but he adds, 'I have
+heard him and Quin and Patterson[17] talk so together that I could have
+listened to them for ever.' Arbuthnot, one of the finest wits and best
+men of his time, who, as Swift said, could do everything but walk, was
+also a faithful friend of Pope; so was Gay, and so was Bishop Atterbury,
+who, as the poet said, first taught him to think "as becomes a
+reasonable creature."
+
+James Craggs, who had been formerly Secretary of State, and was on the
+warmest terms of intimacy with the poet, resided for some time near his
+friend in order to enjoy the pleasure of his society. When in office he
+proposed to pay him a pension of £300 a year out of the secret service
+money, but Pope declined the offer. Statesmen and men of active pursuits
+cultivated the society of the poetical recluse, and Pope, whose
+compliments are monuments more enduring than marble, has recorded their
+visits to Twickenham:
+
+    'There, my retreat the best companions grace,
+    Chiefs out of war, and statesmen out of place,
+    There St. John mingles with my friendly bowl,
+    The feast of reason and the flow of soul,
+    And he whose lightning pierced the Iberian lines[18]
+    Now forms my quincunx and now ranks my vines.'
+
+Among Pope's associates was the 'blameless Bethel,'
+
+           '---- who always speaks his thought,
+    And always thinks the very thing he ought,'
+
+and Berkeley who had 'every virtue under heaven,' and Lord Bathurst who
+was unspoiled by wealth and joined
+
+    'With splendour, charity; with plenty, health;'
+
+and 'humble Allen' who
+
+    'Did good by stealth and blushed to find it fame;'
+
+and many another friend who lives in his verse and is secure of the
+immortality a poet can confer.
+
+The five volumes which contain the letters between Pope and his friends
+exhibit an interesting picture of the times and of the writers. The
+poet's own letters, as may be supposed from the thought he bestowed on
+them, are full of artifice, and composed with the most elaborate care.
+Every sentence is elaborately turned, and the ease and naturalness which
+give a charm to the letters of Cowper and of Southey are not to be found
+in Pope. His epistles are weighted with compliments and with professions
+of the most exalted morality. 'He laboured them,' says Horace Walpole,
+'as much as the _Essay on Man_, and as they were written to everybody
+they do not look as if they had been written to anybody.' Pope said
+once, what he did not mean, that he could not write agreeable letters.
+This was true; his letters are, as Charles Fox said, 'very bad,' but
+some of Pope's friends write admirably, and if there is much that can be
+skipped without loss in the correspondence, there is much which no
+student of the period can afford to neglect. 'There has accumulated,'
+says Mark Pattison, 'round Pope's poems a mass of biographical anecdote
+such as surrounds the writings of no other English author,' and not a
+little knowledge of this kind is to be gleaned from his correspondence.
+
+In the years spent at Twickenham Pope produced his most characteristic
+work. It is as a satirist that he, with one exception, excels all
+English poets, and Pope's careful workmanship often makes his satirical
+touches more attractive than Dryden's.
+
+'To attack vices in the abstract,' he said to Arbuthnot, 'without
+touching persons, may be safe fighting indeed, but it is fighting with
+shadows;' and Pope, under the plea of a detestation of vice, generally
+betrayed his contempt or hatred of the men whom he assailed. No doubt
+the critics and Grub Street hacks of the day gave him provocation. Pope,
+however, was frequently the first to take the field, and so eager was he
+to meet his foes that it would seem as if he enjoyed the conflict. Yet
+there were times when he felt acutely the assaults made upon him. 'These
+things are my diversion,' he once said, with a ghastly smile, and it was
+observed that he writhed in agony like a man undergoing an operation.
+The attacks made with these paper bullets, not only on the side of Grub
+Street but on his own, show very vividly the coarseness of London
+society. Courtesy was disregarded by men who claimed to be wits and
+scholars. Pope held, perhaps, a higher place in literature in his own
+day than Lord Tennyson has held in ours, for the best beloved of
+Laureates had noble rivals and friends who came near to him in fame,
+while Pope, until the publication of Thomson's _Seasons_, in 1730, stood
+alone in poetical reputation. Yet he was reviled in the language of
+Billingsgate, and had no scruple in using that language himself. Late in
+life Pope collected the libels made upon him and bound them in four
+volumes, but he omitted to mention the provocation which gave rise to
+many of them. Eusden, Colley Cibber, Dennis, Theobald, Blackmore, Smyth,
+and Lord Hervey are among the prominent criminals placed in Pope's
+pillory, and the student of the age may find an idle entertainment in
+tracking the poet's thorny course, while he gives an unenviable
+notoriety to names of which the larger number were 'born to be forgot.'
+
+In 1725 Swift had written to Pope advising him not to immortalize the
+names of bad poets by putting them in his verse, and Pope replied to
+this advice by saying, 'I am much the happier for finding (a better
+thing than our wits) our judgments jump in the notion that all
+scribblers should be passed by in silence.' How entirely his inclination
+got the better of his judgment was seen three years later in the
+_Dunciad_. The first three books of this famous satire were published in
+1728. It is generally regarded as Pope's masterpiece, but the accuracy
+of such an estimate is doubtful. So heavily weighted is the poem with
+notes, prefaces, and introductions that the text appears to be smothered
+by them. It was Pope's aim to mystify his readers, and in this he has
+succeeded, for the mystifications of the poem even confound the
+commentators. The personalities of the satire excited a keen interest,
+and much amusement to readers who were not included in Pope's black list
+of dunces. At the same time it roused a number of authors to fury, as it
+well might. His satire is often unjust, and he includes among the dunces
+men wholly undeserving of the name, who had had the misfortune to offend
+him. To place a great scholar like Bentley, an eloquent and earnest
+preacher like Whitefield, and a man of genius like Defoe among the
+dunces was to stultify himself, and if Pope in his spite against
+Theobald found some justification for giving the commentator
+pre-eminence for dulness in three books of the _Dunciad_, his anger got
+the better of his wit when in Book IV. he dethroned Theobald to exalt
+Colley Cibber. For Cibber, with a thousand faults, so far from being
+dull had a buoyancy of heart and a sprightliness of intellect wholly out
+of harmony with the character he is made to assume.
+
+That he might have some excuse for his dashing assaults in the
+_Dunciad_, Pope had published in the third volume of the _Miscellanies_,
+of which he and Swift, Arbuthnot and Gay were the joint authors, an
+_Essay on Bathos_ in which several writers of the day were sneered at.
+The assault provoked the counter-attack for which Pope was looking, and
+he then produced the satire which was already prepared for the press. In
+its publication the poet, as usual, made use of trickery and deception.
+At first he issued an imperfect edition with initial letters instead of
+names, but on seeing his way to act more openly, the poem appeared in a
+large edition with names and notes.
+
+'In order to lessen the danger of prosecution for libel,' Mr. Courthope
+writes, 'he prevailed on three peers, with whom he was on the most
+intimate terms, the good-natured Lord Bathurst, the easy-going Earl of
+Oxford, and the magnificent Earl of Burlington, to act as his nominal
+publishers; and it was through them that copies of the enlarged edition
+were at first distributed, the booksellers not being allowed to sell any
+in their shops. The King and Queen were each presented with a copy by
+the hands of Sir R. Walpole. In this manner, as the report quickly
+spread that the poem was the property of rich and powerful noblemen,
+there was a natural disinclination on the part of the dunces to take
+legal proceedings, and the prestige of the _Dunciad_ being thus fairly
+established, the booksellers were allowed to proceed with the sale in
+regular course.'[19]
+
+The _Dunciad_ owes its merit to the literary felicities with which its
+pages abound. The theme is a mean one. Pope, from his social eminence at
+Twickenham, looks with scorn on the authors who write for bread, and
+with malignity on the authors whom he regarded as his enemies. There
+is, for the most part, little elevation in his method of treatment, and
+we can almost fancy that we see a cruel joy in the poet's face as he
+impales the victims of his wrath. Some portions of the _Dunciad_ are
+tainted with the imagery which, to quote the strong phrase of Mr.
+Churton Collins, often makes Swift as offensive as a polecat,[20] and
+there is no part of it which can be read with unmixed pleasure, if we
+except the noble lines which conclude the satire. Those lines may be
+almost said to redeem the faults of the poem, and they prove
+incontestably, if such proof be needed, Pope's claim to a place among
+the poets.
+
+    'In vain, in vain,--the all-composing Hour
+    Resistless falls; the Muse obeys the Power.
+    She comes! she comes! the sable Throne behold,
+    Of Night primæval and of Chaos old!
+    Before her Fancy's gilded clouds decay,
+    And all its varying rainbows die away.
+    Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,
+    The meteor drops, and in a flash expires,
+    As one by one at dread Medea's strain,
+    The sickening stars fade off the etherial plain;
+    As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand opprest,
+    Closed one by one to everlasting rest;
+    Thus at her felt approach and secret might,
+    Art after Art goes out, and all is Night.
+    See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,
+    Mountains of Casuistry heaped o'er her head!
+    Philosophy that leaned on Heaven before,
+    Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more;
+    Physic of Metaphysic begs defence,
+    And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense!
+    See Mystery to Mathematics fly!
+    In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.
+    Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,
+    And unawares Morality expires.
+    Nor public Flame, nor private, dares to shine;
+    Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!
+    Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos! is restored;
+    Light dies before thy uncreating word;
+    Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
+    And universal Darkness buries All.'
+
+The publication of the _Dunciad_ showed Pope where his main strength as
+a poet lay. That the writers he had attacked, in many instances without
+provocation, should resent the ungrateful notoriety conferred upon them
+was inevitable. In self-defence, and to add to the provocation already
+given, he started a paper called the _Grub Street Journal_, which
+existed for eight years--Pope, who had no scruple in 'hazarding a lie,'
+denying all the time that he had any connection with it.
+
+His next work of significance, _The Essay on Man_, a professedly
+philosophical poem by an author who knew little of philosophy, was
+published in four epistles, in 1733-4. Bolingbroke's brilliant,
+versatile, and shallow intellect had strongly impressed Swift, and had
+also fascinated Pope. It has been commonly supposed that the _Essay_
+owes its existence to his suggestion and guidance. The poet believed in
+his philosophy, and had the loftiest estimate of his genius. In the last
+and perhaps finest passage of the poem he calls Bolingbroke the 'master
+of the poet and the song,' and draws a picture of the ambitious
+statesman as beautiful as it is false. In Mark Pattison's Introduction
+to _The Essay on Man_,[21] which every student of Pope will read, he
+objects to the notion that the poet took the scheme of his work from
+Bolingbroke, observing that both derived their views from a common
+source.
+
+'Everywhere, in the pulpit, in the coffee-houses, in every pamphlet,
+argument on the origin of evil, on the goodness of God, and the
+constitution of the world was rife. Into the prevailing topic of polite
+conversation Bolingbroke, who returned from exile in 1723, was drawn by
+the bent of his native genius. Pope followed the example and impulse of
+his friend's more powerful mind. Thus much there was of special
+suggestion. But the arguments or topics of the poem are to be traced to
+books in much vogue at the time; to Shaftesbury's _Characteristics_
+(1711), King on the _Origin of Evil_ (1702), and particularly to
+Leibnitz, _Essais de Théodicée_ (1710).'
+
+In admitting that Pope followed the impulse of a more powerful mind, Mr.
+Pattison asserts as much perhaps as can be known with certainty as to
+Bolingbroke's influence, but it is reasonable to believe that the close
+intercourse of the two men did immensely sway the more impressionable,
+and, so far as philosophy is concerned, the more ignorant of the two.
+Mr. Pattison also overlooks the fact that Pope confessed to Warburton
+that he had never read a line of Leibnitz in his life. That the poet
+acknowledges his large debt to Bolingbroke, and that Bolingbroke
+confesses it was due, is all that can be declared with certainty. That
+which makes the _Essay_ worthy the reading is the fruit, not of the
+argument but of the poetry, and for that Pope trusted to his own genius.
+
+His attempt to 'vindicate the ways of God to man' is confused and
+contradictory, and no modern reader, perplexed with the mystery of
+existence, is likely to gain aid from Pope. Nominally a Roman Catholic,
+and in reality a deist, apart from poetry he does not seem to have had
+strong convictions on any subject, and was content to be swayed by the
+opinions current in society. In undertaking to write an ethical work
+like the _Essay_ his ambition was greater than his strength, yet if
+Pope's philosophy does not 'find' us, to use Coleridge's phrase, it did
+appeal to a large number of minds in his own day, and had not lost its
+popularity at a later period. The poem has been frequently translated
+into French, into Italian, and into German; it was pronounced by
+Voltaire to be the most useful and sublime didactic poem ever written in
+any language; it was admired by Kant and quoted in his lectures; and it
+received high praise from the Scotch philosopher, Dugald Stewart. The
+charm of poetical expression is lost or nearly lost in translations, and
+while the sense may be retained the aroma of the verse is gone. The
+popularity of the _Essay_ abroad is therefore not easily to be accounted
+for, unless we accept the theory that the shallow creed on which it is
+based suited an age less earnest than our own.[22]
+
+Pope has no strong convictions in this poem, but he has many moods. On
+one page he is a pantheist, on another he says what he probably did not
+mean, that God inspires men to do evil, and on a third that 'all our
+knowledge is ourselves to know.' Nowhere in the argument does Pope seem
+to have a firm standing, and De Quincey is not far wrong in saying that
+it is 'the realization of anarchy.'
+
+Read the poem for its poetical merits and you will forget its defects.
+Pope was a superficial teacher, but direct teaching is not the end of
+poetry. _The Essay on Man_ is not a poem which can be read and re-read
+with ever-growing delight, but there are passages in it of as fine an
+order as any that he has composed on more familiar subjects. Pope was,
+as Sir William Hamilton said, a curious reader, and the ideas versified
+in the poem may be traced to a variety of sources. Students who wish to
+follow this track will find all the help they need in Mr. Pattison's
+instructive notes, and in the comments attached to the poem in Elwin and
+Courthope's edition. In his Introduction Mr. Pattison observes that 'the
+subject of the _Essay on Man_ is not, considered in itself, one unfit
+for poetry. Had Pope had a genius for philosophy there was no reason why
+he should not have selected a philosophical subject. Didactic poetry is
+a mistake if not a contradiction in terms. But poetry is not necessarily
+didactic because its subject is philosophical.'
+
+It is always difficult to define the themes suitable for poetry. Many
+theories have been formed as to the scope of the art, and poets have
+been amply instructed by critics as to what they ought to do, and what
+they should avoid doing. The theories may appear sound, the arguments
+convincing, until a great poet arises and knocks them on the head. In a
+sense every poet of the highest order is also a philosopher and a
+prophet who sees into 'the life of things.' Whether a philosophical
+subject can be fitly represented in the imaginative light of poetry is a
+matter for discussion rather than for decision. In the case of Pope,
+however, it will be evident to all studious readers that he was
+incapable of the continuous thought needed for the argument of the
+_Essay_.
+
+'Anything like sustained reasoning,' says Mr. Leslie Stephen,' was
+beyond his reach. Pope felt and thought by shocks and electric
+flashes.... The defect was aggravated or caused by the physical
+infirmities which put sustained intellectual labour out of the
+question.'[23]
+
+Crousaz, a Swiss pastor and professor, who appears to have competed with
+Berkeley for a prize and won it, attacked Pope's _Essay_ for its want of
+orthodoxy, and his work was translated into English. The poet became
+alarmed, but had the good fortune to find a champion in Warburton, who
+for the rest of his life did Pope much service, not always of a
+reputable kind. We shall have more to say of him later on, and it will
+suffice to observe here that Warburton, who through Pope's friendship
+obtained a good wife, a fortune, and a bishopric, was not a man of high
+character. His sole object was to advance in life, and he succeeded.
+
+The _Moral Essays_ as they are called, and the _Imitations from Horace_
+are the final and crowning efforts of the poet's genius. They contain
+his finest workmanship as a satirist, and will be read, I think, with
+more pleasure than the _Dunciad_, despite Mr. Ruskin's judgment of that
+poem as 'the most absolutely chiselled and monumental work "exacted" in
+our country.'[24] It is impossible to concur in this estimate. The
+imagery of the poem serves only to disgust, and the spiteful attacks
+made in it on forgotten men want the largeness of purpose that lifts
+satire above what is of temporary interest, making it a lesson for all
+time.
+
+Pope's venom, and the personal animosities which give the sharpest
+sting, and in some instances a zest, to his verse, are also amply
+displayed in the _Moral Essays_ and in the _Imitations_, but the scope
+is wider in these poems, and the subjects allow of more versatile
+treatment. They should be read with the help of notes, a help generally
+needed for satirical poetry, but it should be remembered always that
+editorial judgments are to be received with discretion and not servilely
+followed. There is perhaps no danger more carefully to be shunned by the
+student of literature than the habit of resting satisfied with opinions
+at second-hand. Better a wrong estimate formed after due reading and
+thought, than a right estimate gleaned from critics, without any thought
+at all.
+
+According to Warburton, who is as tricky as Pope himself when it suits
+his purpose to be so, the _Essay on Man_ was intended to form four
+books, in which, as part of the general design, the _Moral Essays_ would
+have been included, as well as Book IV. of the _Dunciad_, but to have
+welded these _Essays_, which were published separately, into one
+continuous poem would neither have suited Pope's genius nor the
+character of the poems; and how the last book of the _Dunciad_ could
+have been included in such an _olla podrida_ it is difficult to
+conceive. The poet was fond of projects, and this, happily for his
+readers, remained one. The dates of the four _Essays_, which are really
+Epistles, and appeared in folio pamphlets, run over several years, but
+were afterwards re-arranged by Pope. That to Lord Burlington, _Of the
+Use of Riches_ (Epistle IV.), was published in 1731, under the title,
+_Of False Taste_; that to Lord Bathurst, _Of the Use of Riches_ (Epistle
+III), in 1732; the epistle to Lord Cobham (Epistle I.), _Of the
+Knowledge and Characters of Men_, bears the date of 1733; and that To a
+Lady (Epistle II.), _Of the Characters of Women_, in 1735. Pope wrote
+other Epistles, some at a much earlier period of his career, which
+follow the _Moral Essays_ but are not connected with them. Of these one
+is addressed to Addison, two are to Martha Blount, for whom the second
+of the _Moral Essays_ was written; one to the painter Jervas, originally
+printed in 1717; while another, a few lines only in length, was
+addressed to Craggs when Secretary of State. Space will not allow of
+examining each of the _Essays_ minutely, but there are portions of them
+which call for comment.
+
+The first _Moral Essay_, _Of the Knowledge and Characters of Men_, in
+which Pope enlarges on his theory of a ruling passion, affords a
+significant example of his incapacity for sustaining an argument, since
+Warburton, to use his own words, entirely changed and reversed the order
+and disposition of the several parts to make the composition more
+coherent. That he has succeeded is doubtful, that he should have
+ventured upon such a task shows where Pope's weakness lay as a
+philosophical poet. It is the least interesting of the _Essays_, but is
+not without lines that none but Pope could have written. _The Characters
+of Women_, the subject of the second _Essay_, was not one which the
+satirist could treat with justice. He saw little in the sex save their
+foibles, and the lines with which it opens show the spirit that animates
+the poem:
+
+    'Nothing so true as what you once let fall;
+    "Most women have no character at all,"
+    Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,
+    And best distinguished by black, brown, or fair.'
+
+The satire contains one of Pope's offensive allusions to Lady Mary, and
+the celebrated portrait drawn from two notable women, the Duchess of
+Buckingham and Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, from the latter of whom
+the poet, at one time, despite his unquestionable love of independence,
+received £1,000. The story, like many another in the career of Pope, is
+wrapt in mystery.
+
+Pope took great pains with the Epistle _Of the Use of Riches_. It was
+altered from the original conception by the advice of Warburton, who
+cared more for the argument of a poem than for its poetry. The thought
+and purpose of the _Essay_ are defective, notwithstanding Warburton's
+effort to clear them, but these defects are of slight moment when
+compared with the brilliant passages with which the poem is studded.
+Among them is the famous description of the Duke of Buckingham's
+death-bed which should be compared with Dryden's equally famous lines
+on the same nobleman's character.
+
+    'In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung,
+    The floors of plaster, and the walls of dung,
+    On once a flock-heel, but repaired with straw,
+    With tape-tied curtains never meant to draw,
+    The George and Garter dangling from that bed
+    Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,
+    Great Villiers lies--alas! how changed from him,
+    That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim!
+    Gallant and gay, in Cliveden's proud alcove,
+    The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love;
+    Or just as gay at council, in a ring
+    Of mimic statesmen and their merry King.
+    No wit to flatter left of all his store!
+    No fool to laugh at, which he valued more.
+    There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends,
+    And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends.'
+
+There is also a covert attack in this Epistle upon the moneyed interest
+represented by Walpole, and on the political corruption which he
+sanctioned and promoted. Yet Pope knew how to praise the great Whig
+statesman for his social qualities:
+
+    'Seen him I have, but in his happier hour
+    Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power;
+    Seen him uncumbered with the venal tribe,
+    Smile without art and win without a bribe.'
+
+Epistle IV. pursues the same subject as the third, and deals mainly with
+false taste in the expenditure of wealth, and with the necessity of
+following 'sense, of every art the soul.' In this poem there is the
+far-famed description of Timon's Villa, and by Timon Pope was accused of
+representing the Duke of Chandos, whose estate at Canons he is supposed
+to have held in scorn after having been, as he acknowledges,
+'distinguished' by its master. That would not have deterred Pope from
+producing a brilliant picture, and his equivocations did but serve to
+increase suspicion. Probably he found it convenient to use some features
+of what he may have seen at Canons while composing a general sketch with
+no special application. The _Moral Essays_, it may be added, are not
+especially moral, but they are full of fine things, and form a portion
+of Pope's verse second only to the _Imitations from Horace_.
+
+These _Imitations_ are introduced by the Prologue addressed to Dr.
+Arbuthnot, a poem of more than common brilliancy, and also more than
+commonly venomous. Nowhere, perhaps, is there in Pope's works so
+powerful and bitter an attack as the twenty-five lines in the Prologue
+devoted to the vivisection of Lord Hervey, which we are forced to admire
+while feeling their malevolence; nowhere is there a more consummate
+piece of satire than the twenty-two lines that contain the poet's
+masterpiece, the character of Atticus; and nowhere, I may add, are there
+lines more personally interesting. Portions of the poem were written
+long before the date of publication, and this is Pope's excuse, a rather
+lame one perhaps, for printing the character of Atticus and the lines on
+his mother after the death of Addison and of Mrs. Pope.
+
+'When I had a fever one winter in town,' Pope said to his friend Spence,
+'that confined me to my room for some days, Lord Bolingbroke came to see
+me, happened to take up a Horace that lay on the table, and in turning
+it over dipt on the first satire of the second book. He observed how
+well that would hit my case if I were to imitate it in English. After he
+was gone I read it over, translated it in a morning or two, and sent it
+to press in a week or fortnight after. And this was the occasion of my
+imitating some other of the satires and epistles afterwards.'
+
+Bolingbroke did his friend a better service in giving this advice than
+he had done with regard to the _Essay on Man_; and the six _Imitations_,
+with the Prologue and Epilogue, which are among the latest fruits of
+Pope's genius as a satirist, are also the ripest.
+
+Warburton, writing of the _Imitations of Horace_, says: 'Whoever expects
+a paraphrase of Horace or a faithful copy of his genius or his manner of
+writing in these _Imitations_ will be much disappointed. Our author uses
+the Roman poet for little more than his canvas; and if the old design or
+colouring chance to suit his purpose, it is well; if not, he employs his
+own without scruple or ceremony.'
+
+This is true. Pope makes use of Horace when it suits his convenience,
+but never follows him servilely, and quits him altogether when his
+design carries him another way.
+
+It was inevitable that he should exercise this freedom, since, as
+Johnson has pointed out, there will always be an irreconcilable
+dissimilitude between Roman images and English manners. Moreover, the
+aim of the two poets was different, Pope's main object being to express
+personal enmities and to give an exalted notion of his own virtue.
+
+In the opening lines of his First Satire Pope follows Horace pretty
+closely. Both poets complain that some persons think them too severe,
+and others too complaisant; both take the advice of a lawyer, Horace of
+C. Trebatius Testa, who gives him the pithiest replies; and Pope of
+Fortescue. Both complain that they cannot sleep, the prescription of a
+wife and cowslip wine being given by the English adviser, while Testa
+advises Horace to swim thrice across the Tiber and moisten his lips with
+wine. Throughout the rest of the satire Pope takes only casual glances
+at the Roman original, and if in the Second Satire the English poet
+follows Horace in the first few verses in recommending frugality, and in
+the advice to keep the middle state, and neither to lean on this side or
+on that, the resemblance between the poets is seldom striking, and the
+spirit which animates them is different,--Horace being classical, and
+therefore open to the apprehension of all educated readers, while Pope
+is in a sense provincial, and, as I have already said with reference to
+the _Dunciad_, cannot be fully enjoyed or even understood without some
+knowledge of the time and of the men whom he lashes in his satire. The
+Sixth Epistle of the First Book of Horace, which Pope attempts to
+imitate, is, as Mr. Courthope observes, 'incapable of imitation. Its
+humour, no less than its philosophy, belongs entirely to the Pagan
+World.' In a general sense it is also true that Horace's style, whether
+of language or of thought, will not bear transplanting. Indeed, whatever
+is most characteristic and most exquisite in a poet's work is precisely
+the portion which cannot be clothed in a foreign dress.
+
+'Life,' said Pope, 'when the first heats are over is all down hill,' and
+with him the downward progress began at a time when most men are still
+standing on the summit. Never was there a more fiery spirit in so weak a
+body. He suffered frequently from headaches, which he relieved by
+inhaling the steam of coffee. Unfortunately he pampered his appetite and
+paid a heavy penalty for doing so. Every change of weather affected him;
+and at the time when most people indulge in company, he tells Swift that
+he hid himself in bed. Although he sneers at Lord Hervey for taking
+asses' milk he tried that remedy himself, and he frequently needed
+medical aid. In his early days he was strong enough to ride on
+horseback, but in later life his weakness was so great that he was in
+constant need of help. M. Taine, whose criticism of Pope needs to be
+read with caution, indulges in an exaggerated description of his bodily
+condition, observing that when arrived at maturity he appeared no longer
+capable of existing, and styling him 'a nervous abortion.' The poet's
+condition was sad enough as told by Dr. Johnson, without amplifying it
+as M. Taine has done. 'One side was contracted. His legs were so slender
+that he enlarged their bulk with three pairs of stockings, which were
+drawn on and off by the maid; for he was not able to dress or undress
+himself, and neither went to bed nor rose without help. His weakness
+made it very difficult for him to be clean.' After this forlorn
+description of the poet's state it is a little grotesque to read that
+his dress of ceremony was black, with a tie-wig and a little sword. A
+distorted body often holds a generous and untainted soul. This was not
+the case with Pope, and the sympathy he stood in so large a need of
+himself, was seldom given to others.
+
+In the spring of 1744 it became evident that the end was approaching.
+Three weeks before his death he distributed the _Moral Epistles_ among
+his friends, saying: 'Here I am, like Socrates, dispensing my morality
+amongst my friends just as I am dying.' He died peacefully on May 30th,
+1744, and was buried in Twickenham Church near the monument erected to
+his parents.
+
+Pope's standing among his country's poets has been the source of much
+controversy. There have been critics who deny to him the name of a poet,
+while others place him in the first rank. In his own century there was
+comparatively little difference of opinion with regard to his merits.
+Chesterfield gave him the warmest praise; Swift, Addison, and Warburton
+ranked him with the peers of song; Johnson, whose discriminative
+criticism reaches perhaps its highest level in his _Life of Pope_, in
+reply to the question which had been asked, even in his day, whether
+Pope was a poet? asks in return, 'If Pope be not a poet, where is poetry
+to be found?' and adds that 'to circumscribe poetry by a definition will
+only show the narrowness of the definer, though a definition which shall
+exclude Pope will not readily be made.' Joseph Warton, too, Johnson's
+contemporary and friend, while preferring the Romantic School to the
+Classical, allows that in that species of poetry wherein Pope excelled
+he is superior to all mankind.
+
+In our century Bowles, whose edition of his works provoked prolonged
+discussion, in which Campbell, Byron, and the _Quarterly Review_ took
+part, places Pope above Dryden. Byron, with more enthusiasm than
+judgment, regarded him as the greatest name in our poetry; Scott, with
+generous appreciation of a genius so alien to his own, called him a
+'true Deacon of the craft,' and at one time proposed editing his works,
+a task projected also by Mr. Ruskin, who, putting Shakespeare aside as
+rather the world's than ours, holds Pope 'to be the most perfect
+representative we have since Chaucer of the true English mind.' 'Matched
+on his own ground,' says Mr. Swinburne, 'he never has been nor can be.'
+And Mr. Lowell in the same strain observes that 'in his own province he
+still stands unapproachably alone.'
+
+What then is Pope's ground? What is this province of which he is the
+sole ruler? To a considerable extent the question has been answered in
+these pages, but it may be well to sum up with more definiteness what
+has been already stated.
+
+In poetry Pope takes a first place in the second order of poets. The
+deficiencies which forbid his entrance into the first rank are obvious.
+He cannot sing, he has no ear for the subtlest melodies of verse, he is
+not a creative poet, and has few of the spirit-stirring thoughts which
+the noblest poets scatter through their pages with apparent
+unconsciousness. There are no depths in Pope and there are no heights;
+he has neither eye for the beauties of Nature, nor ear for her
+harmonies, and a primrose was no more to him than it was to Peter Bell.
+
+These are defects indeed, but nothing is more unfair says a great French
+critic than to judge notable minds solely by their defects, and in spite
+of them Pope's position is so unassailable that the critic must take a
+contracted view of the poet's art who questions his right to the title.
+
+His merits are of a kind not likely to be affected by time; a lively
+fancy, a power of satire almost unrivalled, and a skill in using words
+so consummate that there is no poet, excepting Shakespeare, who has left
+his mark upon the language so strongly. The loss to us if Pope's verse
+were to become extinct cannot readily be measured. He has said in the
+best words what we all know and feel, but cannot express, and has made
+that classical which in weaker hands would be commonplace. His
+sensibility to the claims of his art is exquisite, the adaptation of his
+style to his subject shows the hand of a master, and if these are not
+the highest gifts of a poet, they are gifts to which none but a poet can
+lay claim.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[11] Some qualification may be made to these statements. Pope took
+pleasure in landscape gardening on the English plan, as opposed to the
+formality of the French and Dutch systems, and the design of the Prince
+of Wales's garden is said to have been copied from the poet's at
+Twickenham.
+
+[12] Elwin and Courthope's _Pope_, vol. ii. p. 160.
+
+[13] See the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.
+
+[14] Elwin and Courthope's _Pope_, vol. v., p. 195.
+
+[15] 'Lady Mary,' says Byron, 'was greatly to blame in that quarrel for
+having encouraged Pope.... She should have remembered her own line,
+
+    '"He comes too near who comes to be denied."'
+
+
+[16] _Studies in English Literature_, p. 47.--_Stanford._
+
+[17] Quin (1693-1766) was the famous actor, and Patterson was Thomson's
+deputy in the surveyor-generalship of the Leeward Isles, and ultimately
+his successor.
+
+[18] The Earl of Peterborough, the meteor-like brilliancy of whose
+actions forms one of the most striking chapters in the history of his
+time.
+
+[19] _Life of Pope_, p. 216.
+
+[20] 'Pope and Swift,' says Dr. Johnson, 'had an unnatural delight in
+ideas physically impure, such as every other tongue utters with
+unwillingness, and of which every ear shrinks from the mention.'
+
+[21] Clarendon Press, Oxford.
+
+[22] No doubt many distinguished foreigners who appreciated the beauty
+of the poem had read it in the original.
+
+[23] Stephen's _Pope_, p. 163.
+
+[24] _Lectures on Art_, p. 70, Oxford.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+PRIOR, GAY, YOUNG, BLAIR, THOMSON.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Matthew Prior (1664-1721).]
+
+The ease with which the Queen Anne wits obtained office and rose to
+posts of high trust through the pleasant art of verse-making, is
+conspicuous in the career of Prior. His parents are unknown, the place
+of his birth is somewhat doubtful, although he is claimed by
+Wimborne-Minster, in Dorsetshire, and the first trustworthy facts
+recorded of his early career are that he was a Westminster scholar when
+the famous Dr. Busby, whose discipline was physical as well as mental,
+presided over the school. His father died, and his mother being no
+longer able to pay the school fees, Prior was placed with an uncle who
+kept the Rhenish Wine Tavern in Westminster. His seat was in the bar,
+and there the Earl of Dorset (1637-1705-6), a small poet, but a generous
+patron of poets, found the youth reading Horace, and, pleased with his
+'parts,' sent him back to Westminster, whence he went up to Cambridge as
+a scholar at St. John's, the college destined a century later to receive
+one of the greatest of English poets.
+
+Charles Montague, afterwards Earl of Halifax (1661-1715), the son of a
+younger son of a nobleman, was also a Westminster scholar. He entered
+Trinity College in 1679, and like Prior appears to have owed his good
+fortune to the rhymer's craft. 'At thirty,' writes Lord Macaulay, 'he
+would gladly have given all his chances in life for a comfortable
+vicarage and a chaplain's scarf. At thirty-seven he was First Lord of
+the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a Regent of the Kingdom.'
+The literary history of the Queen Anne age has many associations with
+his name. He proved a liberal patron of the wits, and of Pope among
+them, by subscribing largely to his _Homer_; but the poet's memory was
+stronger for imaginary injuries than for real benefits, and because
+Halifax had patronized Tickell, he figures in the Prologue to the
+Satires as 'full-blown Bufo, puffed by every quill.'
+
+Prior and Montague began their rhyming career early, and a partnership
+production, entitled the _Hind and Panther, transversed to the story of
+the Country Mouse and the City Mouse_ (1687), a parody of Dryden's
+famous poem published in the same year, brought both authors into
+notice. At the age of twenty-six Prior, who had previously obtained a
+fellowship, was appointed Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague. After
+that he rose steadily to eminence, became Secretary of State in Ireland,
+and was finally appointed Ambassador at the French Court. High office
+brings its troubles, and in those days was not without its perils. In
+1711 Prior was sent secretly to Paris to negotiate a peace, for which,
+when the Whigs came again into power, he was imprisoned and expected to
+lose his head. While in prison, where he remained for two years
+(1715-1717), the poet wrote _Alma_, a humorous and speculative poem on
+the relations of the soul and body, and when released published his
+_Poems_ by subscription in a noble folio, said to be the largest-sized
+volume in the whole range of English poetry. He gained 4,000 guineas by
+the publication, and with that sum and an estate purchased for him by
+Lord Harley, Prior was able to live in comfort. He died in September,
+1721, in his fifty-eighth year, and was buried in Westminster Abbey,
+under a monument for which he had had the vanity to pay five hundred
+pounds.
+
+The peculiar merit of Prior is better understood in our day than it was
+in his own. We read his poems solely for the sake of the 'lighter
+pieces,' which Johnson despised. The poet thought _Solomon_ his best
+work, but no one who toils through the three books which form that poem
+is likely to agree with this estimate. Dulness pervades the work like an
+atmosphere, but it had its admirers in the last century, and among them
+was John Wesley, who, in reply to Johnson's complaint of its
+tediousness, said he should as soon think of calling the Second or Sixth
+Æneid tedious. In the preface to the poem Prior declares that he "had
+rather be thought a good Englishman than the best poet or greatest
+scholar that ever wrote," a passage which does more honour to the poet
+than any in the text. A far more popular piece was _Henry and Emma_,
+which even so fine a judge of poetry as Cowper called 'inimitable.'
+Tastes change, let us hope for the better, and possibly none but the
+greatest poets remain unaffected by time. Assuredly Prior does not, and
+_Henry and Emma_ affords a striking illustration of the contrast between
+the poetical spirit of Prior's age and that which influences ours. The
+poem is founded on the fine ballad of the _Nut-Browne Maide_. The story,
+as originally told, is homely and quaint, written without apparent
+effort and told in 360 lines. Prior requires considerably more than
+twice that number, and his maid and her lover, instead of using the
+simple language befitting the theme, employ the conventional machinery
+of the age, and bring Jove and Mars, Cupid and Venus upon the scene,
+with allusions to Marlborough's victories and to 'Anna's wondrous
+reign.'
+
+_Alma_, a poem written in Hudibrastic verse, which shows that Prior had
+in a measure caught the vein of Butler, has some couplets familiar in
+quotations. He won, too, not a little contemporary reputation for his
+tales in verse, which are singularly coarse; but an age that tolerated
+Mrs. Manley and read the plays and novels of Aphra Behn was not likely
+to object to the grossness of Prior. Dr. Johnson would not admit that
+his poems were unfit for a lady's table, and Wesley, who appears to have
+been strangely oblivious to Prior's moral delinquencies, observes that
+his tales are the best told of any in the English tongue. Cowper praised
+him for his 'charming ease,' and this gift enabled him to write some of
+the most delightful occasional verses produced in the century. There is
+nothing more exquisite of its kind than his address, _To a Child of
+Quality_, written when the child was five years old and the poet forty,
+and one is not surprised to learn that Prior was admired by Thomas
+Moore, who more than once caught his note. A reader familiar with Moore
+and ignorant of Prior would without hesitation attribute the following
+stanzas, from the _Answer to Chloe Jealous_, to the Irish poet:
+
+    'The god of us versemen (you know, Child), the sun,
+      How after his journeys he sets up his rest;
+    If at morning o'er earth 'tis his fancy to run,
+      At night he declines on his Thetis's breast.
+
+    'So when I am wearied with wandering all day,
+      To thee, my delight, in the evening I come;
+    No matter what beauties I saw in my way;
+      They were but my visits, but thou art my home.
+
+    'Then finish, dear Cloe, this pastoral war,
+      And let us, like Horace and Lydia, agree;
+    For thou art a girl as much brighter than her
+      As he was a poet sublimer than me.'
+
+"The grammatical lapse in these last two lines," says Mr. Austin Dobson,
+"perhaps calls for correction, but many readers will probably agree with
+Moore (_Diary_, November, 1818), 'that it is far prettier as it is.'
+'Nothing,' he says truly, 'can be more gracefully light and gallant than
+this little poem.'"
+
+It was fancy and not imagination which conceived the following lines,
+but how charming is the fancy! The poem, which is given in a slightly
+abridged form, is addressed
+
+'TO A LADY: SHE REFUSING TO CONTINUE A DISPUTE WITH ME, AND LEAVING ME
+IN THE ARGUMENT.
+
+    'In the dispute whate'er I said,
+      My heart was by my tongue belied;
+    And in my looks you might have read
+      How much I argued on your side.
+
+    'You, far from danger as from fear,
+      Might have sustained an open fight;
+    For seldom your opinions err;
+      Your eyes are always in the right.
+
+    'Alas! not hoping to subdue,
+      I only to the fight aspired;
+    To keep the beauteous foe in view
+      Was all the glory I desired.
+
+    'But she, howe'er of victory sure,
+      Contemns the wreath too long delayed;
+    And, armed with more immediate power,
+      Calls cruel silence to her aid.
+
+    'Deeper to wound, she shuns the fight:
+      She drops her arms, to gain the field;
+    Secures her conquest by her flight;
+      And triumphs, when she seems to yield.
+
+    'So when the Parthian turned his steed,
+      And from the hostile camp withdrew;
+    With cruel skill the backward reed
+      He sent; and as he fled, he slew.'
+
+Wit and a ready command of verse are the characteristics of Prior's
+poetry. Both of these gifts are to be seen in his lively _English
+ballad on the Taking of Namur by the King of Great Britain_, in which he
+travesties Boileau's _Ode sur la prise de Namur_. As an epigrammatist he
+reaped his advantage from a study of Martial, and in this department of
+verse Prior is often successful. If brevity be a prominent merit in an
+epigram, he sometimes excels his master, as, for example, in this
+stanza:
+
+    'To John I owed great obligation;
+      But John unhappily thought fit
+    To publish it to all the nation;
+      Sure John and I are more than quit.'[25]
+
+This is half the length of the original Latin, and what it loses in
+elegance it gains in point.
+
+It may be hoped that the next quotation is a libel on Bishop Atterbury;
+if so, the lines have every merit but truth. The epigram is on the
+funeral of the Duke of Buckingham, who died in 1721.
+
+    'I have no hopes,' the duke he says, and dies;
+    'In sure and certain hopes,' the prelate cries:
+    Of these two learned peers, I prithee say, man,
+    Who is the lying knave, the priest or layman?
+    The duke he stands an infidel confest;
+    'He's our dear brother,' quoth the lordly priest.
+    The duke, though knave, still 'brother dear,' he cries;
+    And who can say the reverend prelate lies?
+
+Prior, it may be observed here, could say pointed things in prose as
+well as in verse, and nothing can be happier than his reply to the
+Frenchman's inquiry whether the King of England had anything to show in
+his palace equal to the paintings at Versailles illustrating the
+victories of Louis XIV: 'The monuments of my master's actions,' said the
+poet, 'are to be seen everywhere except in his own house.'
+
+It is always interesting to link poet with poet, and in relation to
+Prior many readers will recall the pathetic incident related of Sir
+Walter Scott when the wonderful intellect which had entranced the world
+was giving indications of decay. Lockhart relates how, as they were
+travelling together, a quotation from Prior led Scott to make another,
+slightly altered for the occasion, and he adds:
+
+'This seemed to put him into the train of Prior, and he repeated several
+striking passages both of the _Alma_ and the _Solomon_. He was still at
+this when we reached a longish hill, and he got out to walk a little. As
+we climbed the ascent, he leaning heavily on my shoulder, we were met by
+a couple of beggars, who were, or professed to be, old soldiers both of
+Egypt and the Peninsula. One of them wanted a leg, which circumstance
+alone would have opened Scott's purse-strings, though, _ex facie_, a sad
+old blackguard; but the fellow had recognized his person as it happened,
+and in asking an alms bade God bless him fervently by his name. The
+mendicants went on their way, and we stood breathing on the knoll. Sir
+Walter followed them with his eye, and planting his stick firmly on the
+sod, repeated, without break or hesitation Prior's verses to the
+historian Mezeray. That he applied them to himself was touchingly
+obvious, and therefore I must quote them.
+
+    '"Whate'er thy countrymen have done,
+    By law and wit, by sword and gun,
+      In thee is faithfully recited;
+    And all the living world that view
+    Thy work, give thee the praises due,
+      At once instructed and delighted.
+
+    '"Yet for the fame of all these deeds,
+    What beggar in the _Invalides_,
+      With lameness broke, with blindness smitten,
+    Wished ever decently to die,
+    To have been either Mezeray,
+      Or any monarch he has written?
+
+    '"It strange, dear author, yet it true is,
+    That down from Pharamond to Louis
+      All covet life, yet call it pain:
+    All feel the ill, yet shun the cure;
+    Can sense this paradox endure?
+      Resolve me Cambray[26] or Fontaine.
+
+    '"The man in graver tragic known
+    (Though his best part long since was done),
+      Still on the stage desires to tarry;
+    And he who played the Harlequin,
+    After the jest still loads the scene,
+      Unwilling to retire, though weary."'
+
+[Sidenote: John Gay (1685-1732).]
+
+Gay, who enjoyed an unbroken friendship with the brotherhood of wits,
+and was treated by them like a spoilt child, was born at Barnstaple in
+1685, and left an orphan at the age of ten. He was educated at the free
+grammar school in the town, and was afterwards, to his discontent,
+apprenticed to a mercer in London. He escaped from this uncongenial
+employment to be dependent on an uncle, and thus early exhibited his
+life-long disposition to rely upon others for support. 'Providence,'
+Swift writes, 'never designed Gay to be above two-and-twenty by his
+thoughtlessness and gullibility. He has as little foresight of age,
+sickness, poverty, or loss of admirers as a girl of fifteen.' His
+weakness, it has been said, appealed to Swift's strength, and Swift,
+Pope, and Arbuthnot were Gay's most faithful friends. They found
+something in him to laugh at and to love. Ladies, too, treated him with
+the kind of friendliness which has a touch of commiseration. In 1714 Gay
+was appointed secretary to Lord Clarendon, a post which he owed to
+Swift, but the death of Queen Anne in that year brought the Whigs into
+office, and destroyed the poet's prospects. Prior to this he had been
+secretary to the imperious Duchess of Monmouth. He was now left without
+money or employment, and owed much to the generosity of Pope. It was
+Gay's lot 'in suing long to bide,' to be always hoping, and nearly
+always disappointed. 'He seems,' says his latest biographer, 'to have
+begun his career under the impression that it was somebody's duty to
+provide for him in the world, and this impression clung to him through
+nearly the whole of a lifetime.'[27] Ten years before his death he was
+eagerly looking to others for support. Writing to Swift, he says: 'I
+lodge at present in Burlington House, and have received many civilities
+from many great men, but very few real benefits. They wonder at each
+other for not providing for me, and I wonder at them all.'
+
+Gay's first poem of any mark was _The Shepherd's Week_ (1714), six
+burlesque pastorals, a subject proposed to him by Pope, who was then
+smarting from the praise Philips had received in _The Guardian_. But if
+Pope meant Gay to poke his fun at Philips in _The Shepherd's Week_, he
+must have been disappointed, for the poems were accepted as genuine
+bucolics, and although humorously absurd, are, to say the least, more
+true to rustic life than the pastorals either of Philips or of Pope.
+_The Shepherd's Week_ was followed by _Trivia_ (1715), a piece suggested
+by Swift's _City Shower_. It is one of Gay's most notable productions,
+not as a poem, but as a vivid description of the streets of London
+nearly two hundred years ago. The great reputation he obtained as the
+author of _The Fables_ (1727), and still more of _The Beggar's Opera_
+(1728), the idea of which was suggested to Gay by Swift, survived him
+for some years. _The Fables_ were written for and dedicated to the
+youthful Duke of Cumberland, who is asked to "accept the moral lay, and
+in these tales mankind survey." There is skill and ingenuity in the
+poems, but higher merit they cannot boast, and young readers are likely
+to prefer the illustrations which generally accompany _The Fables_ to
+the letterpress. Many of Gay's allusions are beyond the apprehension of
+the young, and have a political flavour. _The Beggar's Opera_ was
+intended as a burlesque of the Italian opera, which had been long the
+laughing-stock of men of letters, and as the play was thought to have
+political significance, and the character of Macheath to be a portrait
+of Walpole, it was received with enthusiasm, and acted in London for
+about sixty nights. So popular did the opera become, that ladies carried
+about the songs on their fans.
+
+Eight years before, Gay had published his poems by subscription, and in
+those happy days for versemen had gained £1,000 by the venture. He put
+the money into South Sea stock, and lost it all. For _The Beggar's
+Opera_ he received about £800. It was followed by _Polly_, a play of the
+same coarse character, which, for political reasons, was not allowed to
+be acted. The result was that it had a large sale, and put money in
+Gay's purse. Ten thousand five hundred copies are said to have been
+printed in one year, and the £1,200 realized by the sale were very
+wisely retained for the poet's use by the Duke of Queensberry, under
+whose roof he had at length found a warm nest. To the student Gay is
+chiefly interesting as the only noteworthy poet of the period, south of
+the Tweed, gifted with a lyrical capacity. Two or three of his songs and
+ballads, and especially _Black-Eyed Susan_, have a charm beyond the
+reach of the mechanical versifier. But the art of song is at a low level
+even in the hands of Gay. The lyric which the Elizabethan and Jacobean
+poets loved so well, and of which the present century has produced
+specimens to be matched only by Shakespeare, may be said to have been
+lost to English poetry for the first half of the last century, since
+neither Prior's verse, delightful though it be, nor the songs of Gay,
+have enough of the poetical element to form exceptions to this
+statement.
+
+In his _Tales_ he follows Prior in grossness, while inferior to him in
+art. Like the greater number of the Queen Anne poets, Gay flatters with
+a free hand. In an epistle addressed to Lintot, the bookseller, he
+declares that Anacreon lives once more in Sheffield, and Waller in
+Granville, that Buckingham's verse will last to distant time; while Ovid
+sings again in Addison, and 'Homer's _Iliad_ shines in his _Campaign_.'
+
+One of the liveliest and most graceful of Gay's poems is addressed to
+Pope 'On his having finished his translation of Homer's _Iliad_.' It is
+called _A Welcome from Greece_, and describes the friends who assembled
+to greet the poet on his return to England.
+
+Three stanzas from the Epistle shall be quoted:
+
+    'Oh, what a concourse swarms on yonder quay!
+      The sky re-echoes with new shouts of joy;
+    By all this show, I ween 'tis Lord Mayor's day;
+      I hear the voice of trumpet and hautboy--
+    No, now I see them near.--Oh, these are they
+      Who come in crowds to welcome thee from Troy.
+    Hail to the bard, whom long as lost we mourned
+    From siege, from battle, and from storm returned!
+
+    'What lady's that to whom he gently bends?
+      Who knows not her? Ah! those are Wortley's eyes:
+    How art thou honoured, numbered with her friends!
+      For she distinguishes the good and wise.
+    The sweet-tongued Murray near her side attends;
+      Now to my heart the glance of Howard flies;
+    Now Hervey, fair of face, I mark full well,
+    With thee Youth's youngest daughter, sweet Lepell.
+
+    'I see two lovely sisters hand in hand,
+      The fair-haired Martha and Teresa brown;
+    Madge Bellenden, the tallest of the land;
+      And smiling Mary, soft and fair as down.
+    Yonder I see the cheerful Duchess stand,
+      For friendship, zeal, and blithesome humours known;
+    Whence that loud shout in such a hearty strain?
+    Why, all the Hamiltons are in her train!'
+
+Gay's love of good living was known to all his friends. 'As the French
+philosopher,' Congreve wrote, 'used to prove his existence by _cogito
+ergo sum_, the greatest proof of Gay's existence is _edit ergo est_.'
+For a long time his health compelled him to give up wine, and he tells
+Swift that he had also left off verse-making, 'for I really think that
+man must be a bold writer who trusts to wit without it.' He was
+dispirited, he told Swift not long before his death, for want of a
+pursuit, and found 'indolence and idleness the most tiresome things in
+the world.'
+
+Gay died in 1732 at the Duke of Queensberry's house, and Pope grieved
+that one of his nearest and longest ties was broken. He was interred, to
+quote Arbuthnot's words, 'as a peer of the realm,' in Westminster Abbey.
+The superficial character of the poet may be seen in his couplet
+transcribed upon the monument:
+
+    'Life is a jest, and all things show it;
+    I thought so once, and now I know it.'
+
+[Sidenote: Edward Young (1684-1765).]
+
+Gay's moderate gift of song was withheld from the famous author of the
+_Night Thoughts_. Yet Young was vain enough to think that he possessed
+it, and wrote a patriotic ode called _Ocean_, preceded by an elaborate
+essay on lyric poetry. He also produced _Imperium Pelagi_ (1729), _A
+Naval Lyric written in Imitation of Pindar's spirit_. The lyric, which
+was travestied by Fielding in his _Tom Thumb_,[28] reads like a
+burlesque, and badly treated though Pindar was by the versemen of the
+last century, there is perhaps not one of them who mocks him more
+outrageously than Young. He says that this ode is an original, and no
+critic is likely to dispute the assertion.
+
+Young was born in 1684 at Upham, near Winchester, his father, who was
+afterwards Dean of Sarum, being at that time the rector of the village.
+Edward was placed upon the foundation at Winchester College, and
+remained there until he was eighteen. He was then sent up to New
+College, and afterwards removed to Corpus. At the age of twenty-seven he
+was nominated to a law fellowship at All Souls, and took his degree of
+B.C.L. and his doctor's degree some years later. Characteristically
+enough he began his poetical career by _An Epistle to Lord Lansdowne_
+(1712), who is praised for his heavenly numbers, and is said to have
+been born "to make the muse immortal." His next poem of any consequence,
+_The Last Day_, written in heroic couplets, and filling three books, is
+correct, or fairly so, in versification, and execrable in taste. Young,
+it may be supposed, wished to produce a sense of solemnity in the
+treatment of his theme, and he does so by lamenting that the very land
+'where the Stuarts filled an awful throne' will in that day be
+forgotten. The want of taste which so often deforms Young's verse is
+also seen in the imagery he employs to illustrate the fear which even
+good men may have on appearing before that 'dread tribunal.'
+
+    'Thus the chaste bridegroom, when the priest draws nigh,
+    Beholds his blessing with a trembling eye;
+    Feels doubtful passions throb in every vein,
+    And in his cheeks are mingled joy and pain,
+    Lest still some intervening chance should rise,
+    Leap forth at once, and snatch the golden prize,
+    Inflame his woe, by bringing it so late,
+    And stab him in the crisis of his fate.'
+
+His next poem, _The Force of Religion, or Vanquished Love_, was
+suggested by the execution of Lady Jane Grey and Lord Guildford, a
+subject chosen for a tragedy by John Banks (1694), by Rowe in 1715, and
+treated with considerable dramatic power in our own day by Ross Neil. In
+Young's hands this fine theme becomes a rhetorical exercise without
+poetry and without pathos. A few lines will suffice to show the style of
+the poem. Jane and Dudley, it must be premised, are imprisoned in a
+gloomy hall:
+
+    'What can they do? They fix their mournful eyes--
+    Then Guildford, thus abruptly: "I despise
+    An empire lost; I fling away the crown;
+    Numbers have laid that bright delusion down;
+    But where's the Charles, or Dioclesian, where,
+    Could quit the blooming, wedded, weeping fair?
+    Oh! to dwell ever on thy lip! to stand
+    In full possession of thy snowy hand!
+    And thro' the unclouded crystal of thine eye
+    The heavenly treasures of thy mind to spy!
+    Till rapture reason happily destroys,
+    And my soul wanders through immortal joys!
+    Give me the world, and ask me, where's my bliss?
+    I clasp thee to my breast and answer, this."'
+
+Verse of this quality, which might be amply quoted, is of interest to
+the student of literature, since in Young's day it passed current for
+poetry. But in accepting his claims as a poet the faith of the age must
+have been often strained.
+
+Walpole, who despised the whole tribe of poets, and cared nothing for
+literature, had by some strange chance awarded to Young a pension of
+£200 a-year, whereupon in a piece called _The Instalment_, addressed to
+Sir Robert, Britain is called upon to behold
+
+    'His azure ribbon and his radiant star,'
+
+and the poet's breast 'glows with grateful fire' as he exclaims:
+
+    'The streams of royal bounty turned by thee
+    Refresh the dry domains of poesy.
+    My fortune shows, when arts are Walpole's care,
+    What slender worth forbids us to despair:
+    Be this thy partial smile from censure free,
+    'Twas meant for merit, though it fell on me.'
+
+Following in the steps of George Sandys, but with inferior power, and in
+a less racy diction, Young performed the vain task of paraphrasing part
+of the Book of Job, one of the noblest poems the world possesses, and
+translated in our authorized version in language not to be surpassed for
+dignity and simplicity.
+
+In 1719 his _Busiris_ was performed. _The Revenge_, a better known
+tragedy, written on the French model, followed in 1721, and kept the
+stage for some time. Seven years later _The Brothers_, his third and
+last tragedy, was in rehearsal, but the poet, who had lately taken holy
+orders, withdrew it at the last moment. These tragedies, which are full
+of sound and fury, are destitute of tragic power. _The Revenge_, in
+which Zanga acts the part of an Iago, has some forcible scenes, and so,
+despite much rant and fustian, has _Busiris_. Plenty of blood is shed,
+of course, and the heroines of the plays die by their own hands. Tragedy
+is supposed to exercise an elevating influence, but to counteract this
+happy result, _Busiris_ and _The Revenge_ are followed by indecent
+epilogues, in which the speakers jest at the feelings which the plays
+may have excited. For _The Brothers_ Young wrote his own epilogue. It is
+decent and dull. His genius was better fitted for satire than for the
+drama, and _The Universal Passion_, which consists of seven satires
+published in a collected form in 1728, brought him reputation and money.
+The poet Crabbe was never more surprised in his life than when John
+Murray (the famous 'My Murray' of Byron) gave him £3,000 for the
+copyright of his poems; Young received the same sum for work
+immeasurably inferior in value, and in a less legitimate way. Two
+thousand pounds, it is stated, was a gift from the Duke of Grafton, who
+said it was the best bargain he ever made, as the satires were worth
+£4,000. Young, it will be seen, preceded Pope as a satirist. He is more
+generous and humane, and has none of the venomous attacks on living
+persons by which Pope added piquancy to his verse. But he is a careless
+writer, and for the most part lacks the exquisite precision, the subtle
+wit, the rhythmical felicity, which make the couplets of Pope so
+memorable. _The Dunciad_, the _Moral Essays_, and the _Imitations_ are
+read by all lovers of literature, but _The Universal Passion_ is
+forgotten. Of the six satires, the two on women are the most spirited,
+and may be compared with Pope's on the same subject. The different
+foibles, and faults worse than foibles of the women of that day are
+exhibited with a satirist's licence, and occasionally with a Pope-like
+terseness. Take the following, for example:
+
+    'There is no woman where there's no reserve,
+    And 'tis on plenty your poor lovers starve.'
+
+    'Few to good breeding make a just pretence;
+    Good breeding is the blossom of good sense.'
+
+    'A shameless woman is the worst of men.'
+
+    'Naked in nothing should a woman be,
+    But veil her very wit with modesty.'
+
+It was not until he was nearly fifty that Young, disappointed of the
+preferment he sought, took holy orders, and in 1730 accepted the college
+living of Welwyn, in Herts, which he held till his death.
+
+In the following year the poet married Lady Elizabeth Lee, a daughter of
+the Earl of Lichfield, a union that lasted ten years. One son was the
+offspring of this marriage. Lady Elizabeth had a daughter by a former
+marriage, who was married to Mr. Temple, a son of Lord Palmerston, and
+shortly before her own death she lost both daughter and son-in-law, who,
+there can be little doubt, are the Philander and Narcissa of the _Night
+Thoughts_, the earlier books of which were published in 1742. This once
+celebrated poem, written in his old age, is the one effort of Young's
+genius that has enjoyed a great popularity. It suited well an age which,
+while far from moral, delighted in moral treatises and in didactic
+verse. In the _Night Thoughts_ Young remembers that he is a clergyman,
+and puts on his gown and bands. He puts on also his singing robes, and
+shows the reader what none of his earlier poems prove, that he is in the
+presence of a poet.
+
+The _Night Thoughts_ is remarkable in its finest passages for a strong,
+but sombre imagination, and for a command of his instrument that puts
+Young at times nearly on a level with the greatest masters of blank
+verse. On this height, however, he does not stay long. He is rich in
+great thoughts, but they do not fall unconsciously, as it were, while
+the poet pursues his argument. They are aphorisms uttered generally in
+single lines which are apt to break the continuity of the poem and to
+injure the harmony of its versification. The theme of Life, Death, and
+Immortality is not a narrow one, and affords ample space for imaginative
+treatment. Young's treatment of it is too often declamatory; he drops
+the poet in the rhetorician and the wit. There is much of the false
+sublime in the poem, and much that reveals the hollow character of the
+writer. The first book is the finest, sparkling with felicitous
+expressions and rising frequently to true poetry. The poetical quality
+of that book, however, is lessened by the author's passion for
+antithesis. The merit of the following passage, for example, is not due
+to poetical inspiration:
+
+    'How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
+    How complicate, how wonderful is man!
+    How passing wonder He, who made him such!
+    Who centered in our make such strange extremes
+    From different natures, marvellously mixed,
+    Connexion exquisite of distant worlds!
+    Distinguished link in being's endless chain!
+    Midway from nothing to the Deity;
+    A beam etherial, sullied, and absorbt!
+    Though sullied and dishonoured still divine!
+    Dim miniature of greatness absolute!
+    An heir of glory! a frail child of dust!
+    Helpless immortal! insect infinite!
+    A worm! a god!--I tremble at myself,
+    And in myself am lost. At home a stranger,
+    Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast,
+    And wondering at her own: How reason reels!
+    O what a miracle to man is man!
+    Triumphantly distressed! what joy! what dread!
+    Alternately transported and alarmed!
+    What can preserve my life? or what destroy?
+    An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave:
+    Legions of angels can't confine me there.'
+
+The opening of the ninth and last book will give a more favourable
+illustration of Young's style:
+
+    'As when a traveller, a long day past
+    In painful search of what he cannot find,
+    At night's approach, content with the next cot,
+    There ruminates awhile, his labour lost;
+    Then cheers his heart with what his fate affords,
+    And chants his sonnet to deceive the time,
+    Till the due season calls him to repose;
+    Thus I, long-travelled in the ways of men,
+    And dancing with the rest the giddy maze
+    Where Disappointment smiles at Hope's career;
+    Warned by the languor of life's evening ray,
+    At length have housed me in an humble shed,
+    Where, future wandering banished from my thought,
+    And waiting, patient, the sweet hour of rest,
+    I chase the moments with a serious song.
+    Song soothes our pains, and age has pains to soothe.'
+
+While moralizing on man's mortality Young is seldom a cheerful monitor,
+he dwells with too great persistence on the incidents of death and of
+bodily corruption, too little on life with which we have more to do than
+with death. Thus with a strange perversion he exclaims:
+
+    'This is the desart, this the solitude,
+    How populous, how vital, is the grave!
+    This is creation's melancholy vault,
+    The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom,
+    The land of apparitions, empty shades!
+    All, all on earth is shadow, all beyond
+    Is substance; the reverse is folly's creed.'
+
+and harping on the same theme in the ninth book, says:
+
+    'What is the world itself? Thy world--a grave.
+    Where is the dust that has not been alive?
+    The spade, the plough, disturb our ancestors;
+    From human mould we reap our daily bread;
+    The globe around earth's hollow surface shakes,
+    And is the ceiling of her sleeping sons.
+    O'er devastation we blind revels keep;
+    Whole buried towns support the dancer's heel.'
+
+[Sidenote: Robert Blair (1699-1746).]
+
+On laying down the _Night Thoughts_ the student may be advised to read
+Blair's _Grave_, a poem in less than 800 lines of blank verse, composed
+in a fresher and more rigorous style than the far larger work of Young,
+and rather moulded, as Mr. Saintsbury has observed, 'upon dramatic than
+upon purely poetical models.' _The Grave_, which was written before the
+publication of the _Night Thoughts_,[29] abounds with poetical
+felicities, and is pregnant with suggestions that seize the imagination,
+and appeal alike to the intellect and the heart. The brevity of the
+piece is in its favour; there is not a line that flags.
+
+    'Tell us, ye dead! will none of you, in pity
+    To those you left behind, disclose the secret?
+    Oh! that some courteous ghost would blab it out,--
+    What 'tis you are and we must shortly be.
+    I've heard that souls departed have sometimes
+    Forewarned men of their death. 'Twas kindly done
+    To knock and give the alarm. But what means
+    This stinted charity? 'Tis but lame kindness
+    That does its work by halves. Why might you not
+    Tell us what 'tis to die? Do the strict laws
+    Of your society forbid your speaking
+    Upon a point so nice?--I'll ask no more:
+    Sullen, like lamps in sepulchres, your shine
+    Enlightens but yourselves. Well, 'tis no matter;
+    A very little time will clear up all,
+    And make us learn'd as you are, and as close.'
+
+
+Blair, who was a Scotch clergyman, wrote also an _Elegy in Memory of
+William Law_, a Professor of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh, whose
+daughter he married. He writes in a masculine and homely style. His
+imagery is often more powerful than pleasing, but some of his similes
+win attention by their beauty. For example:
+
+    "Look how the fair one weeps! the conscious tears
+    Stand thick as dewdrops on the bells of flowers."
+
+Among the victims claimed by the grave is
+
+        'The long demurring maid,
+    Whose lonely unappropriated sweets
+    Smiled, like yon knot of cowslips on the cliff,
+    Not to be come at by the willing hand.'
+
+And the death of a good man is pictured in this musical couplet:
+
+    'Night dews fall not more gently to the ground
+    Nor weary worn out winds expire so soft.'
+
+Cowper, referring to the poets of his century, said that every warbler
+had Pope's tune by heart. But if they had the tune by heart, many of
+them did not make it a vehicle for their verse, and among these are
+poets of the weight and worth of Thomson and Young, of Gray and Collins.
+Poets of a minor order, too, such as Somerville, Armstrong, Glover,
+Shenstone, Akenside, and John Dyer, either did not use the heroic
+distich which Pope crowned with such honour, or used it in their least
+significant poems.
+
+[Sidenote: James Thomson (1700-1748).]
+
+Thomson's influence, though less visible than Pope's, was probably as
+great. It was felt by the poets who loved Nature, and had no turn for
+satire. To pass to him from Prior, Gay, and Young is to leave the town
+for the country. English poetry owes much to the author of _The
+Seasons_, who was the first among the poets of his century to bring men
+back to 'Nature, the Vicar of the Almighty Lord.' He could not, indeed,
+shake off altogether the fetters of the conventional diction current in
+his day, and his style is often turgid and verbose. But Thomson had, to
+use a phrase of his own, 'a fine flame of imagination,' and when brought
+face to face with Nature he has the inspiration of a poet who discerns
+the lessons which Nature is ready to teach.
+
+James Thomson was born at Ednam, on the banks of the Tweed, on September
+11th, 1700, but his father removed to Jedburgh shortly afterwards, and
+there the future poet gained his first impression of rural scenes. He
+began to rhyme in boyhood, but, unlike most young poets, had the good
+sense to make an annual bonfire of his youthful effusions. At the early
+age of fifteen he was sent to the university at Edinburgh, his father,
+who was a Presbyterian minister, wishing that his son should follow the
+same vocation. But Thomson was not destined to 'wag his head in a
+pulpit.' He had a friend at this time in David Mallet, a minor poet of
+more prudence than principle, and when Mallet had the good fortune to
+gain a tutorship in London, his companion also started for the
+metropolis in search of money and fame. It was a desperate venture, and
+the young poet's difficulties were increased by the loss of his letters
+of introduction. Scotchmen however have always countrymen willing to
+help them, and Thomson whose pedigree on the mother's side connected him
+with the famous house of Home, found temporary employment as tutor to a
+child of Lord Binning who belonged by marriage to the same family.
+Afterwards he resided with Millan, a bookseller at Charing Cross, and
+then having finished _Winter_ (1726), on which he had been at work for
+some time, he sold it to the publisher for three guineas. Before long
+it was read and warmly praised by Aaron Hill, then a man of mark in the
+world of letters. Sir Spencer Compton, the Speaker, to whom the poem was
+dedicated, gave the poet twenty guineas for the compliment; Rundle, the
+Bishop of Derry, and several ladies of rank cheered him with their
+praise, and Thomson's success was assured. It was the age of patrons,
+and he practised without shame and without discrimination the art of
+flattery. Each book of _The Seasons_ had a dedication, and the honour
+was one for which some kind of payment was expected. _Summer_ appeared
+in 1727 and _Spring_ in the year following. In 1729 the appearance of
+_Britannia_ showed the popularity of the poet and of his theme, for
+three editions were sold. It is a distinctly party poem, and contains an
+attack upon Walpole--whom he had previously praised as the 'most
+illustrious of patriots'--for submitting to indignities from Spain. The
+British Lion roars loudly in it, but there is more of fustian in the
+piece than of true patriotism. 'How dares,' the poet exclaims, 'the
+proud Iberian rouse to wrath the masters of the main:'
+
+    'Who told him that the big incumbent war
+    Would not ere this have rolled his trembling ports
+    In smoky ruin? and his guilty stores,
+    Won by the ravage of a butchered world,
+    Yet unatoned, sunk in the swallowing deep,
+    Or led the glittering prize into the Thames?'
+
+In February, 1729-30, Thomson's tragedy of _Sophonisba_, a subject
+previously chosen by Marston (1606), and by Lee (1676), was acted at
+Drury Lane. The play was dedicated to the queen, and on the opening
+night the house was crowded, but the success of the piece was slight.
+Thomson's genius was not dramatic, and while his characters declaim,
+they do not act. His next play, _Agamemnon_ (1738), was not lost for
+want of labour or of friends. Pope appeared in the theatre on the first
+night, and was greeted with applause. The Prince and Princess of Wales
+were present on another occasion, but the play did not live long. His
+third attempt, _Edward and Eleanora_, was prohibited by the Lord
+Chamberlain, since it was supposed to praise the Prince of Wales at the
+expense of the Court. In 1740 the _Masque of Alfred_, by Thomson and
+Mallet, was performed. _Tancred and Sigismunda_ followed in 1745, and
+this tragedy, in which Garrick played the leading part, had at the time
+a considerable measure of success. The plot is more interesting than
+that of _Sophonisba_, and the characters are more life-like. Despite its
+effusive sentiment, Garrick's splendid acting would, no doubt, make the
+tragedy effective on the stage, but it does not add to the literary
+reputation of the poet. _Coriolanus_, Thomson's last drama, was not
+performed upon the stage until the year after his death.
+
+Voltaire, who had met Thomson and liked him--the liking, indeed, seemed
+to be universal--praised his tragedies for being 'elegantly writ.' 'It
+may be,' he says, 'that his heroes are neither moving nor busy enough,
+but taking him all in all, methinks he has the highest claim to the
+greatest esteem.' The value of Voltaire's criticism of an English
+dramatist is best appreciated by remembering his ignorant judgment of
+Shakespeare.
+
+Thomson's laurels were gained in another field of poetry. On the
+production of _Autumn_ in 1730, _The Seasons_ in its complete form was
+published by subscription in quarto. The four books, as we have already
+said, appeared at different times, _Winter_ being the first in order and
+_Autumn_ the latest. The Hymn with which the poem concludes may be
+compared, and will not greatly suffer in the comparison, with Adam's
+morning hymn in the fifth book of _Paradise Lost_, and with Coleridge's
+_Hymn in the Valley of Chamouni_. Like them it is raised, to use the
+poet's own words, to an 'Almighty Father.' A brief extract shall be
+given:
+
+    'His praise, ye brooks, attune, ye trembling rills;
+    And let me catch it as I muse along.
+    Ye headlong torrents, rapid, and profound;
+    Ye softer floods, that lead the humid maze
+    Along the vale; and thou, majestic main,
+    A secret world of wonders in thyself,
+    Sound His stupendous praise, whose greater voice
+    Or bids you roar, or bids your roarings fall.
+    Soft roll your incense, herbs, and fruits, and flowers,
+    In mingled clouds to Him, whose sun exalts,
+    Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil paints.
+    Ye forests bend, ye harvests wave, to Him;
+    Breathe your still song into the reaper's heart,
+    As home he goes beneath the joyous moon.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Great source of day! best image here below
+    Of thy Creator, ever pouring wide,
+    From world to world, the vital ocean round,
+    On Nature write with every beam His praise.
+    The thunder rolls: be hushed the prostrate world;
+    While cloud to cloud returns the solemn hymn.
+    Bleat out afresh, ye hills; ye mossy rocks
+    Retain the sound: the broad responsive low,
+    Ye valleys, raise; for the Great Shepherd reigns,
+    And His unsuffering kingdom yet will come.'
+
+Swift complains that the _Seasons_, being all descriptive, nothing is
+doing, a defect inseparable from the subject. But the work has a poet's
+best gift--imagination--and a poet's instinct for apprehending the charm
+of what is minute in Nature, as well as of what is grand.
+
+Thomson has been called the naturalist's poet, and Hartley Coleridge
+observes that he is 'a perfect reservoir of natural images.' In his
+account of what he had learnt only by report he depends sometimes on the
+ignorant traditions of the country people; but in describing what he
+observes with the bodily eye, and with the eye of the mind, he is
+faithful to what he sees, and to what he perceives. No Dutch painter can
+be more exact and accurate than Thomson in the delineation of familiar
+scenes, and of animal life. In illustration of this gift, which Cowper
+shares with him, a scene, not to be surpassed for truthfulness of
+description, shall be quoted from _Winter_:
+
+    'Through the hushed air the whitening shower descends,
+    At first thin-wavering; till at last the flakes
+    Fall broad and wide and fast, dimming the day
+    With a continual flow. The cherished fields
+    Put on their winter robe of purest white.
+    'Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts
+    Along the mazy current. Low the woods
+    Bow their hoar head; and ere the languid sun,
+    Faint from the west, emits his evening ray,
+    Earth's universal face, deep-hid and chill,
+    Is one wild dazzling waste, that buries wide
+    The works of man. Drooping, the labourer-ox
+    Stands covered o'er with snow, and then demands
+    The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven,
+    Tamed by the cruel season, crowd around
+    The winnowing store, and claim the little boon
+    Which Providence assigns them. One alone,
+    The redbreast, sacred to the household gods,
+    Wisely regardful of th' embroiling sky,
+    In joyless fields and thorny thickets, leaves
+    His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man
+    His annual visit. Half afraid, he first
+    Against the window beats; then brisk, alights
+    On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor,
+    Eyes all the smiling family askance,
+    And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is--
+    Till more familiar grown, the table-crumbs
+    Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds
+    Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare,
+    Though timorous of heart and hard beset
+    By death in various forms, dark snares, and dogs,
+    And more unpitying men, the garden seeks
+    Urged on by fearless want. The bleating kind
+    Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth,
+    With looks of dumb despair; then, sad-dispersed
+    Dig for the withered herb through heaps of snow.'
+
+Thomson loves also to paint the landscape on a broad scale, and though
+his diction is sometimes too florid, he generally satisfies the
+imagination, as, for instance, in the splendid description in _Summer_
+of a sand-storm in the desert.
+
+                                    'Breathed hot
+    From all the boundless furnace of the sky,
+    And the wide, glittering waste of burning sand,
+    A suffocating wind the pilgrim smites
+    With instant death. Patient of thirst and toil,
+    Son of the desert! even the camel feels,
+    Shot through his withered heart, the fiery blast.
+    Or from the black-red ether, bursting broad,
+    Sallies the sudden whirlwind. Straight the sands,
+    Commoved around, in gathering eddies play;
+    Nearer and nearer still they darkening come;
+    Till with the general all-involving storm
+    Swept up, the whole continuous wilds arise;
+    And by their noonday fount dejected thrown,
+    Or sunk at night in sad disastrous sleep,
+    Beneath descending hills, the caravan
+    Is buried deep. In Cairo's crowded streets
+    The impatient merchant, wondering, waits in vain,
+    And Mecca saddens at the long delay.'
+
+The _Seasons_ was at one time, and for many years the most popular
+volume of poetry in the country. It was to be found in every cottage,
+and passages from the poem were familiar to every school-boy. The
+appreciation of the work was more affectionate than critical, and
+Thomson's faults were sometimes mistaken for beauties; but the
+popularity of the _Seasons_ was a healthy sign, and the poem, a
+forerunner of Cowper's _Task_, brought into vigorous life, feelings and
+sympathies that had been long dormant.
+
+Pope, who is twice mentioned in the poem, took a great interest in its
+progress through the press. Thomson consulted him frequently, and
+accepted many of his suggestions, while apparently retaining at all
+times an independent judgment. To the familiar episode of 'the lovely
+young Lavinia' the following graceful passage is said, but on very
+doubtful authority to have been added by Pope.[30] The first line, given
+for the sake of the context, is from Thomson's pen:
+
+    'Thoughtless of beauty, she was Beauty's self,
+    Recluse amid the close-embowering woods;
+    As in the hollow breast of Apennine,
+    Beneath the shelter of encircling hills,
+    A myrtle rises, far from human eye,
+    And breathes its balmy fragrance o'er the wild;
+    So flourished, blooming and unseen by all,
+    The sweet Lavinia; till, at length, compelled
+    By strong necessity's supreme command
+    With smiling patience in her looks she went
+    To glean Palemon's fields.'
+
+Thomson had now gained the highest mark of his fame, and, like Pope, had
+won it in a few years. Nearly two years of foreign travel followed, the
+poet having obtained the post of governor to a son of the
+Solicitor-General. The fruit of this tour was a long poem in blank verse
+on _Liberty_, which probably gave him infinite labour, but his ascent
+upon this occasion of what he calls 'the barren, but delightful mountain
+of Parnassus,' was labour lost. It is enough to say of _Liberty_, that
+it contains more than three thousand lines of unreadable blank verse.
+Sinecures were the rewards of genius in Thomson's day, and he was made
+Secretary of Briefs in the Court of Chancery. He took a cottage at
+Richmond, within an easy walk of Pope, and the two poets met often and
+lived amicably.
+
+Thomson did not enjoy his official fortune long, for his patron died,
+and though he might have kept his post had he applied to the Lord
+Chancellor, in whose gift it was, he appears to have been too lazy to do
+so. His friend Lyttelton in this emergency introduced him to the Prince
+of Wales, who, on learning that his affairs 'were in a more poetical
+posture than formerly,' gave him a pension of £100 a year. There was no
+certainty in a gift of this nature, and in about ten years it was
+withdrawn.
+
+_The Castle of Indolence_ (1748) was the latest labour of Thomson's
+life, and in the judgment of many critics takes precedence of _The
+Seasons_ in poetical merit. This verdict may be questioned, but the
+poem, written in the Spenserian stanza, has a soothing beauty and an
+enchanting felicity of expression which show the poet's genius in a new
+light. It is unlike any poetry of that age, and when compared with _The
+Seasons_, the verse, as Wordsworth justly says, 'is more harmonious and
+the diction more pure.' All the imagery of the poem is adopted to the
+vague and sleepy action of the characters represented in it. It is a
+veritable poet's dream, which carries the reader in its earliest stanzas
+into 'a pleasing land of drowsy-head:'
+
+      'In lowly dale, fast by a river's side,
+      With woody hill o'er hill encompassed round,
+      A most enchanting wizard did abide,
+      Than whom a fiend more fell is nowhere found.
+      It was, I ween, a lovely spot of ground;
+      And there a season atween June and May
+      Half prankt with Spring, with Summer half embrowned,
+      A listless climate made, where, sooth to say,
+    No living wight could work, ne carèd even for play.'
+
+There are verbal inspirations in a great poet which satisfy the ear,
+capture the imagination, and live in the memory for ever. Milton's pages
+are studded with them like stars; Gray has a few, Wordsworth many, and
+Keats some not to be surpassed for witchery. Of such poetically
+suggestive lines Thomson has his share, and although it seems unfair to
+remove them from their context, the excision may be made in a few cases,
+since they show not only that a new poet had appeared in an age of
+prose, but a poet of a new order, whose inspiration was felt by his
+successors. How poetically imaginative is Thomson's imagery of the
+'meek-eyed morn, mother of dews;' of
+
+    'Ships dim discovered dropping from the clouds;'
+
+of
+
+    'Autumn nodding o'er the yellow plain;'
+
+of the summer wind
+
+    'Sweeping with shadowy gust the fields of corn;'
+
+and of the Hebrid-Isles
+
+    'Placed far amid the melancholy main,'
+
+a line which may have suggested the lovelier verse of Wordsworth
+descriptive of the cuckoo:
+
+    'Breaking the silence of the seas
+    Among the farthest Hebrides.'
+
+Thomson did not live long after the publication of _The Castle of
+Indolence_. A cold caught upon the river led to a fever, which ended
+fatally on August 27th, 1748. He had for some years been in love with a
+Miss Young, the 'Amanda' of his very feeble love lyrics, and her
+marriage is said to have hastened his death. Men, however, do not die
+for love at the mature age of forty-nine, and as Thomson was 'more fat
+than bard beseems,' and was not always temperate in his habits,
+constitutional causes are more likely to have led to the poet's death
+than Amanda's cruelty.
+
+Dr. Johnson says somewhere that the further authors keep apart from each
+other the better, and the literary squabbles of the last century
+afforded him good ground for the remark. It is to Thomson's credit that,
+like Goldsmith twenty-six years later, he died, leaving behind him many
+friends and not a single enemy. His fame rests upon two poems, _The
+Seasons_ and _The Castle of Indolence_, and on a song which has gained a
+national reputation. Apart from _Rule Britannia_, which appeared
+originally in the _Masque of Alfred_ and is spirited rather than
+poetical, his attempts to write lyrical poetry resulted in failure; but
+from his own niche in the Temple of Fame time is not likely to dislodge
+Thomson.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[25] See _Martialis Epigrammata_, book v. lii.
+
+[26] Fénelon was Archbishop of Cambray.
+
+[27] _The Poetical Works of Gay_, edited, with Life and Notes, by John
+Underhill, 2 vols.
+
+[28]
+
+    'I'll swim through seas; I'll ride upon the clouds;
+    I'll dig the earth; I'll blow out every fire;
+    I'll rave; I'll rant; I'll rise; I'll rush; I'll war;
+    Fierce as the man whom smiling dolphins bore
+    From the prosaic to poetic shore.
+    I'll tear the scoundrel into twenty pieces.'
+
+'The reader,' Fielding adds in a note, 'may see all the beauties of this
+speech in a late ode called a _Naval Lyric_.'
+
+[29] Written but not published. The earlier books of the _Night
+Thoughts_ appeared in 1742, the _Grave_ in 1743, but in a letter dated
+Feb. 25th, 1741-2, Blair in transmitting the MS. of the poem to a friend
+states that the greater portion of it was composed several years before
+his ordination ten years previously. Southey states that Blair's _Grave_
+is the only poem he could call to mind composed in imitation of the
+_Night Thoughts_, but the style as well as the date contradicts this
+judgment.
+
+[30] The tradition is founded on a volume in the British Museum
+containing MS. corrections supposed to be in Pope's handwriting. It is
+now, however, the opinion of experts that the writing is not Pope's. If
+he be the author, it is the only example of blank verse which we have
+from his pen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+MINOR POETS.
+
+Sir Samuel Garth--Ambrose Philips--John Philips--Nicholas
+    Rowe--Aaron Hill--Thomas Parnell--Thomas Tickell--William
+    Somerville--John Dyer--William Shenstone--Mark Akenside--David
+    Mallet--Scottish Song-Writers.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Sir Samuel Garth (1660-1717-18).]
+
+In Pope's day even the medical profession was influenced by party
+feeling, and Samuel Garth became known as the most famous Whig
+physician, but his friendships were not confined to one side, and he
+appears to have been universally beloved.
+
+Garth came of a Yorkshire family, and was born in 1660. He was admitted
+a Fellow of the College of Physicians in 1693, gained a large practice,
+and is said to have been very benevolent to the poor. The _Dispensary_
+(1699) is a satire called forth by the opposition of the Society of
+Apothecaries, to an edict of the College, and is a mock-heroic poem,
+which the quarrel made so effective at the time that it passed through
+several editions. The merit of achieving what the satirist intended may
+therefore be granted to the _Dispensary_. Few modern readers, however,
+will appreciate the welcome it received, and it is ludicrous to read in
+Anderson's edition of the poet that the poem 'is only inferior in
+humour, discrimination of character, and poetical ardour to the _Rape of
+the Lock_.' It would be far more accurate to say that the _Dispensary_
+has not a single merit in common with that poem, and but slight merit of
+any kind.
+
+The following passage upon death is the most vigorous, and is
+interesting as having supplied Cowper with a line in the poem on his
+Mother's Picture:[31]
+
+    ''Tis to the vulgar Death too harsh appears,
+    The ill we feel is only in our fears;
+    To die is landing on some silent shore
+    Where billows never break, nor tempests roar;
+    Ere well we feel th' friendly stroke 'tis o'er.
+    The wise through thought th' insults of death defy,
+    The fools through blest insensibility.
+    'Tis what the guilty fear, the pious crave;
+    Sought by the wretch and vanquished by the brave.
+    It eases lovers, sets the captive free,
+    And though a tyrant, offers liberty.'
+
+Addison in defending Garth in the _Whig-Examiner_ from the criticisms of
+Prior in the _Examiner_, the organ of the Tory party, says he does not
+question but the author 'who has endeavoured to prove that he who wrote
+the _Dispensary_ was no poet, will very suddenly undertake to show that
+he who gained the battle of _Blenheim_ is no general.' The comparison
+was an unfortunate one. Marlborough's military reputation has grown
+brighter with time, Garth's fame as a poet has long ago ceased to exist.
+
+A literary although not a poetical interest is associated with the name
+of "well-natured Garth," who, as Pope acknowledges, was one of his
+earliest friends; like Arbuthnot, he lived among the wits, and as a
+member of the famous Kit-cat Club he wrote verses upon the Whig beauties
+toasted by its members. His name is linked with Dryden's as well as with
+that of his illustrious successor. It will be remembered how, on the
+death of Dryden, the poet's body lay in state in the College of
+Physicians, and how, before the great procession started for
+Westminster Abbey, Sir Samuel, who was then President, delivered a Latin
+oration.
+
+Garth died in January, 1717-18, and, according to Pope, was a good
+Christian without knowing it. Addison, however, who visited Garth in his
+last illness, told Dr. Berkeley that he rejected Christianity on the
+assurance of his friend Halley that its doctrines were incomprehensible,
+and the religion itself an imposture. According to another report which
+comes through Pope, he actually 'died a papist.'
+
+[Sidenote: Ambrose Philips (1671-1749).]
+
+Ambrose Philips, who belonged, like Tickell, to Addison's 'little
+senate,' was born in 1671, and educated at St. John's, Cambridge. His
+_Pastorals_ were published in Tonson's _Miscellany_ (1709), and the same
+volume contained the _Pastorals_ of Pope. Log-rolling was understood in
+those days, and Philips's verses received warm praise in more than one
+number of the _Guardian_, the writer in one place declaring that there
+have been only four masters of the art in above two thousand years:
+'Theocritus, who left his dominions to Virgil; Virgil, who left his to
+his son Spenser; and Spenser, who was succeeded by his eldest born,
+Philips.'
+
+Pope's _Pastorals_ were not mentioned, and in revenge he devised the
+consummate artifice of sending an anonymous paper to the _Guardian_, in
+which, while appearing to praise Philips, he exalted himself. Steele
+took the bait, and considering that the essay depreciated Pope would not
+publish it without his permission, which was of course readily granted.
+'From that time,' says Johnson, 'Pope and Philips lived in a perpetual
+reciprocation of malevolence.'
+
+Philips's tragedy, _The Distrest Mother_ (1712), a translation, or
+nearly so, of Racine's _Andromaque_, was puffed in the _Spectator_. It
+is the play to which Sir Roger de Coverley was taken by his friends, and
+the representation supplied the good knight with an opportunity for
+much humorous comment.
+
+'When Sir Roger saw Andromache's obstinate refusal to her lover's
+importunities, he whispered me in the ear that he was sure she would
+never have him; to which he added with a more than ordinary vehemence,
+"You cannot imagine, sir, what it is to have to do with a widow." Upon
+Pyrrhus his threatening afterwards to leave her, the knight shook his
+head, and muttered to himself, "Ay, do if you can." This part dwelt so
+much upon my friend's imagination that at the close of the third Act, as
+I was thinking of something else, he whispered in my ear, "These widows,
+sir, are the most perverse creatures in the world. But pray," says he,
+"you that are a critic, is this play according to your dramatic rules,
+as you call them? Should your people in tragedy always talk to be
+understood? Why, there is not a single sentence in this play that I do
+not know the meaning of."'[32] Addison also inserted and praised in the
+_Spectator_ Philips's translations from Sappho (Nos. 223, 229).
+
+His odes to babes and children earned for him the _sobriquet_ of 'Namby
+Pamby,' 'a term which has been incorporated into the English language to
+designate mawkish sentiment. Namby was the infantine pronunciation of
+Ambrose, and Pamby was formed by the first letter of Philips's surname
+and that reduplication of sound which is natural to lisping
+children.'[33]
+
+Between simplicity and absurdity the line is a narrow one, and Philips
+stepped over it when he wrote to a child in the nursery--
+
+    'Dimply damsel, sweetly smiling,
+    All caressing, none beguiling;
+    Bud of beauty, fairly blowing,
+    Every charm to nature owing.'
+
+The longest of his baby songs is addressed to the Hon. Miss Carteret, in
+which he pictures the child's progress to womanhood, and anticipates her
+future loveliness and maiden reign:
+
+    'Then the taper-moulded waist
+    With a span of ribbon braced;
+    And the swell of either breast,
+    And the wide high-vaulted chest;
+    And the neck so white and round,
+    Little neck with brilliants bound;
+    And the store of charms which shine
+    Above, in lineaments divine,
+    Crowded in a narrow space
+    To complete the desperate face;
+    These alluring powers, and more,
+    Shall enamoured youths adore;
+    These and more in courtly lays
+    Many an aching heart shall praise.'
+
+The inventory of the maiden's physical charms which follows includes
+veiny temples, sloping shoulders, a hazely lucid eye, and cheek of
+health; but in the category the only allusion to the attractions of
+intellect and heart is in a couplet foretelling her
+
+                              'Gentleness of mind,
+    Gentle from a gentle kind.'
+
+That Philips translated _The Persian Tales_ is indelibly recorded by
+Pope:
+
+    'The bard whom pilfered Pastorals renown,
+    Who turns a Persian tale for half-a-crown,
+    Just writes to make his barrenness appear,
+    And strains from hard-bound brains eight lines a year.'
+
+But even Pope could award praise to Philips. In a letter to Henry
+Cromwell, in 1710, he observes that he was capable of writing very
+nobly, 'as I guess by a small copy of his, published in the _Tatler_, on
+the Danish winter;' and two years later he says to his friend Caryll:
+'Mr. Philips has two lines which seem to me what the French call very
+_picturesque_, that I cannot omit to you:
+
+    'All hid in snow in bright confusion lie,
+    And with one dazzling waste fatigue the eye!'
+
+The lines, not quite accurately quoted by Pope, are from an epistle,
+addressed to Lord Dorset from Copenhagen, which contains a few striking
+couplets, two of which may be transcribed before bidding adieu to
+Ambrose Philips:
+
+    'The vast leviathan wants room to play,
+    And spout his waters in the face of day.
+    The starving wolves along the main sea prowl,
+    And to the moon in icy valleys howl.'
+
+[Sidenote: John Philips (1676-1708).]
+
+Ambrose Philips must not be confounded with his namesake John, the
+author of a clever burlesque of Milton, called _The Splendid Shilling_
+(1705); of _Blenheim_ (1705), a poem which he was urged to write by the
+Tories in opposition to Addison's _Campaign_; and of a poem upon _Cider_
+(1706), in 'Miltonian verse,' which seems to have afforded several
+suggestions to Pope in his _Windsor Forest_. It is said to display a
+considerable knowledge of the subject, and in that its principal merit
+consists. From _The Splendid Shilling_ a brief extract may be given:
+
+    'So pass my days. But when nocturnal shades
+    This world envelop, and th' inclement air
+    Persuades men to repel benumbing frosts
+    With pleasant wines, and crackling blaze of wood;
+    Me, lonely sitting, nor the glimmering light
+    Of make-weight candle, nor the joyous talk
+    Of loving friend delights; distressed, forlorn,
+    Amidst the horrors of the tedious night,
+    Darkling I sigh, and feed with dismal thoughts
+    My anxious mind; or sometimes mournful verse
+    Indite, and sing of groves and myrtle shades,
+    Or desperate lady near a purling stream,
+    Or lover pendent on a willow tree.
+    Meanwhile I labour with eternal drought
+    And restless wish, and rave; my parched throat
+    Finds no relief, nor heavy eyes repose.
+    But if a slumber haply does invade
+    My weary limbs, my fancy still awake,
+    Thoughtful of drink, and eager, in a dream
+    Tipples imaginary pots of ale
+    In vain; awake I find the settled thirst
+    Still gnawing, and the pleasant phantom curse.'
+
+'Philips,' says the poet Campbell, 'had the merit of studying and
+admiring Milton, but he never could imitate him without ludicrous
+effect, either in jest or earnest. His _Splendid Shilling_ is the
+earliest and one of the best of our parodies; but _Blenheim_ is as
+completely a burlesque upon Milton as _The Splendid Shilling_, though it
+was written and read with gravity, ... yet such are the fluctuations of
+taste that contemporary criticism bowed with solemn admiration over his
+Miltonic cadences.'
+
+[Sidenote: Nicholas Rowe (1673-1718).]
+
+Nicholas Rowe had the honour, if it was one in those days, of being made
+Laureate on the accession of George I. His odes, epistles, and songs are
+without merit, but he gained reputation as the translator of Lucan's
+_Pharsalia_, of which Sir Arthur Gorges had produced a version in 1614,
+and his plays entitle him to a place, though not a high one, in our
+dramatic literature.
+
+Rowe edited an edition of Shakespeare, and should have known his author,
+yet in a prologue he declares that he could not draw women--an amazing
+assertion echoed by Collins, who praises Fletcher for his knowledge of
+the 'female mind,' and adds that 'stronger Shakespeare felt for man
+alone.'
+
+The chronological list of Rowe's dramas runs as follows: _The Ambitious
+Step-mother_ (1700); _Tamerlane_ (1702); _The Fair Penitent_ (1703);
+_Ulysses_ (1705); _The Royal Convert_ (1707); the _Tragedy of Jane
+Shore_ (1714); and the _Tragedy of Lady Jane Grey_ (1715). Measured by
+his contemporary dramatists he is a distinguished playwright. His
+characters do not live, but he could invent effective scenes, though in
+some cases the poet's taste may be questioned.
+
+For many years _Tamerlane_ was acted at Drury Lane on the anniversary of
+King William's landing in England, and under the names of Tamerlane and
+Bajazet the king is belauded at the expense of Louis XIV. _The Fair
+Penitent_, a piece even more successful upon the stage, will still
+please the reader, though he may question the high eulogium of Johnson,
+that "scarcely any work of any poet is at once so interesting by the
+fable, and so delightful by the language." Rowe has not the tragic power
+which can express passion without rant, and pathos without extravagance.
+In _The Fair Penitent_ Calista gives utterance to her feelings by piling
+up expletives. Thus, when her husband attacks the lover who has ruined
+her, she exclaims, 'Destruction! fury! sorrow! shame! and death!' and,
+on another occasion, she cries out, 'Madness! confusion!' words which
+give a sense of the ludicrous rather than of the tragic; and so also
+does Calista's last utterance when, addressing Altamont, she says:
+
+                    'Had I but early known
+    Thy wondrous worth, thou excellent young man
+    We had been happier both--now 'tis too late!'
+
+Rowe may be regarded as the principal representative of tragedy in the
+'age of Pope,' but his respectable work shows a fatal degeneration from
+the 'gorgeous tragedy' of the Elizabethans.
+
+[Sidenote: Aaron Hill (1684-1749).]
+
+Aaron Hill, unlike Rowe, was not distinguished as a dramatist, and
+succeeded only in two or three adaptations from the French. His claims
+as a poet are also insignificant. He was born in London in 1684, with
+expectations that were not destined to be realized, but Fortune was not
+unkind to him. His uncle, Lord Paget, Ambassador at Constantinople, gave
+the youth a warm welcome, supplied him with a tutor, and sent him to
+travel in the East. On Lord Paget's return to England, Hill accompanied
+him, and together they are said to have visited a great part of Europe.
+Some time later Hill went abroad again, and was absent two or three
+years. For awhile--it could not have been long--he was secretary to the
+Earl of Peterborough, and at the age of twenty-six, his good star being
+still in the ascendant, he married a young lady 'of great merit and
+beauty, with whom he had a very handsome fortune.' Hill was then
+appointed manager of Drury Lane, and he wrote a number of plays, the
+very names of which are now forgotten. Few men indeed so well known in
+his own day have sunk into such insignificance in ours. He wrote eight
+books of a long and unfinished epic called _Gideon_, which I suppose no
+one in the present century has had the hardihood to read; like Young he
+wrote a poem on _The Judgment Day_, a theme attempted also, shortly
+before his death, by John Philips, and that, after his kind, he produced
+a Pindaric ode goes without saying. A long poem called _The Northern
+Star_, a panegyric on Peter the Great, is said to have passed through
+several editions. The poem does not prove Hill to be a poet, but it
+shows his command of the heroic couplet. The style of the poem, which
+is an indiscriminate panegyric, may be judged from the following lines:
+
+    'Transcendent prince! how happy must thou be!
+    What can'st thou look upon unblessed by thee?
+    What inward peace must that calm bosom know,
+    Whence conscious virtue does so strongly flow!
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Such are the kings who make God's image shine,
+    Nor blush to dare assert their right divine!
+    No earth-born bias warps their climbing will,
+    No pride their power, no avarice whets their skill.
+    They poise each hope which bids the wise obey,
+    And shed broad blessings from their widening sway;
+    To raise the afflicted, stretch the healing hand,
+    Drive crushed oppression from each rescued land,
+    Bold in alternate right, or sheath or draw
+    The sword of conquest, or the sword of law;
+    Spare what resists not, what opposes bend,
+    And govern cool, what they with warmth defend.'
+
+Hill has the merit of having turned the tables upon Pope, who had put
+him into the treatise on the _Bathos_, and then into the _Dunciad_,
+where, however, the lines have more of compliment than censure, since he
+is made to mount 'far off among the swans of Thames.' Irritated by a
+note in the _Dunciad_, Hill replied in a long poem entitled _The
+Progress of Wit, a Caveat_, which opens with the following pointed
+lines:
+
+    'Tuneful Alexis, on the Thames' fair side,
+    The ladies' plaything, and the Muses' pride;
+    With merit popular, with wit polite,
+    Easy though vain, and elegant though light;
+    Desiring, and deserving others' praise,
+    Poorly accepts a fame he ne'er repays;
+    Unborn to cherish, sneakingly approves,
+    And wants the soul to spread the worth he loves.'
+
+In a letter to Hill Pope complained of these lines, and had the
+hypocrisy to say that he never thought any great matters of his poetical
+capacity, but prided himself on the superiority of his moral life. Hill
+returned a masterly and incisive reproof to this ridiculous statement,
+in the course of which he says:
+
+    'I am sorry to hear you say you never thought any great matters
+    of your poetry. It is in my opinion the characteristic you are
+    to hope your distinction from. To be honest is the duty of every
+    plain man. Nor, since the soul of poetry is sentiment, can a
+    great poet want morality. But your honesty you possess in common
+    with a million who will never be remembered; whereas your poetry
+    is a peculiar, that will make it impossible that you should be
+    forgotten.'
+
+He adds that if Pope had not been in the spleen when he wrote, he would
+have remembered that humility is a moral virtue; and how, asks the
+writer, can you know that your moral life is above that of most of the
+wits 'since you tell me in the same letter that many of their names were
+unknown to you?'
+
+Aaron Hill, though he could write a sensible letter, was not a wise man.
+He was 'everything by turns and nothing long.' Poetry was but one of his
+accomplishments, and we are told that he cultivated it 'as a relaxation
+from the study of history, criticism, geography, physic, commerce,
+agriculture, war, law, chemistry, and natural philosophy, to which he
+devoted the greatest part of his time.'
+
+As a poet Hill has the facility in composition exhibited by so many of
+his contemporaries, and he has occasionally a pretty turn of fancy. His
+last labour was the successful adaptation of Voltaire's _Merope_ to the
+English stage (1749); sixteen years before he had adapted _Zara_ with
+equal success.
+
+[Sidenote: Thomas Parnell (1679-1718).]
+
+Among the minor poets of the period an honourable place must be given to
+Parnell, who possessed the soul of a poet, but gave limited expression
+to it, for it was only during the later years of a short life that he
+discovered where his genius lay. The friend of Pope, Arbuthnot, and
+Swift, his biography has been written by Johnson, and more discursively
+by his countryman Goldsmith.
+
+Thomas Parnell was born in Dublin, 1679, entered Trinity College at the
+early age of thirteen, and in 1700 obtained the degree of Master of
+Arts. Having taken orders he gained preferment in the Church, became, in
+1706, Archdeacon of Clogher, and through the recommendation of Swift
+obtained also a good living. Parnell was fond of society, and was
+accustomed as often as possible to join the wits in London. He was a
+member of the Scriblerus Club, wrote for the _Spectator_, preached
+eloquent sermons, and had the ambition of a poet. But the loss of his
+wife preyed upon his mind, and he is said, though I believe chiefly on
+Pope's authority, to have given way to intemperance. He died suddenly at
+Chester at the age of thirty-nine in 1718.
+
+Parnell was one of the poets whose fortunes Swift did his best to
+promote. Writing in 1712, he says, 'I gave Lord Bolingbroke a poem of
+Parnell's. I made Parnell insert some compliments in it to his lordship.
+He is extremely pleased with it, and read some parts of it to-day to
+Lord Treasurer, who liked it as much. And indeed he outdoes all our
+poets here a bar's length.' And a month later he writes, 'Lord
+Bolingbroke likes Parnell mightily, and it is pleasant to see that one
+who hardly passed for anything in Ireland, makes his way here with a
+little friendly forwarding.'
+
+_The Hermit_, the _Hymn to Contentment_, an _Allegory on Man_, and a
+_Night Piece on Death_, give Parnell his title to a place among the
+poets. _The Rise of Woman_, and _Health, an Eclogue_, have also much
+merit, and were praised by Pope (but this was to their author) as 'two
+of the most beautiful things he ever read.' The story of _The Hermit_,
+written originally in Spanish, is given in _Howell's Letters_
+(1645-1655), and is admirably told by Parnell, but much that he wrote,
+including a series of long poems on Scripture characters, is poetically
+worthless. His poems, published five years after his death, were edited
+by Pope, who wisely suppressed some pieces unworthy of the poet. Then,
+as now, literary scavengers were at work. In 1758 the suppressed poems
+were published, and called forth the comment from Gray, 'Parnell is the
+dunghill of Irish Grub Street.' To Parnell Pope was indebted for the
+_Essay on Homer_ prefixed to the translation, with which he does not
+seem to have been well pleased. He complained of the stiffness of the
+style, and said it had cost him more pains in the correcting than the
+writing of it would have done.
+
+If Parnell's prose has the defect of stiffness, his lines glide with a
+smoothness that must have satisfied the ear of Pope. The higher
+harmonies of verse were unknown to him, but ease is not without a charm,
+and in illustration of Parnell's gift the final lines of _A Night Piece
+on Death_ shall be quoted:
+
+    'When men my scythe and darts supply,
+    How great a king of fears am I!
+    They view me like the last of things,
+    They make and then they draw my stings.
+    Fools! if you less provoked your fears,
+    No more my spectre form appears.
+    Death's but a path that must be trod,
+    If man would ever pass to God;
+    A port of calms, a state to ease
+    From the rough rage of swelling seas.
+    Why then thy flowing sable stoles,
+    Deep pendent cypress, mourning poles,
+    Loose scarfs to fall athwart thy weeds,
+    Long palls, drawn hearses, covered steeds,
+    And plumes of black that as they tread,
+    Nod o'er the scutcheons of the dead?
+    Nor can the parted body know,
+    Nor wants the soul these forms of woe;
+    As men who long in prison dwell,
+    With lamps that glimmer round the cell,
+    Whene'er their suffering years are run,
+    Spring forth to greet the glittering sun;
+    Such joy, though far transcending sense,
+    Have pious souls at parting hence.
+    On earth and in the body placed,
+    A few and evil years they waste;
+    But when their chains are cast aside,
+    See the glad scene unfolding wide,
+    Clap the glad wing, and tower away,
+    And mingle with the blaze of day.'
+
+[Sidenote: Thomas Tickell (1686-1740).]
+
+Tickell wished to be remembered as the friend of Addison, and with
+Addison his name is indissolubly associated. The poem dedicated to the
+essayist's memory is perhaps over-praised by Macaulay when he says that
+it would do honour to the greatest name in our literature, but it proved
+incontestibly that Tickell, as a poet, was superior to the master whom
+he so loved and honoured. His reputation hangs upon this elegy, which
+Fox pronounced perfect.[34] The _Prospect of Peace_, which passed
+through several editions, had at one time a considerable reputation, not
+assuredly for its poetry, but because it appealed to the spirit of the
+time The style of the poem may be judged from these lines:--
+
+    'Accept, great Anne, the tears their memory draws,
+    Who nobly perished in their sovereign's cause;
+    For thou in pity bidd'st the war give o'er,
+    Mourn'st thy slain heroes, nor wilt venture more.
+    Vast price of blood on each victorious day!
+    (But Europe's freedom doth that price repay.)
+    Lamented triumphs! when one breath must tell
+    That Marlborough conquered and that Dormer fell.'
+
+His _Colin and Lucy_ called forth high praise from Goldsmith as one of
+the best ballads in our language, and Gray terms it the prettiest ballad
+in the world. Three stanzas from this once famous poem shall be
+quoted:--
+
+    '"I hear a voice you cannot hear,
+      Which says I must not stay;
+    I see a hand you cannot see,
+      Which beckons me away.
+    By a false heart and broken vows,
+      In early youth I die;
+    Was I to blame because his bride
+      Was thrice as rich as I?
+
+    '"Ah, Colin, give not her thy vows,
+      Vows due to me alone;
+    Nor thou, fond maid, receive his kiss,
+      Nor think him all thy own.
+    To-morrow in the church to wed,
+      Impatient, both prepare!
+    But know, fond maid, and know, false man,
+      That Lucy will be there!
+
+    '"Then bear my corse, my comrades, bear,
+      This bridegroom blithe to meet,
+    He in his wedding trim so gay,
+      I in my winding-sheet."
+    She spoke, she died; her corse was borne
+      The bridegroom blithe to meet,
+    He in his wedding trim so gay,
+      She in her winding-sheet.'
+
+There is some fancy but no imagination in the machinery of Tickell's
+long poem on _Kensington Gardens_, a title which recalls Matthew
+Arnold's exquisite stanzas. But the pathetic beauty of Arnold's lines
+belongs to a world of poetry wholly unlike that in which even the best
+of the Queen Anne poets lived and moved.
+
+Tickell's translation of the first book of the _Iliad_ led to the
+quarrel already mentioned in the account of Pope. He wrote, also, a
+rather lengthy poem on Oxford, in which there is some absurd criticism
+of insignificant poetasters, and, as a matter of course, an extravagant
+eulogium of Addison.
+
+The few facts recorded of Tickell's life may be summed up in a
+paragraph. He was born in 1686 at Bridekirk, in Cumberland, and entered
+Queen's College, Oxford, in 1701. In 1708 he obtained his M.A. degree,
+and two years later was chosen Fellow. For sixteen years Tickell held
+his fellowship, but resigned it on his marriage in 1726. In a poem
+addressed to the lady before marriage, he asks whether
+
+    'By thousands sought, Clotilda, canst thou free
+    Thy crowd of captives and descend to me?'
+
+Praise which in those days would be regarded as fulsome secured the
+friendship and patronage of Addison, who employed him in public affairs,
+and when he became Secretary of State made Tickell Under-Secretary. To
+him Addison left the charge of editing his works, which were published
+by subscription, and appeared in four quarto volumes in 1721. In 1725 he
+was made secretary to the Lord Justices of Ireland, 'a place of great
+honour,' which he held until his death in 1740. The praise of
+Wordsworth, a poet always chary of expressing approbation, has been
+bestowed upon Tickell. 'I think him,' he said, 'one of the very best
+writers of occasional verses.'
+
+[Sidenote: William Somerville (1692-1742).]
+
+Tickell had written some lines on hunting, which he published as a
+fragment. His contemporary Somerville, selecting the same subject, wrote
+_The Chase_ (1735), a poem in blank verse. He was born at Edston, in
+Warwickshire, and was said, Dr. Johnson writes, 'to be of the first
+family in his county.' He was educated at Winchester and Oxford, and had
+the tastes of a scholar as well as of a country gentleman, which, among
+other accomplishments, included that of hard drinking. We know little
+about him, and what we do know is deplorable, for his friend Shenstone
+writes that he was plagued and threatened by low wretches, and 'forced
+to drink himself into pains of the body in order to get rid of the pains
+of the mind.' He died in 1742, the owner of a good estate, which, owing
+to a contempt for economy, he was never able to enjoy. 'I loved him for
+nothing so much,' said Shenstone, 'as for his
+flocci-nauci-nihili-pili-fication of money.'
+
+In _The Chase_ Somerville had the advantage of knowing his subject, but
+knowledge is not poetry, and the interest of the poem is not due to its
+poetical qualities. He deserves some credit for his skill in handling a
+variety of metres as well as blank verse, in which his principal poem is
+written. In an address _To Mr. Addison_, the couplet,
+
+    'When panting Virtue her last efforts made,
+    You brought your Clio to the virgin's aid,'
+
+is praised by Johnson as one of those happy strokes which are seldom
+attained. In the same poem Shakespeare and Addison are brought together
+in a way that is far from happy:
+
+    'In heaven he sings; on earth your muse supplies
+    Th' important loss, and heals our weeping eyes,
+    Correctly great, she melts each flinty heart
+    With equal genius, but superior art.'
+
+Praise can be too strong even for a poet's digestion, and Somerville,
+who writes a great deal more nonsense in the same strain, should have
+remembered that he was not addressing a fool. If the poetical adulation
+of the time is to be excused, it must be on the ground that a poet had
+to live by patronage and not by the public. In a pecuniary point of view
+his subservience to men in high position was often successful. An almost
+universal custom, it was not regarded as degrading; but the poet must
+have been peculiarly constituted who was not degraded by it.
+
+[Sidenote: John Dyer (1698(?)-1758).]
+
+In the last century any subject was deemed suitable for poetry, and the
+Welsh poet, John Dyer, who was born about 1698, found in his later life
+poetical materials in _The Fleece_ (1757), a poem in four books of blank
+verse. His genius for descriptive poetry and his passionate and
+intelligent delight in natural objects are seen more pleasantly in
+_Grongar Hill_ (published in the same year as Thomson's _Winter_), a
+poem not without grammatical inaccuracies, one of which deforms the
+first couplet, but full of poetical feeling. In an ease of composition
+which runs into laxity he reminds us occasionally of George Wither. His
+chief merit is, that while independent of Thomson, he was inspired by
+the same love, and wrote with the same aim. Dyer is not content with
+bare description, but likes to moralize on the landscape he surveys.
+Thus, when looking on a ruined tower, the poet exclaims:
+
+    'Yet time has seen, that lifts the low,
+    And level lays the lofty brow,
+    Has seen this broken pile compleat,
+    Big with the vanity of state;
+    But transient is the smile of fate!
+    A little rule, a little sway,
+    A sunbeam in a winter's day,'
+    Is all the proud and mighty have
+    Between the cradle and the grave.'
+
+Dyer who is best seen in the octosyllabic metre, chose it also for _The
+Country Walk_, a poem in which, notwithstanding an occasional lapse into
+the conventional diction of the period, the rural pictures are drawn
+from life. He takes the reader into the farm-yard and fields as he
+writes:
+
+    'I am resolved this charming day
+    In the open field to stray,
+    And have no roof above my head
+    But that whereon the gods do tread.
+    Before the yellow barn I see
+    A beautiful variety
+    Of strutting cocks, advancing stout,
+    And flirting empty chaff about;
+    Hens, ducks, and geese, and all their brood,
+    And turkeys gobbling for their food;
+    While rustics thrash the wealthy floor,
+    And tempt all to crowd the door.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    And now into the fields I go,
+    Where thousand flaming flowers glow,
+    And every neighbouring hedge I greet
+    With honey-suckles smelling sweet;
+    Now o'er the daisy meads I stray
+    And meet with, as I pace my way,
+    Sweetly shining on the eye
+    A rivulet gliding smoothly by,
+    Which shows with what an easy tide
+    The moments of the happy glide.'
+
+_An Epistle to a Friend in Town_, records his satisfaction with the
+country retirement in which his days are passed. In a rather awkward
+stanza he says that he is more than content, and is indeed charmed with
+everything, and the lines close with the moralizing that was dear to
+Dyer's heart:
+
+    'Alas! what a folly that wealth and domain
+      We heap up in sin and in sorrow!
+    Immense is the toil, yet the labour how vain!
+      Is not life to be over to-morrow?
+    Then glide on my moments, the few that I have,
+      Smooth-shaded and quiet and even;
+    While gently the body descends to the grave,
+      And the spirit arises to heaven.'
+
+Dyer was an artist as well as a poet, and visited Italy, which suggested
+a poem in blank verse, _The Ruins of Rome_ (1740). After his return to
+England he entered into holy orders, took a wife, who is said to have
+been a descendant of Shakespeare, and settled at Calthorp in
+Leicestershire, which he afterwards exchanged for a living in
+Lincolnshire. There is much to like in Dyer, and he has had the good
+fortune to win the applause of two great poets. Gray says, in a letter
+to Horace Walpole, that he had 'more of poetry in his imagination than
+almost any of our number,' and Wordsworth in a sonnet, _To the Poet,
+John Dyer_, writes:
+
+    'Though hasty Fame hath many a chaplet culled
+    For worthless brows, while in the pensive shade
+    Of cold neglect she leaves thy head ungraced,
+    Yet pure and powerful minds, hearts meek and still,
+    A grateful few, shall love thy modest Lay,
+    Long as the shepherd's bleating flock shall stray
+    O'er naked Snowdon's wide aerial waste;
+    Long as the thrush shall pipe on Grongar Hill!'
+
+[Sidenote: William Shenstone (1714-1764).]
+
+'The true rustic style,' Charles Lamb writes, 'I think is to be found in
+Shenstone,' and he calls his _Schoolmistress_ the 'prettiest of poems.'
+
+William Shenstone was born in 1714 at the Leasowes in Hales-Owen, a spot
+upon which he afterwards expended his skill as a landscape gardener. In
+1732 he went up to Pembroke College, Oxford, and remained there for some
+years without taking a degree. Those years appear to have been devoted
+to poetry. In 1737 Shenstone published a small volume anonymously. This
+was followed by the _Judgment of Hercules_ (1741), and by the
+_Schoolmistress_ (1742). In 1745 he undertook the management of his
+estate, and began, to quote Dr. Johnson's quaint description, 'to point
+his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his walks, and to
+wind his waters; which he did with such judgment and such fancy, as made
+his little domain the envy of the great and the admiration of the
+skilful; a place to be visited by travellers and copied by designers.'
+On this estate, with its lakes and cascades, its urns and poetical
+inscriptions, its hanging woods, and 'wild shaggy precipice,' Shenstone
+appears to have spent all his fortune. He led the life of a dilettante,
+and died unmarried at the age of fifty. His elegies and songs are dead,
+and whatever vitality remains in his verse will be found in the
+_Pastoral Ballad_ and the _Schoolmistress_.
+
+The ballad written in anapæstic verse has an Arcadian grace, against
+which even Johnson's robust intellect was not proof. For the following
+lines he says, 'if any mind denies its sympathy it has no acquaintance
+with love or nature':
+
+    'When forced the fair nymph to forego,
+      What anguish I felt in my heart!
+    Yet I thought--but it might not be so--
+      'Twas with pain that she saw me depart.
+    She gazed as I slowly withdrew,
+      My path I could hardly discern;
+    So sweetly she bade me adieu,
+      I thought that she bade me return.
+
+The _Schoolmistress_, written in imitation of Spenser, has the merits of
+simplicity and homely humour. The village dame is a life-like character,
+and the urchins whom she is supposed to teach, and does sometimes teach
+by chastisement, are cunningly portrayed.
+
+From the verses _Written at an Inn in Henley_ three stanzas may be
+quoted. The last will be already known to readers familiar with their
+Boswell:
+
+    'I fly from pomp, I fly from plate,
+      I fly from falsehood's specious grin!
+    Freedom I love, and form I hate,
+      And choose my lodgings at an inn.
+
+    'Here, waiter! take my sordid ore,
+      Which lacqueys else might hope to win;
+    It buys what courts have not in store,
+      It buys me freedom at an inn!
+
+    'Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round,
+      Where'er his stages may have been,
+    May sigh to think he still has found
+      The warmest welcome at an inn.'
+
+Unhappily this final verse, which Johnson is said to have repeated 'with
+great emotion,' has lost its application. The modern traveller, instead
+of being warmly welcomed at an inn, loses his identity and becomes a
+number.
+
+[Sidenote: Mark Akenside (1721-1770).]
+
+Akenside, who was born at Newcastle, 1721, received his education in
+Edinburgh, where he was sent to prepare for the ministry among the
+Dissenters. He, however, changed his mind, became a medical student, and
+finally, though much disliked for his manners, gained reputation as a
+physician in London. He is stated to have been excessively stiff and
+formal, and a frigid stiffness marks the _Pleasures of Imagination_
+(1744), a remarkable work considering the writer's age, since it is
+without the faults of youth. The poem is founded on Addison's _Essays_
+on the subject in the _Spectator_, and the poet also owes a considerable
+debt to Shaftesbury. Akenside's blank verse has the merits of dignity
+and strength. But the work is as cold as the author's manners were said
+to be, and in spite of what may be called poetical power, as distinct
+from a high order of inspiration, the poem leaves the reader unmoved.
+Pope, who saw it in MS., said that Akenside was 'no everyday writer,'
+which is a just criticism. The _Pleasures of Imagination_ has the merits
+of careful workmanship and of some originality, but the interest which
+it at one time excited is not likely to be revived. In 1757 Akenside
+re-wrote the poem, and I believe that no critic, with the exception of
+Hazlitt, regards the second attempt as an improvement on the first. His
+skill in the use of classical imagery is seen to advantage in the _Hymn
+to the Naiads_ (1746), and he deserves praise, too, for his
+inscriptions, which are distinguished for conciseness and vigour of
+style. The poet, it may be added, wrote a great number of odes that lack
+all, or nearly all, the qualities which should distinguish lyrical
+poetry. Not a spark of the divine fire warms or illuminates these
+reputable verses, but the author states that his chief aim was to be
+correct, and in that he has succeeded.
+
+[Sidenote: David Mallet (1700-1765).]
+
+David Mallet, a friend or acquaintance of Thomson, was contemptible as a
+man and comparatively insignificant as a poet. He did a large amount of
+dirty work, and appears to have made a good income by it. The base
+character of the man was known to Bolingbroke, of whose basest purpose
+he made him the instrument (see c. vii.). Mallet's ballad of _William
+and Margaret_ (1724) is known to many readers, and so is the inferior
+ballad _Edwin and Emma_, which was written many years afterwards. In
+1728 he published _The Excursion_, a poem not sufficiently significant
+to prevent Wordsworth from selecting the same title. In Mallet's poem on
+_Verbal Criticism_ (1733), Johnson states that he paid court to Pope,
+and was rewarded by a travelling tutorship gained through the poet's
+influence. In 1731 his tragedy, _Eurydice_, was acted at Drury Lane. He
+joined Thomson, as we have said elsewhere, in the composition of the
+masque of _Alfred_, and 'almost wholly changed' the piece after
+Thomson's death. _Amyntor and Theodora_, a long poem in blank verse,
+appeared in 1747; _Britannia_, a masque, in 1753, and _Elvira_, a
+tragedy, in 1763. Mallet, who was without qualifications for the task,
+wrote a life of Lord Bacon. He is said to have obtained a pension for
+inflaming the mind of the public against Admiral Byng, and thereby
+hastening his execution.
+
+In Anderson's edition of the poets, Mallet's biography is related with
+more fulness than by Dr. Johnson, and, after frankly recording acts
+which fully justify Macaulay's statement that Mallet's character was
+infamous, the writer adds, 'his integrity in business and in life is
+unimpeached.'
+
+
+SCOTTISH SONG-WRITERS.
+
+When the poets of England were writing satires, moral essays, and
+elaborate didactic treatises, the poets of Scotland were singing, in
+bird-like notes, songs of humour and of love. It is remarkable that the
+Scotch, the shrewdest, hardest, and most business-like people in these
+islands, should be so richly endowed with a gift shared and enjoyed by
+rich and poor alike. The most exquisite of English lyrics fall, where
+culture is wanting, on regardless ears; the songs of Ramsay and of
+Burns, of Lady Anne Lindsay and Jane Elliot, of Hogg and Lady Nairne, of
+Tannahill and Macneil, are household words in Scotland to gentle and
+simple. A few of the choicest songs of Scotland are due to ladies of
+rank, but the larger number have sprung from 'the huts where poor men
+lie.' Ramsay was a barber and wig-maker; Burns, as all the world knows,
+followed the plough; Tannahill was a weaver; Hogg a shepherd; and Robert
+Nicoll the son of a small farmer, 'ruined out of house and hold.'
+
+[Sidenote: Allan Ramsay (1686-1758).]
+
+Allan Ramsay was, born at Leadhills, in Lanarkshire, in 1686, and was
+therefore Pope's senior by two years. He has been called 'the restorer
+of Scottish poetry,' and by his compilation of _The Evergreen_ (1724),
+and of _The Tea-Table Miscellany_, published in the same year, he
+gathered up the wealth of song scattered through the country. _The
+Miscellany_ extended to four volumes, and before the poet's death had
+reached twelve editions. An undying interest belongs to both
+anthologies. _The Evergreen_ was the first poetry Walter Scott perused,
+and in a marginal note on his copy of _The Tea-Table Miscellany_ he
+writes: 'This book belonged to my grandfather, Robert Scott, and out of
+it I was taught _Hardiknute_ by heart before I could read the ballad
+myself. It was the first poem I ever learnt, the last I shall ever
+forget.' The ballad Scott loved so well, I may say in passing, was
+written as a whole or in part by Lady Wardlaw (1677-1727),[35] and
+belongs therefore either to our period or to the later years of the
+seventeenth century.
+
+In 1725 Ramsay published _The Gentle Shepherd_, a pastoral that puts to
+shame the numerous semi-classical and mythological poems which appeared
+under that name in England. It is essentially a rural poem, in which the
+action and language harmonize with what we know, or think we know, of
+country manners and life. There is neither striking invention in the
+plot nor much individuality in the characters, but there is poetical
+harmony throughout, many pretty rustic scenes, and sufficient interest
+to carry the reader pleasantly over the ground. _The Gentle Shepherd_ is
+the work of a poet, and gives a higher impression of Ramsay's power than
+his songs alone would warrant. His lyrical pieces, though not wholly
+without the lilt and charm such verse exacts, are perhaps mainly of
+service in showing the immeasurable superiority of Burns. Ramsay was a
+successful poet, and not too much of a poet to be also a successful man
+of business. He exchanged wig-making for bookselling, kept a shop in the
+High Street of Edinburgh, and finally retired to a villa which he had
+built for himself on the Castle Hill. A good-humoured, care-defying man,
+he enjoyed life in an easy way, and was not disposed to repine when his
+road lay down the hill. In an epistle to a friend he writes:
+
+    'And now in years and sense grown auld,
+    In ease I like my limbs to fauld,
+    Debts I abhor, and plan to be
+    From shackling trade and dangers free;
+    That I may, loosed frae care and strife,
+    With calmness view the edge of life;
+    And when a full ripe age shall crave,
+    Slide easily into my grave.'
+
+Among the Scottish song-writers of the period may be mentioned Robert
+Crawford (1695?-1732), whose love verses, written in a conventional
+strain, are not without music; Lord Binning (1696-1732), the author of a
+pretty song called _Ungrateful Nanny_; and William Hamilton of Bangour
+(1704-1754), who wrote the well-known _Braes of Yarrow_. The most
+charming of Scottish lyrics belong, however, to a later period of the
+century than the age of Pope.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The student who reads the minor poets who figured, in some cases with
+much applause, during the years of Pope's ascendency, will be struck by
+the almost total absence from their works of creative power. These
+rhymers wrote for the age, and illustrate it, but they did not write for
+all time, and a small volume would suffice to hold all their verse which
+is of permanent value. Too often they imagined that by the composition
+of flowing couplets they proved their title to rank with inspired poets.
+They confounded the art of verse-making with the divine art of poetry,
+and were not aware that the substance of their work is prose. Now and
+then the digger in this mine will discover a small nugget of gold, but
+for the most part the interest called forth by the poets mentioned in
+the present chapter, is more historical than poetical, and the reader in
+passing to the great prose writers of the age will be conscious of gain
+rather than of loss.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[31] Cowper's line,
+
+    'Where tempests never beat nor billows roar,'
+
+is not an improvement upon Garth's. Tempests, it has been justly said,
+do not beat.
+
+[32] The _Spectator_, No. 335.
+
+[33] Elwin and Courthope's _Pope_, vol. vii., p. 62.
+
+[34] Edward Young tried his skill on the same theme in a poetical
+epistle to Tickell, but his lines are leaden and his praise absurd.
+Addison's glory was so great, he says, as a statesman and a patriot,
+that
+
+          'It borders on disgrace
+    To say he sung the best of human race.'
+
+
+[35] To Lady Wardlaw Dr. Robert Chambers attributed twenty-five ballads,
+and among them several of the finest we possess, which are regarded as
+ancient by every other authority. If the assumption were proved, this
+lady would hold a distinguished and unique position among the poets of
+the Pope period, but there is absolutely no ground for the theory so
+zealously advocated by Chambers.
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+THE PROSE WRITERS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+JOSEPH ADDISON--SIR RICHARD STEELE.
+
+
+As essayists, the writings of Addison and of Steele are familiar to all
+readers of eighteenth-century literature. Their work in other
+departments may be neglected without much loss; but the student who
+disregards the _Tatler_, the _Spectator_, the _Guardian_, and some of
+the essay-volumes which follow in their wake, will be blind to one of
+the most significant literary features of the period.
+
+The alliance between Addison and Steele was so intimate, that to judge
+of one apart from the other, would be fair to neither. It may be well,
+therefore, after giving the leading facts in the lives of the two
+friends, to bring them together again while considering the work they
+accomplished in their literary partnership. One point, I think, will
+come out clearly in this examination, namely, that while Steele might,
+under very inferior conditions, have produced the _Tatler_ and
+_Spectator_ without Addison, it is highly improbable that Addison, as an
+essayist, would have existed without Steele.
+
+[Sidenote: Joseph Addison (1672-1719).]
+
+Addison lives on the reputation of his prose works, but he thought that
+he was a poet, and was regarded as a poet by his contemporaries. It was
+by verse that he won his earliest reputation, and it was on his Pegasus
+that he rose to be Secretary of State. He was born on May 1st, 1672, at
+Milston, in Wiltshire, a parish of which his father was the rector, and
+was educated at the Charterhouse, where he contracted his memorable
+friendship with Steele. Thence, in 1687, at the boyish age of fifteen,
+he went up to Queen's College, Oxford, and in a few months, thanks to
+his Latin verses, gained a scholarship at Magdalen, of which college ten
+years later he became a fellow.
+
+While at Oxford he acquired, after the fashion of the day, what Johnson
+calls 'the trade of a courtier.' His Latin poem on the _Peace of
+Ryswick_ was dedicated to Montague, and two years later a pension of
+£300 a year, gained through Somers and Montague, enabled him to travel,
+in order that by gaining a knowledge of French and Italian, he might be
+fitted for the diplomatic service. Some time after his return to England
+he published his _Remarks on Several Parts of Italy_ (1705), and
+dedicated the volume to Swift, 'the most agreeable companion, the truest
+friend, and the greatest genius of his age.'
+
+Addison's patrons had now lost their power, and he was left to his own
+exertions. His difficulties did not last long. In 1704 the battle of
+Blenheim called forth several weak efforts from the poetasters, and as
+the Government required verse more worthy of the occasion, the
+Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the recommendation of Montague, now Earl
+of Halifax, applied to Addison, who, in answer to the appeal, published
+_The Campaign_, in 1705. The poem contains the well-known similitude of
+the angel, and also an apt allusion to the great storm that had lately
+destroyed fleets and devastated the country.
+
+    'So when an angel by divine command
+    With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,
+    Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past,
+    Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
+    And, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform,
+    Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.'
+
+_The Campaign_, which has no other passage worth quoting, proved a happy
+hit, and was of such service to the Ministry, that Addison found the way
+to fame and fortune. He was appointed Commissioner of Appeals, and not
+long after Under Secretary of State. In 1707 he accompanied his friend
+and patron, Halifax, on a mission to Hanover, and two years later he was
+appointed Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. In Dublin
+he gained golden opinions. 'I am convinced,' Swift writes, 'that
+whatever Government come over, you will find all marks of kindness from
+any parliament here with respect to your employment; the Tories
+contending with the Whigs which should speak best of you. In short, if
+you will come over again when you are at leisure, we will raise an army
+and make you king of Ireland.' When the Whig Ministry fell in 1710, and
+Addison lost his appointment, he must have gained a fortune, for he was
+able to purchase an estate for £10,000.
+
+In the early years of the century the Italian opera, which had been
+brought into England in the reign of William and Mary, excited the mirth
+and opposition of the wits. Lord Chesterfield, who called it 'too absurd
+and extravagant to mention,' said, 'Whenever I go to the opera I leave
+my sense and reason at the door with my half-guinea, and deliver myself
+up to my eyes and ears.' Steele, Gay, and Pope ridiculed the new-fangled
+entertainment, and Colley Cibber, too, pointed his jest at these
+'poetical drams, these gin-shops of the stage that intoxicate its
+auditors, and dishonour their understanding with a levity for which I
+want a name.' Addison, who has some lively papers on the subject in the
+_Spectator_, undertook to give a faithful account of the progress of
+the Italian opera on the English stage, 'for there is no question,' he
+writes, 'but our great grandchildren will be very curious to know why
+their forefathers used to sit together like an audience of foreigners in
+their own country; and to hear whole plays acted before them in a tongue
+which they did not understand.'
+
+Before writing thus in the _Spectator_, Addison, in order to oppose the
+Italian opera, by what he regarded as a more rational pastime, produced
+his English opera of _Rosamond_, which was acted in 1706, and proved a
+failure on the stage. The music is said to have been bad, and the poetry
+is the work of a writer destitute of lyrical genius. Lord Macaulay, who
+finds a merit in almost everything produced by Addison, praises 'the
+smoothness with which the verses glide, and the elasticity with which
+they bound,' and considers that if he 'had left heroic couplets to Pope,
+and blank verse to Rowe, and had employed himself in writing airy and
+spirited songs, his reputation as a poet would have stood far higher
+than it now does.' The gliding movement of the verse may be admitted;
+but lyric poetry demands the higher qualities of music and imaginative
+treatment, and Addison's 'smoothness,' so far from being a poetical
+gift, is a mechanical acquisition.
+
+In 1713 his _Cato_, with its stately rhetoric and cold dignity, received
+a very different reception. The prologue, written by Pope, is in
+admirable accordance with the spirit of the play. Addison's purpose is
+to exhibit a great man struggling with adversity, and Pope writes:
+
+    'He bids your breasts with ancient ardour rise,
+    And calls forth Roman drops from British eyes;
+    Virtue confessed in human shape he draws,
+    What Plato thought, and God-like Cato was:
+    No common object to your sight displays,
+    But what with pleasure Heaven itself surveys;
+    A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,
+    And greatly falling with a falling state!
+    While Cato gives his little senate laws,
+    What bosom beats not in his country's cause?'
+
+Addison has proved that he could draw a life-like character in his
+representation of Sir Roger de Coverley, but the _dramatis personæ_, who
+act a part, or are supposed to act one, in _Cato_, are mere dummies,
+made to express fine sentiments. There is no flesh and blood in them,
+and owing to the dramatist's regard for unity of place, the play is full
+of absurdities. Yet _Cato_ was received with immense applause. It was
+regarded from a political aspect, and both Whig and Tory strove to turn
+the drama to party account. 'The numerous and violent claps of the Whig
+party,' Pope writes, 'on the one side of the theatre, were echoed back
+by the Tories on the other; while the author sweated behind the scenes
+with concern to find their applause proceeding more from the hand than
+the head.'
+
+In another letter he says: 'The town is so fond of it, that the orange
+wenches and fruit women in the parks offer the books at the side of the
+coaches, and the prologue and epilogue are cried about the streets by
+the common hawkers.' It would be interesting to ascertain what there was
+in the state of public affairs in the spring of 1713, which created this
+enthusiasm. Swift, writing to Stella, alludes to a rehearsal of the
+play, but makes no criticism upon it; and Berkeley, who was in London at
+the time, and had a seat in Addison's box on the first night, is also
+silent about it. In a letter written, as it happens, by Bolingbroke, on
+the day that _Cato_ was produced, he indicates the signs of the time, as
+they appeared to a Tory statesman: 'The prospect before us,' he writes,
+'is dark and melancholy. What will happen no man is able to foretell.'
+
+It was this sense of doubt and insecurity in the nation that gave
+significance to trifles. The political atmosphere was charged with
+electricity. The Tories, though in office, were far from feeling
+themselves secure, and both Harley and Bolingbroke were in
+correspondence with the Pretender. Atterbury, who was heart and soul
+with him, had just been made a bishop, Protestant ascendancy was in
+danger, the security of the country seemed to hang on the frail life of
+the Queen, and the strong party spirit of the time was easily fanned
+into a flame. We cannot now place ourselves in the position of the
+spectators whose passions gave such popularity to _Cato_. Its mild
+platitudes and rhetorical periods, its coldness and sobriety, seem ill
+fitted to arouse the fervour of playgoers, but Addison, whose good luck
+rarely failed him, was especially fortunate in the moment chosen for the
+representation of the play. Had _Cato_ exhibited genius of the highest
+order, it could not have been more successful. Cibber writes that it was
+acted in London five times a week for a month to constantly crowded
+houses, and when the tragedy was acted at Oxford, 'Our house,' he says,
+'was in a manner invested, and entrance demanded by twelve o'clock at
+noon, and before one it was not wide enough for many who came too late
+for places.'[36]
+
+_Cato_ had the good fortune to run in London for thirty-five nights, and
+gained also some reputation on the continent. It is formed on the French
+model, and Addison was therefore praised by Voltaire as 'the first
+English writer who composed a regular tragedy.' He added that _Cato_ was
+'a masterpiece.' If so, it is one of the masterpieces that has long
+ceased to be read. Little could its author have surmised that his
+tragedy, received with universal praise, had but a brief life to live,
+while the Essays which he had already contributed to the _Tatler_ and
+_Spectator_ would make his name familiar to future generations.
+
+Addison's poetry may now be regarded as extinct, and most of the poems
+he wrote are probably unknown to the present generation of readers even
+by name. His Latin verses are pronounced excellent by all competent
+critics, but when a man writes verses in a dead language he does so
+generally to show his scholarship, and not to express his inspiration.
+Latin verse is, as M. Taine says, a faded flower. Now and then, indeed,
+a poem has been written with merits apart from its latinity--witness the
+_Epitaphium Damonis_ of Milton--but Addison, who lacked poetic fire in
+his native language, was not likely to find it in a dead tongue. His
+English poems are generally dull, and sometimes, as in his earliest
+poem, the _Account of the greatest English Poets_ (1694), the tameness
+of the verse is matched by the ignorance of the criticism. The student
+will observe how differently the theme is treated by a true poet like
+Drayton in his _Epistle to Reynolds_; or, like Ben Jonson, in the many
+allusions that he makes to his country's poets. Compare, too, Addison's
+_Letter from Italy_ (1701) with the lovely lines on a like theme in
+Goldsmith's _Traveller_, and the contrast between a verseman and a poet
+is at once apparent. Addison, it may be added, is remembered for his
+hymns, which may be found in most selections of sacred verse, and
+deserve a place in the best of them. As the forerunner of Isaac Watts
+(1674-1748) and of Charles Wesley (1708-1788), he struck upon what at
+that time might, in our country, be almost called a new department of
+literature; and it is remarkable that an age which so dreaded enthusiasm
+should have originated verse which gives utterance to the most emotional
+form of spiritual aspiration. As hymn-writers, Englishmen were more
+than a century behind the best sacred poets of Germany. Luther had
+taught the German people the power of hymnody, but it was during the
+Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), and after its conclusion, that the spirit
+of devotion found full expression in religious verse. Just before the
+engagement at Leipzic, Gustavus Adolphus wrote his well-known battle
+hymn, and the peace was celebrated in a noble hymn by Martin Rinkart. He
+was followed by a succession of sacred singers whose devout utterances
+influenced and in some degree inspired the Wesleys.
+
+    "A verse may find him whom a sermon flies,"
+
+says George Herbert, and the enormous power wielded by Methodism owes a
+large portion of its strength to song.
+
+Amidst much in their writings that is questionable in taste and weak in
+expression, both Watts and Charles Wesley have written hymns which prove
+their incontestible right to a place among the poets, and the influence
+they have exerted over the English-speaking race is beyond the power of
+the literary historian to estimate. The external divisions of the
+Christian Church are numerous; its unity is to be seen in the Hymn Book.
+'Men whose theological views contrast most strongly,' says Mr. Abbey in
+his essay on _The English Sacred Poetry of the Eighteenth Century_,
+'meet on common ground when they express in verse the deeper aspirations
+of the heart and the voice of Christian praise.'
+
+In 1714, on the death of the Queen, Addison was once more in office, and
+held his old position of Irish Secretary. In the following year he
+defended the Whig Government and Whig principles in the _Freeholder_, a
+paper published twice weekly. In it he gives no niggard praise to the
+Government of George I., and to the King himself, for his 'civil
+virtues,' and for his martial achievements. Addison's praise disagrees,
+it need scarcely be said, with the more minute and veracious description
+of the King given by Thackeray, but a party politician in those days
+could scarcely be a faithful chronicler. He could see what he wished to
+see, but found it necessary to shut his eyes when the prospect became
+unpleasant. George was a heartless libertine, but Addison observes with
+great satisfaction that the women most eminent for virtue and good sense
+are in his interest. 'It would be no small misfortune,' he says, 'to a
+sovereign, though he had all the male part of the nation on his side, if
+he did not find himself king of the most beautiful half of his subjects.
+Ladies are always of great use to the party they espouse, and never fail
+to win over numbers to it. Lovers, according to Sir William Petty's
+computation, make at least the third part of the sensible men of the
+British nation, and it has been an uncontroverted maxim in all ages,
+that though a husband is sometimes a stubborn sort of a creature, a
+lover is always at the devotion of his mistress. By this means it lies
+in the power of every fine woman to secure at least half-a-dozen
+able-bodied men to his Majesty's service. The female world are likewise
+indispensably necessary in the best causes to manage the controversial
+part of them, in which no man of tolerable breeding is ever able to
+refute them. Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.'
+
+The essayist thinks it fortunate for the Whigs 'that their very enemies
+acknowledge the finest women of Great Britain to be of that party;' and
+in an amusing but rather absurd way he discourses to maids, wives, and
+widows on the advantages of adhering to the Hanoverian Government. It is
+characteristic of Addison that a political paper like the _Freeholder_
+should be flavoured with the humour and badinage he found so effective
+in the _Spectator_. To the ladies he appeals again and again, but not to
+their reason. He gives them mirth instead of argument, and thinks it
+more likely to prevail with the 'Fair Sex.' The _Freeholder_ has several
+papers worthy of the author in his best moods, the best of them,
+perhaps, being the 'Tory Fox-hunter,' with which, to quote Johnson's
+words, 'bigotry itself must be delighted.' In the year which gave birth
+to the _Freeholder_, _The Drummer_, a comedy, was acted at Drury Lane,
+and ran three nights. The play was not acknowledged by Addison, neither
+was it printed in Tickell's edition of his works; but Steele, who
+published an edition of the play, with a dedication to Congreve, never
+doubted, and there is no reason to doubt, that Addison was the author.
+'The piece,' Mr. Courthope writes, 'is like _Cato_, a standing proof of
+Addison's deficiency in dramatic genius. The plot is poor and trivial,
+nor does the dialogue, though it shows in many passages traces of its
+author's peculiar vein of humour, make amends by its brilliancy for the
+tameness of the dramatic situation.'[37]
+
+After the _Freeholder_ Addison wrote nothing of importance, unless we
+except the essay published after his death _On the Evidences of
+Christianity_. Of this essay it will suffice to quote the judgment of
+his most distinguished eulogist. After observing that the treatise shows
+the narrow limits of Addison's classical knowledge, Lord Macaulay adds:
+'It is melancholy to see how helplessly he gropes his way from blunder
+to blunder. He assigns as grounds for his religious belief stories as
+absurd as that of the Cock Lane Ghost, and forgeries as rank as
+Ireland's Vortigern; puts faith in the lie about the Thundering Legion;
+is convinced that Tiberius moved the senate to admit Jesus among the
+gods, and pronounces the letter of Agbarus, King of Edessa, to be a
+record of great authority. Nor were these errors the effects of
+superstition, for to superstition Addison was by no means prone. The
+truth is, that he was writing about what he did not understand.'
+
+In 1716, after having been made one of the Commissioners for Trades and
+Colonies, he married the Countess Dowager of Warwick, with whom he had
+been acquainted for some years. The marriage, according to the doubtful
+authority of Pope, was not a happy one, and is said to have driven
+Addison to the consolations of the tavern. He did not need them long. In
+1717 Sunderland became Prime Minister, and made Addison a Secretary of
+State, an appointment which he resigned eleven months afterwards; and in
+1719 he died at Holland House at the age of forty-seven, leaving one
+daughter as the memorial of the union. He lies, as is fitting, in the
+great Abbey of which he has written so beautifully.
+
+Tickell's noble tribute to his friend's memory belongs to the undying
+poetry which neither age nor fresher forms of verse can render obsolete.
+It must suffice to quote here a few lines from a poem which, despite
+some conventional expressions common to the time, is worthy of its theme
+throughout:
+
+    'If pensive to the rural shades I rove,
+    His shape o'ertakes me in the lonely grove;
+    'Twas there of Just and Good he reasoned strong,
+    Cleared some great truth, or raised some serious song;
+    There patient showed us the wise course to steer,
+    A candid censor, and a friend severe;
+    There taught us how to live; and (oh! too high
+    The price for knowledge) taught us how to die.'
+
+There are few men of literary eminence in the eighteenth century of whom
+we know so little as of Addison. His own _Spectator_, who never opened
+his lips but in his club, is scarcely more silent than the essayist's
+biographers, so trifling are the details they have to record beyond the
+bare facts of his official and literary career. Steele knew him better,
+and, in spite of an unhappy estrangement at the last, probably loved him
+more than anyone else, and had he written his story, as he once proposed
+doing, the narrative might have been charming; but, alas for Steele's
+resolutions!
+
+That Addison was a shy man we know--Lord Chesterfield said he was the
+most timid man he ever knew--and it speaks well for his resolution and
+strength of purpose that he should have risen notwithstanding this
+timidity to so high a position in public affairs. His want of oratorical
+power was a drawback to his efficiency, and Sir James Macintosh was
+probably right in saying that Addison as Dean of St. Patrick's, and
+Swift as Secretary of State, would have been a happy stroke of fortune,
+putting each into the place most fitted for him. The essayist's reserve,
+while it closed his lips in general society, did not prevent him from
+being one of the most fascinating of companions in the freedom of
+conversation with a few intimate friends. Swift, Steele, and even Pope,
+testify to Addison's irresistible charm in the select society that he
+loved. Young said he could chain the attention of every hearer, and Lady
+Mary Montagu declared that he was the best company in the world.
+
+[Sidenote: Richard Steele (1672-1729).]
+
+Richard Steele was born in Dublin, 1672, of English parents, and
+educated at the Charterhouse, where, as we have said, Addison was at the
+same time a pupil. In 1690 he matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford,
+Addison being then demy at Magdalen. Steele left college without taking
+a degree, and entered the army as a cadet. After a time he obtained the
+rank of captain in Lord Lucas's fusiliers, and wrote his treatise, _The
+Christian Hero_ (1701), with the design, he says, 'principally to fix
+upon his own mind a strong impression of virtue and religion in
+opposition to a stronger propensity towards unwarrantable pleasure.'
+Steele was an honest lover of the things most worthy of love, but his
+frailty too often proved stronger than his virtue, and the purpose of
+_The Christian Hero_ was not answered.
+
+Jeremy Collier's _Short View of the Immorality and Profanity of the
+English Stage_, published in 1698, had made, as it well might, a
+powerful impression, and Steele, who was always ready to inculcate
+morality on other people, wrote four comedies with a moral purpose. _The
+Funeral; or Grief à-la-Mode_ was acted with success at Drury Lane in
+1701, and when published passed through several editions. _The Lying
+Lover_ followed two years later, and was, in the comfortable judgment of
+the author, 'damned for its piety.' This was followed, in 1705, by _The
+Tender Husband_, a play suggested by the _Sicilien_ of Molière, as _The
+Lying Lover_ had been founded on the _Menteur_ of Corneille. Many years
+later Steele's last play, _The Conscious Lovers_ (1722), completed his
+performances as a dramatist. It was dedicated to the King, who is said
+to have sent the author £500. The modern reader will find little worthy
+of attention in the dramas of Steele. His sense of humour enlivens some
+of the scenes, and is, perhaps, chiefly visible in _The Funeral_; but
+for the most part dulness is in the ascendant, and the sentiment is
+frequently mawkish. _The Conscious Lovers_, said Parson Adams, contains
+'some things almost solemn enough for a sermon.' This may be true, but
+we do not desire a sermon in a play, and Steele, who is always a lively
+essayist, loses his liveliness in writing for the stage. It has been
+observed by Mr. Ward that, taking a hint from Colley Cibber, he 'became
+the real founder of that sentimental comedy which exercised so
+pernicious an influence upon the progress of our dramatic literature.'
+'It would be unjust,' he adds, 'to hold him responsible for the
+feebleness of successors who were altogether deficient in the comic
+power which he undoubtedly even as a dramatist exhibits; but in so far
+as their aberrations were the result of his example, he must be held to
+have contributed, though with the best of motives, to the decline of the
+English drama.'[38] One of the prominent offenders who followed in
+Steele's wake was George Lillo (1693-1739), whose highly moral
+tragedies, written for the edification of playgoers, have the kind of
+tragic interest which is called forth by any commonplace tale of crime
+and misery. In Lillo's two most important dramas, _George Barnwell_
+(1731), a play founded on the old ballad, and _The Fatal Curiosity_
+(1736), there is a total absence of the elevation in character and
+language which gives dignity to tragedy. His plays are like tales of
+guilt arranged and amplified from the Newgate Calendar. The author wrote
+with a good purpose, and the public appreciated his work, but it is not
+dramatic art, and has no pretension to the name of literature.
+
+Throughout his life Steele was at war with fortune. His hopefulness was
+inexhaustible, but he learnt no lessons from experience, and escaped
+from one slough to fall into another. He was as unthrifty as Goldsmith,
+whom in many respects he resembles, and his warm, impulsive nature was
+allied to a combativeness and jealousy which sometimes led him to
+quarrel with his best friends. Of his passion for the somewhat exacting
+lady whom he married,[39] and of the 400 and odd notelets addressed by
+the lover-husband to his 'dear, dearest Prue,' and 'absolute Governess,'
+it is enough to say here, that the story told offhand in his own words,
+shows how lovable the man was in spite of the faults which he never
+attempted to conceal. Only about a week before the marriage the lady had
+fair warning of one probable drawback to her happiness as a wife.[40] On
+the morning of August 30th, 1707, Steele advised his 'fair one' to look
+up to that heaven which had made her so sweet a companion, and in the
+evening of that day he wrote:
+
+
+    'DEAR LOVELY MRS. SCURLOCK,
+
+    'I have been in very good company, where your health, under the
+    character of _the woman I loved best_, has been often drunk, so
+    that I may say I am dead drunk for your sake, which is more than
+    I _die for you_.
+
+    'RICH. STEELE.'
+
+
+
+After marriage Steele's extravagance and impecuniosity must have proved
+a severe trial to Prue. At times he would live in considerable style,
+and Berkeley, who writes, in 1713, of dining with him frequently at his
+house in Bloomsbury Square, praises his table, servants, and coach as
+'very genteel.' At other times the family were without common
+necessaries, and on one occasion there was not 'an inch of candle, a
+pound of coal, or a bit of meat in the house.'
+
+On the 12th April, 1709, Steele issued the first number of the
+_Tatler_, its supposed author being the Isaac Bickerstaff, whose name,
+thanks to Swift, had been 'rendered famous through all parts of Europe.'
+The essays appeared every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, for the
+convenience of the post, and at the outset contained political news,
+which Steele, by his government appointment of Gazetteer, was enabled to
+supply. After awhile, however, much to the advantage of the _Tatler_,
+this news was dropped. The articles are dated from White's
+Chocolate-house, from Will's Coffee-house, from the Grecian, and from
+the St. James's. It is probable that the column in Defoe's _Review_,
+containing _Advice from the Scandal Club_, suggested his 'Lucubrations'
+to Steele. If so, it does not detract from his originality of treatment,
+for Defoe's town gossip is poor stuff. Addison, who knew nothing of the
+project beforehand, came, ere long, to his friend's assistance; but it
+was not until about eighty numbers had appeared, that he became a
+frequent contributor, and before that time Steele had made his mark.
+When the essays were afterwards reprinted in four volumes, Steele, who
+was never wanting in gratitude, generously acknowledged the help he had
+received. 'I fared,' he says, 'like a distressed prince who calls in a
+powerful neighbour to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary. When I had
+once called him in, I could not subsist without dependence on him.' The
+_Tatler_ still supplies delightful entertainment, and in the almost
+total absence of amusing and wholesome reading in Steele's time, must
+have proved a welcome companion. Readers who are inundated by what is
+called 'light literature' can with difficulty imagine the dearth
+suffered in Pope's day, when the interminable romances of Calprenède, of
+Mdlle. de Scuderi and her brother, and of Madame la Fayette, were the
+liveliest books considered fit for a modest woman to read. A novel,
+however, in ten volumes, like the _Grand Cyrus_ or _Clélie_, had one
+advantage over the cheap fictions of our time, its interest was not soon
+exhausted.
+
+The _Tatler_ has claims upon the student's attention, apart from the
+entertainment it affords. Steele, who lived from hand to mouth, and
+wrote, as he lived, on the impulse of the moment, had unwittingly begun
+a work destined to form an epoch in English literature. The _Essay_, as
+we now understand the word, dates from the _Lucubrations of Isaac
+Bickerstaff_, and Steele and Addison, who may boast a numerous progeny,
+have in Charles Lamb the noblest of their sons.
+
+On the 2nd January, 1711, Steele wrote the final number of the _Tatler_,
+partly on the plea that the essays would suffice to make four volumes,
+and partly because he was known to be the author, and could not, as Mr.
+Steele, attack vices with the freedom of Mr. Bickerstaff. Addison, who
+had done so much to assist Steele in his first venture, was as ignorant
+of his intention to close the work as he was of its initiation. Two
+months later _The Spectator_ appeared, and this time the friends worked
+in concert. It proved a brilliantly successful partnership. The second
+number, in which the characters of the club are introduced, was written
+by Steele, and to him we owe the first sketch of the immortal Sir Roger
+de Coverley:
+
+'When he is in town he lives in Soho Square. It is said he keeps himself
+a bachelor by reason he was crossed in love by a perverse, beautiful
+widow of the next county to him. Before his disappointment, Sir Roger
+was what you call a fine gentleman, had often supped with my Lord
+Rochester and Sir George Etheridge, fought a duel upon his first coming
+to town, and kicked bully Dawson in a public coffee-house for calling
+him youngster. But being ill-used by the above-mentioned widow, he was
+very serious for a year and a half; and though, his temper being
+naturally jovial, he at last got over it, he grew careless of himself,
+and never dressed afterwards. He continues to wear a coat and doublet of
+the same cut that were in fashion at the time of his repulse, which, in
+his merry humours, he tells us has been in and out twelve times since he
+first wore it.... He is now in his fifty-sixth year, cheerful, gay, and
+hearty, keeps a good house both in town and country; a great lover of
+mankind; but there is such a mirthful cast in his behaviour, that he is
+rather beloved than esteemed. His tenants grow rich, his servants look
+satisfied, all the young women profess love to him, and the young men
+are glad of his company. When he comes into a house he calls the
+servants by their names, and talks all the way upstairs to a visit. I
+must not omit that Sir Roger is a justice of the quorum; that he fills
+the chair at a quarter-session with great abilities; and three months
+ago gained universal applause by explaining a passage in the Game Act.'
+
+In their daily issue, as well as afterwards in volumes, the essays had
+an extensive sale. They were to be found on every breakfast-table, and
+so popular did they prove, that when the imposition of a halfpenny tax
+destroyed a number of periodicals, Steele found it safe to double the
+price of the _Spectator_. The vivacity and humour of the paper were
+visible from the beginning. 'Mr. Steele,' Swift wrote, 'seems to have
+gathered new life, and to have a new fund of wit.' Of 555 papers,
+Addison wrote 274 and Steele 236, while the remaining forty-five were
+the work of occasional contributors. In the full tide of its success,
+and without any assigned reason, the _Spectator_ was brought to a
+conclusion in December, 1712, and in the following spring Steele started
+the _Guardian_, which might have been as fortunate as its predecessor,
+had not the editor's zeal tempted him to diverge to politics. He had
+also a disagreement with his publisher, and the _Guardian_ was allowed
+but a short life of 175 numbers. Of these about fifty were due to
+Addison, and upwards of eighty to Steele.
+
+Steele's political ardour was irrepressible, and a paper in the
+_Guardian_ (No. 128), demanding the abolition of Dunkirk, called forth a
+pamphlet from Swift, in which the weaknesses of his former friend are
+sneered at and denounced with enough of truthfulness to enhance their
+malice. After allowing that Steele has humour, and is no disagreeable
+companion 'after the first bottle,' Swift adds, 'Being the most
+imprudent man alive, he never follows the advice of his friends, but is
+wholly at the mercy of fools and knaves, or hurried away by his own
+caprice, by which he has committed more absurdities in economy,
+friendship, love, duty, good manners, politics, religion, and writing
+than ever fell to one man's share.' A little later, in anticipation of
+the Queen's death, Steele published _The Crisis_ (1714), a political
+pamphlet, which led to his expulsion from the House of Commons. It was
+answered by one of the most masterly of Swift's pamphlets, _The Public
+Spirit of the Whigs_, in which it is suggested that Steele might be
+superior to other writers on the Whig side 'provided he would a little
+regard the propriety and disposition of his words, consult the
+grammatical part, and get some information in the subject he intends to
+handle.'
+
+The reader is chiefly concerned with Steele as an essayist, and it is
+unnecessary to follow his career in the House of Commons and out of it.
+Yet there is one anecdote too characteristic to be omitted in the
+briefest notice of his life. Lady Charlotte Finch had been attacked in
+the _Examiner_ 'for knotting in St. James's Chapel during divine
+service, in the immediate presence both of God and her Majesty, who were
+affronted together.' Steele denounced the calumny in the _Guardian_.
+Upon taking his seat as member for Stockbridge, he was attacked by the
+Tories on account of _The Crisis_, which they deemed an inflammatory
+libel, and defended himself in a speech which occupied three hours. When
+he left the House, Lord Finch, who, like Steele, was a new member, rose
+to make his maiden speech in defence of the man who had defended his
+sister; a nervous feeling caused him to hesitate, and he sat down,
+exclaiming, 'It is strange I cannot speak for this man, though I could
+readily fight for him.' The House cheered these generous words, and Lord
+Finch rising again, made an able speech. The effort was a vain one, and
+Steele lost his seat. A few months later, after the death of Queen Anne,
+he entered the House again as member for Boroughbridge, and having been
+placed in the commission of peace for Middlesex, on presenting an
+address from the county, he received the honour of knighthood.
+
+Meanwhile he had not renounced his vocation of essayist. The _Guardian_
+was followed by the _Englishman_ (1713), the _Englishman_ by the _Lover_
+(1714), and the _Lover_ by the _Reader_ (1714), a journal strongly
+political in character. Of this only nine numbers were issued. Then came
+_Town Talk_, the _Tea Table_, _Chit-chat_, and the _Theatre_. Sir
+Richard appears to have been always in a hurry to break new ground, a
+foible not confined to literature. He was continually starting new
+projects, and never doubted, in spite of numberless failures, that his
+latest effort to make a fortune would be successful.
+
+Notwithstanding his appointments as manager of Drury Lane and as a
+Commissioner in Scotland to inquire into the Estates of Traitors,
+Steele's money difficulties did not lessen as he advanced in life; worse
+still, he had the misfortune to quarrel with his oldest and dearest
+friend. For this he and Addison were alike to blame, and Addison dying a
+few months later, there was no time for reconciliation. In 1718 Steele
+had lost his wife, and some years afterwards his only remaining son.
+Ultimately, broken in health and fortune, Sir Richard retired to
+Carmarthen, and there, in 1729, he died.
+
+'I was told,' says Victor, 'he retained his cheerful sweetness of temper
+to the last; and would often be carried out in a summer's evening, when
+the country lads and lasses were assembled at their rural sports, and
+with his pencil give an order on his agent, the mercer, for a new gown
+to the best dancer.'[41]
+
+All literature worthy of the name is the expression of the writer's
+life, of his aspirations, and of his ultimate aims; and since man is a
+moral being, it cannot be severed from morality. To point a moral, if it
+be within the scope of imaginative art, is subordinate to its main
+purpose. To delight by stimulating the imagination, to give a new beauty
+to existence by widening the realm of thought,--these are some of the
+noblest purposes of literature; and while men and women of creative
+genius are among our wisest teachers, the wisdom we gain from them comes
+to us without direct enforcement. In the last century, however, authors
+of good character, and authors who had no character to boast of, were
+equally impressed with the necessity of adorning their pages with moral
+maxims, and if this moral was not inserted in the body of the work, it
+was inevitable that it should be tacked on to the end of it like a tail
+to a kite. Steele in his artless way had a moral end in view, though his
+method of reaching it was not always wise or even discreet. Addison had
+his moral also. It pervades everything he wrote, but so artfully does
+he make use of it, that the reader is not unpleasantly conscious of a
+purpose. His allegories belong to an obsolete form of literature, but
+one of them at least _The Vision of Mirza_, may be still read with
+pleasure. His Saturday essays, which are nearly always serious in
+character, are the sermons of a layman, expressed in the most lucid
+style and in the purest English. His tales, like his allegories, have
+lost much of their flavour, but the humorous essays, in which he depicts
+the manners of the time, as well as the numbers devoted to the Spectator
+Club and to Addison's beloved Sir Roger, have a perennial charm. There
+is a felicity in the essayist's touch which is beyond imitation,
+although a reader might give, as Johnson suggested, days and nights to
+the study. The style is the man, and to write as Addison wrote it would
+be necessary to reach his moral and intellectual level, to see with his
+shrewd but kindly eyes, and to have his fine sense of humour. His
+faults, too, must be shared by his imitator--the somewhat too delicate
+refinement of a nature that never yields to impulse--the feminine
+sensitiveness that is allied to jealousy. Addison, in the judgment of
+his admirers, comes very near to perfection, and that is an irritating
+quality in a fellow mortal. It is, if it be not paradoxical to say so,
+the defect of his essays. There is nothing definite to find fault with
+in them, but we feel that strength is wanting. The clear and silent
+stream is a beautiful object, but after awhile it becomes monotonous,
+and we long for the swift and impetuous movement of a mountain torrent.
+It would be a thankless task, however, to dwell insistently on the
+deficiencies of a writer who has done so much for literature, and so
+much, too, for what is better than literature. We may wish that he had
+more warmth in him, somewhat more of energy and passion, yet such merits
+would be scarcely consonant with the graceful charm which gives to the
+prose writings of Addison an unrivalled position in Pope's age, and, it
+might be added, in the eighteenth century, were it not for the priceless
+literary gift bestowed upon Oliver Goldsmith.
+
+Steele's fame as a writer has been overshadowed by the more exquisite
+genius of Addison, and his reputation has suffered partly from his own
+frailties and partly from the contemptuous way in which he has been
+treated by the panegyrists and critics of Addison. Pity is closely
+allied to contempt, and Sir Richard has come to be regarded as a
+scapegrace whose chief honour in life was the friendship of the
+accomplished essayist. Yet it was Steele who created the form of
+literature in which Addison earned his laurels, and without which he
+would in the present day be utterly forgotten. Steele was the discoverer
+of a new country, and if Addison took possession of its fairest portion,
+it was after his friend had pointed out the path and made the way easy.
+It would be very unjust, however, to treat of Steele solely as a
+pioneer. His own work, though less perfect than that of Addison, a
+consummate master of composition, is rich in variety and spirit, in
+pathos and in knowledge of the world. Steele is often careless, but he
+is never dull, and writes with a glow of enthusiasm that excites the
+reader's sympathy. Truly does Mr. Dobson say that while Addison's essays
+are faultless in their art and beyond the range of his friend's more
+impulsive nature, 'for words which the heart finds when the head is
+seeking; for phrases glowing with the white heat of a generous emotion;
+for sentences which throb and tingle with manly pity or courageous
+indignation, we must go to the essays of Steele.'[42]
+
+Sir Richard's pathetic touches and artless turns of expression come
+from the heart. He is the most natural of writers, but does not seem to
+be aware that nature, in order to be converted into good literature,
+needs a little clothing. His essays have often a looseness or negligence
+of aim unpardonable in a man who can write so well. A conspicuous
+illustration of this defect may be seen in No. 181 of the _Tatler_, one
+of the most beautiful pieces from Steele's pen.
+
+'The first sense of sorrow,' he writes, 'I ever knew was upon the death
+of my father, at which time I was not quite five years of age; but was
+rather amazed at what all the house meant, than possessed with a real
+understanding why nobody was willing to play with me. I remember I went
+into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping alone by it.
+I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a-beating the coffin and
+calling "Papa," for, I know not how, I had some slight idea that he was
+locked up there. My mother catched me in her arms, and transported
+beyond all patience of the silent grief she was before in, she almost
+smothered me in her embraces; and told me in a flood of tears, "Papa
+could not hear me, and would play with me no more, for they were going
+to put him under ground, whence he could never come to us again." She
+was a very beautiful woman of a noble spirit, and there was a dignity in
+her grief amidst all the wildness of her transport, which, methought,
+struck me with an instinct of sorrow, that before I was sensible of what
+it was to grieve, seized my very soul, and has made pity the weakness of
+my heart ever since.'
+
+Later on in the essay, and still looking back on the past, Steele
+recalls the untimely death of the first object his eyes ever beheld with
+love, and then abruptly dismissing his regrets he carelessly finishes
+the paper with this characteristic passage: 'A large train of disasters
+were coming on to my memory when my servant knocked at my closet door,
+and interrupted me with a letter, attended with a hamper of wine of the
+same sort with that which is to be put to sale on Thursday next at
+Garraway's Coffee-house. Upon the receipt of it I sent for three of my
+friends. We are so intimate that we can be company in whatever state of
+mind we meet, and can entertain each other without expecting always to
+rejoice. The wine we found to be generous and warming, but with such a
+heat as moved us rather to be cheerful than frolicsome. It revived the
+spirits, without firing the blood. We commended it until two of the
+clock this morning, and having to-day met a little before dinner, we
+found that though we drank two bottles a man, we had much more reason to
+recollect than forget what had passed the night before.'
+
+Steele, to quote Johnson's phrase, was 'the most agreeable rake that
+ever trod the rounds of indulgence,' but he had many a fine quality that
+does not harmonize with the character of a rake; and although he hurt
+himself by his follies, he did his best to help others by his genial
+wisdom. If he did not sufficiently regard his own interests, his
+thoughts, as Addison said, 'teemed with projects for his country's
+good.' Savage Landor, with an impulse of somewhat extravagant eulogy,
+exclaimed, 'What a good critic Steele was! I doubt if he has ever been
+surpassed.' This is one of the sayings that will not bear examination.
+Steele had doubtless the fine perception of what is noble in art and
+literature, which some men possess instinctively. He felt what was good,
+but does not appear either to have reached or strengthened his
+conclusions by any process of study.
+
+As an essayist Steele is careless, rapid, emotional, and disposed to be
+on the best terms with himself and with his readers. He makes them sure
+that if they could have met him in his rollicking mood at Will's
+Coffee-house, he would have treated them all round, even if, like
+Goldsmith, he had been forced to borrow the money to do it. But he was
+not always in this reckless humour. His heart was expansive in its
+sympathies and tender as a woman's; his mind was open to all kindly
+influences, and his essays have in them the rich blood and vivid
+utterances of a man who has 'warmed both hands before the fire of life.'
+
+Between Steele's _Guardian_ (1713) and the _Rambler_ of Johnson (1750),
+a period of thirty-seven years, a swarm of periodicals testify to the
+fame of Steele and Addison. The reader curious on the subject will find
+in Dr. Drake's essays a minute account of the numerous essayists who
+flourished, or who made an effort to live, between the close of the
+eighth volume of the _Spectator_ and the beginning of the present
+century. Of these a few have still a place on our shelves, but for the
+most part they enjoyed a butterfly existence, and serve but to prove the
+immeasurable superiority of the writers who created the English Essay.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[36] Cibber's _Apology_, p. 386.
+
+[37] Courthope's _Addison_, p. 150.
+
+[38] _English Dramatic Literature_, vol. ii., p. 603.
+
+[39] 'It is a strange thing,' he writes, 'that you will not behave
+yourself with the obedience people of worse features do, but that I must
+be always giving you an account of every trifle and minute of my time.'
+
+[40] Steele had been previously married to Mrs. Stretch, a widow, who
+possessed an estate in the West Indies; but the lady did not long
+survive the marriage.
+
+[41] Victor's _Original Letters, Dramatic Pieces, and Poems_, vol. i.,
+p. 330.
+
+[42] _Selections from Steele_, by Austin Dobson. Introduction, p. xxx.
+Clarendon Press.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+JONATHAN SWIFT--JOHN ARBUTHNOT.
+
+
+The booksellers who employed the most famous man of letters then living
+(1777), to write the _Lives of the Poets_, selected the authors whose
+biographies were to accompany the poems they proposed to publish. They
+did not know the difference between versemakers and poets; but they
+probably did know what authors of the rhyming tribe were likely to prove
+the most popular. Dr. Johnson, who was then in his sixty-ninth year, was
+willing to write the _Lives_ to order. He added, indeed, three or four
+names to the list which had been given him; but he made no protest, and
+contented himself, as he told Boswell, in saying that a man was a dunce
+when he thought that he was one.
+
+Among the biographies included by Johnson in the _Lives_, appears the
+illustrious name of Swift. He was far indeed from being a dunce; but
+just as certainly he was not a poet, unless the title be given to him by
+courtesy. On the other hand, Swift ranks among the most distinguished
+prose writers of his time--many critics consider him the greatest--and
+he therefore finds his natural place in the prose section of this
+volume.
+
+[Sidenote: Jonathan Swift (1667-1745).]
+
+Swift's life is an extraordinary psychological study, but it will
+suffice to state here the bare outline of his career. He was a
+posthumous child, and born in Dublin of English parents, November 30th,
+1667. When a year old he was kidnapped by his nurse out of pure
+affection, and carried off to Whitehaven, where she remained with the
+child for three years. At the age of six the boy was sent to Kilkenny
+school, and there he had William Congreve (1670-1729), the future
+dramatist, for a schoolfellow. Neither at school nor at Trinity College,
+Dublin, which he entered as a boy of fifteen, did Swift distinguish
+himself, and he left the University in disgrace. At the Revolution he
+found a refuge with his mother at Leicester, and she, through a family
+relationship, obtained a position for her boy in the house of Sir
+William Temple (1628-1698), who was accounted a great man in his own
+day, and was famous alike for statecraft and literature. By many readers
+he will be best remembered as the husband of the charming Dorothy
+Osborne, whose innocently sweet love-letters have not lost their
+freshness in the lapse of two centuries.
+
+There was a degree of servitude in Swift's position of secretary, which
+galled his proud spirit. But Temple, so far from treating him unkindly,
+introduced him to the King, and employed him in 'affairs of great
+importance.' In 1694 he left Temple, went to Dublin, took holy orders,
+and lived as prebend of Kilroot on £100 a year. In 1696 he resigned the
+office and returned to Moor Park, where he remained until Sir William
+Temple's death, in 1699. There he studied hard, ran up a steep hill
+daily for exercise, and cultivated the acquaintance of Esther Johnson,
+the 'Stella' destined to take a strange part in Swift's history, then a
+mere girl, and a companion of Temple's sister, who lived with him after
+his wife's death.
+
+Swift began his literary career by writing Pindaric odes, one of which
+led Dryden to say, and the prediction was amply verified, 'Cousin Swift,
+you will never be a poet.' Probably no man of genius ever wrote worse
+poetry than is to be found in these portentous efforts.
+
+Here is one fair illustration of his flights as an ode writer, and the
+reader will not ask for more:
+
+    'Were I to form a regular thought of Fame,
+      Which is perhaps, as hard to imagine right
+      As to paint Echo to the sight,
+    I would not draw the idea from an empty name;
+      Because, alas! when we all die,
+      Careless and ignorant posterity,
+    Although they praise the learning and the wit,
+      And though the title seems to show
+    The name and man by whom the book was writ,
+      Yet how shall they be brought to know
+    Whether that very name was he, or you, or I?
+      Less should I daub it o'er with transitory praise,
+      And water-colours of these days:
+    These days! where e'en th' extravagance of poetry
+      Is at a loss for figures to express
+    Men's folly, whimsies, and inconstancy,
+      And by a faint description makes them less.
+    Then tell us what is Fame, where shall we search for it?
+    Look where exalted Virtue and Religion sit,
+    Enthroned with heavenly Wit!
+      Look where you see
+      The greatest scorn of learned Vanity!
+      (And then how much a nothing is mankind!
+    Whose reason is weighed down by popular air.
+      Who, by that, vainly talks of baffling death,
+      And hopes to lengthen life by a transfusion of breath,
+      Which yet whoe'er examines right will find
+      To be an art as vain as bottling up of wind!)
+    And when you find out these, believe true Fame is there,
+      Far above all reward, yet to which all is due;
+      And this, ye great unknown! is only known in you.'
+
+It is remarkable that at the very time Swift was perpetrating these
+lyrical atrocities, he was at work on the _Tale of a Tub_, which is
+generally regarded as the most masterly effort of his genius. A critic
+has said that Swift's poetry 'lacks one quality only--imagination,' but
+verse without imagination is like a body without a soul, like a house
+without windows, like a landscape-painting without atmosphere, and no
+license of language will allow us to call Swift a poet. Enough that he
+became a master of rhyme, and used it with extraordinary facility. Dr.
+Johnson's estimate of Swift's powers in this respect is a just one:
+
+'In the poetical works of Dr. Swift there is not much upon which the
+critic can exercise his powers. They are often humorous, almost always
+light, and have the qualities which recommend such compositions, ease
+and gaiety. They are, for the most part, what their author intended. The
+diction is correct, the numbers are smooth, and the rhymes exact. There
+seldom occurs a hard-laboured expression, or a redundant epithet; all
+his verses exemplify his own definition of a good style; they consist of
+proper words in proper places.'
+
+The merits with which Swift's verse is credited are, therefore, not
+poetical merits, unless we accept what Schlegel calls the miserable
+doctrine of Boileau, that the essence of poetry consists in diction and
+versification.
+
+The great bulk of Swift's verse is suggested by the incidents of the
+hour. No subject is too trivial for his pen; but the poems which are
+addressed to Stella, and others which, like _Cadenus and Vanessa_, and
+_On the Death of Dr. Swift_, have a personal interest, are by far the
+most attractive. We see the best side of Swift when he addresses Stella,
+whether in verse or prose. The birthday rhymes he delighted to write in
+her praise have the mark of sincerity, and there is true feeling in the
+lines which describe her as a ministering angel in his sickness:
+
+    'When on my sickly couch I lay,
+    Impatient both of night and day,
+    Lamenting in unmanly strains,
+    Called every power to ease my pains;
+    Then Stella ran to my relief
+    With cheerful face and inward grief;
+    And though by Heaven's severe decree
+    She suffers hourly more than me,
+    No cruel master could require
+    From slaves employed for daily hire,
+    What Stella, by her friendship warmed,
+    With vigour and delight performed;
+    My sinking spirits now supplies
+    With cordials in her hands and eyes,
+    Now with a soft and silent tread
+    Unheard she moves about my bed.
+    I see her taste each nauseous draught
+    And so obligingly am caught,
+    I bless the hand from whence they came,
+    Nor dare distort my face for shame.'
+
+The poem in which Swift imagines what will take place upon his death, is
+full of satiric humour, combined with that vein of bitterness that is
+never long absent from his writings. His humour is always allied to
+sadness; his mirth often sounds like a cry of misery. In this poem he
+pictures his gradual decay, and how his special friends, anticipating
+the end, will show their tenderness by adding largely to his years:
+
+    'He's older than he would be reckoned,
+    And well remembers Charles the Second.
+    He hardly drinks a pint of wine,
+    And that I doubt is no good sign.
+    His stomach too begins to fail,
+    Last year we thought him strong and hale,
+    But now he's quite another thing,
+    I wish he may hold out till Spring.'
+
+No enemy can match a friend, Swift adds, in portending a great
+misfortune:
+
+    'He'd rather choose that I should die
+    Than his prediction prove a lie,
+    No one foretells I shall recover,
+    But all agree to give me over.'
+
+So he dies, and the first question asked is, 'What has he left and who's
+his heir?' and when these questions are answered, the Dean is blamed for
+his bequests. The news spreads to London and is told at Court:
+
+    'Kind Lady Suffolk, in the spleen,
+    Runs laughing up to tell the Queen.
+    The Queen so gracious, mild, and good,
+    Cries, "Is he gone? 'tis time he should."'
+
+But the loss of the Dean will cause a brief regret to his most intimate
+friends:
+
+    'Poor Pope will grieve a month; and Gay
+    A week; and Arbuthnot a day.
+    St. John himself will scarce forbear
+    To bite his pen and drop a tear.
+    The rest will give a shrug, and cry,
+    "I'm sorry--but we all must die."'
+
+Why grieve, indeed, at the death of friends, since no loss is more easy
+to supply, and in a year the Dean will be forgotten, and his wit be out
+of date.
+
+    'Some country squire to Lintot goes,
+    Inquires for "Swift in Verse and Prose."
+    Says Lintot, "I have heard the name;
+    He died a year ago." "The same."
+    He searches all the shop in vain.
+    "Sir, you may find them in Duck Lane,
+    I sent them with a load of books
+    Last Monday to the pastrycook's.
+    To fancy they could live a year!
+    I find you're but a stranger here.
+    The Dean was famous in his time,
+    And had a kind of knack at rhyme.
+    His way of writing now is past,
+    The town has got a better taste."'
+
+Enough has been transcribed to show Swift's art in this poem, which is
+of considerable, but not of wearisome length. Perhaps ten or twelve
+pieces, in addition to those already mentioned, will repay the student's
+attention. One of the worthiest is a _Rhapsody on Poetry_. _Baucis and
+Philemon_, too, is a lively piece that pleased Goldsmith, and will
+please every reader. It was much altered from the original draught at
+Addison's suggestion; but the alterations are not improvements.[43] _The
+City Shower_ is a piece of Dutch painting, reminding us of Crabbe. _Mrs.
+Harris's Petition_ is an admirable bit of fooling; _Mary the Cook-Maid's
+Letter_, is in its way inimitable; and so, too, is the amusing talk of
+'my lady's waiting-woman' in _The Grand Question Debated_.
+
+It is difficult, unhappily, to pursue one's way through Swift's poems,
+without being repelled again and again by the filth in which it pleases
+him to wade. _The Beast's Confession_, which has been reprinted in the
+_Selections from Swift_ (Clarendon Press), is not obscene, like _The
+Lady's Dressing-Room_, _Strephon and Chloe_, and other poems of the
+class; but it has the inhumanity which deforms the description of the
+Houyhnhnms. Strange to say, in private life Swift appears to have been
+not only moral in conduct, but refined in conversation, and he is even
+said to have rebuked Stella on one occasion for a slightly coarse
+remark. His imagination was diseased, and he was himself always
+apprehensive of the calamity under which he became at last 'a driveller
+and a show.' 'I shall be like that tree,' he said once to the poet
+Young, 'I shall die at the top.'
+
+It has been already said that _The Tale of a Tub_ was written at Moor
+Park. It appeared in 1704, and although published anonymously and never
+owned, the book effectually stood in the way of Swift's high preferment
+in the Church. Queen Anne declined, and not without reason, to make its
+author a bishop.
+
+It is a satire of amazing power, written by a man who takes, as Swift
+took throughout life, a misanthropical view of human nature, and who
+agrees with the cynical judgment of Carlyle, that men are mostly fools.
+Swift, however, did not consider fools useless, but observes that they
+'are as necessary for a good writer as pen, ink, and paper.' Never was
+volume written which betrayed in larger characters the opinions and
+disposition of its author. Swift was consistent in defending the
+National Church as a political institution; but in the _Tale of a Tub_
+he does so with weapons an atheist might use if he possessed the skill.
+The author maintains that in his ridicule of the Church of Rome and of
+Protestant dissenters, he is only displaying the abuses which deform the
+Christian Church; but no defence can be urged for his wild and
+irreverent method of turning subjects into ridicule which by a vast
+number of people are regarded as sacred. In judging of Swift's satire
+from a moral standing-point, one test, as Mr. Leslie Stephen observes,
+may be supposed to guide our decision. 'Imagine the _Tale of a Tub_ to
+be read by Bishop Butler and by Voltaire, who called Swift a _Rabelais
+perfectionné_. Can anyone doubt that the believer would be scandalized,
+and the scoffer find himself in a thoroughly congenial element? Would
+not any believer shrink from the use of such weapons, even though
+directed against his enemies?'[44]
+
+Although the wit poured out with such profusion in the _Tale of a Tub_,
+in so far as it offends the moral sense, fails to give pleasure, the
+reader is astonished, as Swift in later life was himself, at the genius
+displayed in this allegory, the argument of which may be told in a few
+words.
+
+A man is supposed to have three sons by one wife, and all at a birth. On
+his deathbed he leaves to each of them a new coat, which he says will
+grow with their growth, and last as long as they live. In his will he
+leaves directions, saying how the coats are to be used, and warning them
+against neglecting his instructions. For some years all goes well, the
+will is studied and followed, and the brothers, Peter (the Church of
+Rome), Martin (the Church of England), and Jack (the Calvinist), live in
+unity. How by degrees they misinterpret their father's will, how Peter
+begins by adding topknots to his coat, and afterwards grows so
+scandalous that his brothers resolve to leave him, and then fall out
+between themselves, is told with abundant wit. A great part of the
+volume consists of digressions written in Swift's most vigorous style,
+and with the cynical humour in which he has no competitor.
+
+It is always interesting to observe the influence of a work of genius on
+other minds, and in connection with the _Tale of a Tub_ a story told of
+his boyhood by William Cobbett is worth recording:
+
+'I was trudging through Richmond,' he writes, 'in my blue smock-frock,
+and my red garters tied under my knees, when, staring about me, my eyes
+fell upon a little book in a bookseller's window, on the outside of
+which was written, "_Tale of a Tub_, price threepence." The title was so
+odd that my curiosity was excited.... It was something so new to my mind
+that though I could not at all understand some of it, it delighted me
+beyond description; and it produced what I have always considered a sort
+of birth of intellect. I read on till it was dark, without any thought
+of supper or bed.' Cobbett adds, that having read till he could see no
+longer, he put the volume in his pocket, and 'tumbled down' by the side
+of a haystack, 'where I slept till the birds in Kew Gardens awakened me
+in the morning; when off I started to Kew, reading my little book.'
+
+One of the greatest masters of prose in the language has also recorded
+the impression made upon him by this wonderful book. At the age of
+eighty-three Landor wrote: 'I am reading once more the work I have read
+oftener than any other prose work in our language.... What a writer! Not
+the most imaginative or the most simple, not Bacon or Goldsmith had the
+power of saying more forcibly or completely whatever he meant to say.'
+'Simplicity,' said Swift, 'is the best and truest ornament of most
+things in human life;' and Landor, commenting on Swift's style, observes
+that 'he never attempted to round his sentences by redundant words,
+aware that from the simplest and the fewest arise the secret springs of
+genuine harmony.'
+
+The volume containing the _Tale of a Tub_ had also within its covers the
+_Battle of the Books_, which was suggested by a controversy that
+originated in France, and had been carried on by Sir W. Temple in
+England, as to the relative merits of the Ancients and the Moderns. Out
+of this, too, arose a discussion by some _savants_, with Richard Bentley
+(1662-1742), the greatest scholar of the age, at their head, with regard
+to the genuineness of the _Epistles of Phalaris_, a subject discussed in
+Macaulay's essay on Temple in his usually brilliant style. Swift, in the
+_Battle of the Books_ sides with Temple and with Charles Boyle, the
+nominal editor of the _Epistles_, who, in the famous _Reply to Bentley_,
+fought behind the shield of Atterbury. In a combat, which takes place in
+the Homeric style, the enemies of the Ancients, Bentley and Wotton, are
+slain by one lance upon the field. The mighty deed was achieved by
+Boyle. 'As when a slender cook has trussed a brace of woodcocks, he with
+iron skewer pierces the tender sides of both, their legs and wings close
+pinioned to their ribs, so was this pair of friends transfixed, till
+down they fell joined in their lives, joined in their deaths; so closely
+joined, that Charon would mistake them both for one, and waft them over
+Styx for half his fare.' The humour of the piece is delightful, and it
+matters not a whit for the enjoyment of it, that the wrong heroes gain
+the victory.
+
+In 1708 Swift produced several pamphlets or tracts, and in one of them,
+the _Argument against Abolishing Christianity_, he found ample scope for
+the irony of which he was so consummate a master.
+
+'Great wits,' he writes, 'love to be free with the highest objects; and
+if they cannot be allowed a God to revile or renounce, they will speak
+evil of dignities, abuse the Government, and reflect upon the ministry;
+which I am sure few will deny to be of much more pernicious
+consequence;' and he observes, in concluding the argument: 'Whatever
+some may think of the great advantages to trade by this favourite
+scheme, I do very much apprehend that in six months' time the Bank and
+East India Stock may fall at least one _per cent._ And since that is
+fifty times more than ever the wisdom of our age thought fit to venture
+for the preservation of Christianity, there is no reason we should be at
+so great a loss merely for the sake of destroying it.'
+
+An amusing piece which appeared also at this time from Swift's pen, is
+of literary interest. Under the name of Isaac Bickerstaff he predicted
+the death, upon a certain day, of Partridge, a notorious astrologer and
+almanac maker. When the day arrived his decease was announced, and he
+was afterwards decently buried by Swift, despite a loud protest from the
+poor man that he was not only alive, but well and hearty. The town took
+up the joke, all the wits joined in it, and Steele, who started the
+_Tatler_ in the following year (1709), found it of advantage to assume
+the name of Bickerstaff, which these squibs had made so popular. Swift
+loved practical jokes, and sometimes yielded to a license that bordered
+on buffoonery. He was now in London, charged with a mission from the
+Irish Church, and hoping for Church preferment himself. With the latter
+object in view he published the _Sentiments of a Church of England Man_
+(1708). Two years later, vexed at heart at being unable to gain for the
+Irish clergy privileges enjoyed by their English brethren, and foiled,
+too, in his ambition, Swift forsook the Whig party, which he had never
+loved, and going over to the Tories, fought their battle for some years
+with so masterly a pen, as to become a great power in the country.
+
+Some time before his return to London in 1710, a weekly Tory paper had
+been started by Bolingbroke and Prior called _The Examiner_, and in
+opposition to it, upon September 14th in that year, Addison produced the
+_Whig Examiner_ which lived a brief life of five numbers and died on the
+8th of October. Three weeks later, on the 2nd November, after thirteen
+numbers of the _Examiner_ had been published, Swift took up the pen, and
+from that date to June 14th, 1711, every paper was from his hand. Never
+before had a political journal exercised such power. In his change of
+party Swift was sincere in purpose, but unscrupulous in his methods of
+pursuing it, and to gain his ends told lies with a vigour that has
+rarely been surpassed. He is never delicate in his treatment of
+opponents, and when finer weapons would be useless, strikes with a
+sledge hammer. That such a writer, a master of every method most
+effective in controversy, should have been valued by the statesmen of
+the day is not surprising. When he forsook the Whig camp there was no
+opponent to pit against him, for neither Addison with his delicate
+humour, nor Steele with his brightness and versatility, could grapple
+with an enemy like this.
+
+Swift's arrogance in these days of his power was that of a despot. He
+was doing great things for ministers, and took care that they should
+know it. He was proud of his self-assertion, proud of being rude. Great
+men, and great ladies too, who wished for his acquaintance, had to make
+the first advances. He caused Lady Burlington to burst into tears by
+rudely ordering her to sing. 'She should sing or he would make her.' 'I
+was at court and church to-day,' he tells Stella, 'I generally am
+acquainted with about thirty in the drawing-room, and am so proud I make
+all the lords come up to me.' On one occasion he sent the Lord Treasurer
+into the House of Commons to call out the principal Secretary of State
+in order to say that he would not dine with him if he intended to dine
+late. He relates, too, how he warned St. John not to appear cold to him,
+for he would not be treated like a school-boy, and if he heard or saw
+anything to his disadvantage to let him know in plain words, and not to
+put him in pain by the change of his behaviour, for it was what he would
+hardly bear from a crowned head. 'If we let these great ministers
+pretend too much,' he says, 'there will be no governing them.' And in a
+letter to Pope he makes the following confession: 'All my endeavours
+from a boy to distinguish myself were only for want of a great title and
+fortune that I might be treated like a lord ... whether right or wrong
+it is no great matter; and so the reputation of great learning does the
+work of a blue ribbon, and of a coach and six horses.'
+
+It would be out of place in this volume to dwell on Swift's feats as a
+political writer; for us the most interesting fact connected with the
+years 1710-14 is that during that eventful period of Swift's life, in
+which he was hobnobbing with Ministers of State and doing them infinite
+service by his pen, he was writing at odd moments his inimitable
+_Journal to Stella_, and gaining the love which ended so tragically, of
+Hester Vanhomrigh. This strange chapter in Swift's life is closely bound
+up with his literary history, and must therefore be briefly noticed.
+
+At Moor Park Swift, who was more than twenty years her senior, had seen
+Esther Johnson growing up into womanhood. He had been to her as a
+master, a position he always liked to assume towards women.[45] When he
+settled in Ireland it was arranged that Esther and her companion, Mrs.
+Dingley, should also live there. Her preceptor, in his regard for
+propriety, appears never to have seen Esther apart from the useful
+Dingley, and his letters are apparently addressed to both of them, but
+Esther knew, as we know, that all the tenderness and affectionate humour
+they contain was meant for her alone. Swift never writes as a lover, but
+the kind of love he gave to 'Stella' sufficed to bind her to him for
+life. If there were moments when she wished to escape from his power,
+the wish was hopeless. Having once submitted to his fascination, she was
+held by it to the end. Hester Vanhomrigh, who was about ten years
+younger than Stella, felt the same spell, and having a far less
+restrained nature than Miss Johnson, gave free expression to the passion
+which devoured her. Between his two admirers, for such they were, Swift
+had a difficult course to steer. To Stella he was linked by strong ties
+of companionship, and to her, according to some authorities, he was
+secretly married. Whether this were the case or not she had the larger
+claims upon him, and if one of the twain had to be sacrificed, Vanessa
+must be the victim.
+
+In _Cadenus and Vanessa_ (1713) a poem which every student of Swift will
+read, the author strove to achieve an impossibility. His aim was to
+ignore the lover and to assume the character of a master to an
+intelligent and favourite pupil, or of a father to a daughter. His
+dignity and age, he says, forbade the thought of warmer feelings.
+
+    'But friendship in its greatest height,
+    A constant rational delight,
+    On Virtue's basis fixed to last
+    When love's allurements long are past,
+    Which gently warms but cannot burn,
+    He gladly offers in return;
+    His want of passion will redeem
+    With gratitude, respect, esteem;
+    With that devotion we bestow
+    When goddesses appear below.'
+
+And this was Swift's method of dealing with a woman who confessed the
+'inexpressible passion' she had for him, and that his 'dear image' was
+always before her eyes. 'Sometimes,' she wrote, 'you strike me with that
+prodigious awe, I tremble with fear; at other times a charming
+compassion shines through your countenance which moves my soul.' Swift
+had acted far more than indiscreetly in encouraging a friendship with
+Vanessa, and when she followed him to Dublin, in the neighbourhood of
+which she had some property, he knew not how to escape from the snare
+his own folly had laid. To Stella he had given 'friendship and esteem,'
+but, as he is careful to add, 'ne'er admitted love a guest;' the same
+cold gift was offered to Vanessa, but in vain. According to a report,
+the authority of which is doubtful, Miss Vanhomrigh wrote to Stella, in
+1723, asking if she was Swift's wife. She replied that she was, and sent
+the letter she had received to Swift. In a towering passion he rode to
+Vanessa's house, threw the letter on the table, and left again without
+saying a word. The blow was fatal, and Vanessa died soon afterwards,
+revoking her will in Swift's favour and leaving to him the legacy of
+remorse. Having told in outline this episode in Swift's story, I return
+to the _Journal to Stella_, which dates from September 2nd, 1710, to
+June 6th, 1713.
+
+Little did Swift imagine that the chit-chat he was writing every day for
+Esther Johnson's sake would be read and enjoyed by thousands who care
+little or nothing for the party questions upon which the strenuous
+efforts of his intellect were expended. The early years of the
+eighteenth century contain nothing more delightful than this _Journal_.
+Its gossip, its nonsense, its freshness and ease of style, the
+tenderness concealed, or half-revealed, in its 'little language,' and
+the illustrations it supplies incidentally of the manners of the court
+and town, these are some of the charms that make us turn again and again
+to its pages with ever-increasing pleasure. We enjoy Swift's egotism and
+trivialities, as we enjoy the egotism of Pepys or Montaigne, and can
+imagine the eagerness with which the _Letters_ were read by the lovely
+woman whose destiny it was to receive everything from Swift save the
+love which has its consummation in marriage. The style of the _Journal_
+is not that of an author composing, but of a companion talking; and it
+is all the more interesting since it reveals Swift's character under a
+pleasanter aspect than any of his formal writings. We see in it what a
+warm heart he had for the friends whom he had once learnt to love, and
+with what zeal he exerted himself in assisting brother-authors, while
+receiving little beyond empty praise from ministers himself.
+
+In the winter of 1713-14 Swift joined the Scriblerus Club, an
+association of such wits as Pope, Parnell, Arbuthnot, and Gay, and it
+was about this time that his friendship with Pope began. The members
+proposed writing a satire between them, and when Swift was exiled to
+Dublin as Dean of St. Patrick's, he pursued indirectly the suggestion of
+the Scriblerus wits by writing _Gulliver's Travels_ (1726), a book that
+has made his name known throughout Europe, and in all the lands where
+English literature is read. Although Swift did not hesitate to make use
+of hints and descriptions which he had met with in the course of his
+reading, this is one of the most original works of fiction ever written,
+and one of the wittiest. Yet like almost everything that Swift wrote, it
+is deformed by grossness of expression, and in the latter portion by a
+malignant contempt for human nature which betrays a diseased
+imagination. The stories of the Lilliputians and Brobdingnags, purified
+from coarse allusions, are the delight of children; but the description
+of the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos excites disgust and indignation. He said
+that his object in writing the satire was to vex the world, and he has
+succeeded.
+
+'It cannot be denied,' says Sir Walter Scott, one of the sanest and
+healthiest of imaginative writers, 'that even a moral purpose will not
+justify the nakedness with which Swift has sketched this horrible
+outline of mankind degraded to a bestial state; since a moralist ought
+to hold with the Romans that crimes of atrocity should be exposed when
+punished, but those of flagitious impurity concealed. In point of
+probability, too--for there are degrees of probability, proper even to
+the wildest fiction--the fourth part of _Gulliver_ is inferior to the
+three others.... The mind rejects, as utterly impossible, the
+supposition of a nation of horses, placed in houses which they could not
+build, fed with corn which they could neither sow, reap, nor save,
+possessing cows which they could not milk, depositing that milk in
+vessels which they could not make, and, in short, performing a hundred
+purposes of rational and social life for which their external structure
+altogether unfits them.'[46]
+
+Neither morality, nor a regard for probability are so outraged in the
+story of the Lilliputians and Brobdingnags.
+
+Having once accepted Swift's assumption of the existence of little
+people not six inches high, and of a country in which the inhabitants
+'appeared as tall as an ordinary spire-steeple,' the exactness and
+verisimilitude of the narrative, with its minute geographical details,
+make it appear so reasonable that a young reader may feel inclined to
+resent the criticism of an Irish bishop who said that 'the book was full
+of improbable lies, and for his part he hardly believed a word of it.'
+It is curious to note that Swift, who made a strange vow in early life
+'not to be fond of children, or let them come near me hardly,' should
+have done more to delight them than any author of his century, with the
+exception, perhaps, of Defoe. Gay and Pope wrote a joint letter to Swift
+on the appearance of the _Travels_, pretending that they did not know
+the author, and advising him to get the book if it had not yet reached
+Ireland. 'From the highest to the lowest,' they declare, 'it is
+universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery.... It has
+passed Lords and Commons _nemine contradicente_, and the whole town,
+men, women, and children, are quite full of it.' A book which attained
+in the author's lifetime a wellnigh unprecedented popularity should
+have yielded him a large profit. What it did yield we do not know, but
+in a letter dated 1735, in which, perhaps, he alludes to the _Travels_,
+Swift says, 'I never got a farthing for anything I writ, except once,
+about eight years ago, and that by Mr. Pope's prudent management for
+me.'
+
+The injustice done to Ireland in the last century, as short-sighted as
+it was cruel, is described at large in the second volume of Mr. Lecky's
+_History_. Swift, who hated Ireland, felt a righteous indignation at the
+misgovernment which threatened the country with ruin, and some of his
+most powerful phillipics were secretly written in her defence.
+
+In 1720 he issued a pamphlet urging the Irish to use only Irish
+manufactures: 'I heard the late Archbishop of Tuam,' he writes, 'mention
+a pleasant observation of somebody's, that Ireland would never be happy
+till a law were made for burning everything that came from England,
+except their people and their coals. I must confess, that as to the
+former, I should not be sorry if they would stay at home; and for the
+latter, I hope, in a little time we shall have no occasion for them
+
+    "Non tanti mitra est, non tanti judicis ostrum--"
+
+but I should rejoice to see a staylace from England be thought
+scandalous, and become a topic for censure at visits and tea-tables.'
+
+The pamphlet is a forcible attack on the oppression under which Ireland
+laboured, and the Government answered it by prosecuting the printer.
+Nine times the jury were sent back by the Chief Justice before they
+consented to bring in a 'special verdict,' and ultimately the
+prosecution was dropped.
+
+Two years later the English Government granted a patent to a man of the
+name of Wood to issue a new copper coinage for Ireland to an
+extravagant amount, out of which, in return for bribes to the Duchess of
+Kendal, it was supposed that the speculator would make a considerable
+profit at Ireland's expense. The country was aroused, and Swift, by the
+issue of the _Drapier's Letters_, purporting to come from a Dublin
+draper, roused the passions of the people to a white heat. It was known
+perfectly well from whom the _Letters_ came, but no one would betray
+Swift, and when the printer was thrown into prison the jury refused to
+convict. The battle was fought with vigour, Swift conquered, and the
+patent was withdrawn. A brief passage from the fourth and final letter
+'To the Whole People of Ireland' shall be quoted. It will be seen that
+the writer is not afraid of plain speaking. After saying that the king
+cannot compel the subject to take any money except it be sterling gold
+or silver, he adds:
+
+    'Now here you may see that the vile accusation of Wood and his
+    accomplices, charging us with disputing the King's prerogative
+    by refusing his brass, can have no place--because compelling the
+    subject to take any coin which is not sterling is no part of the
+    King's prerogative, and I am very confident, if it were so, we
+    should be the last of his people to dispute it, as well from
+    that inviolable loyalty we have always paid to his Majesty, as
+    from the treatment we might in such a case justly expect from
+    some, who seem to think we have neither common sense nor common
+    senses. But, God be thanked, the best of them are only our
+    fellow-subjects, and not our masters. One great merit I am sure
+    we have which those of English birth can have no pretence
+    to--that our ancestors reduced this kingdom to the obedience of
+    England; for which we have been rewarded with a worse
+    climate--the privilege of being governed by laws to which we do
+    not consent--a ruined trade--a House of Peers without
+    jurisdiction--almost an incapacity for all employments--and the
+    dread of Wood's halfpence. But we are so far from disputing the
+    king's prerogative in coining, that we own he has power to give
+    a patent to any man for setting his royal image and
+    superscription upon whatever materials he pleases, and liberty
+    to the patentee to offer them in any country from England to
+    Japan; only attended with one small limitation--that nobody
+    alive is obliged to take them.'
+
+With much humour, in the last paragraph of the letter, Swift undertakes
+to show that Walpole is against Wood's project 'by this one invincible
+argument, that he has the universal opinion of being a wise man, an able
+minister, and in all his proceedings pursuing the true interest of the
+King his master; and that as his integrity is above all corruption, so
+is his fortune above all temptation.'
+
+Swift's arguments in the _Drapier's Letters_ are sophistical, his
+statements grossly exaggerated, and his advice sometimes shameless, as,
+for instance, in recommending what is now but too well known as
+'boycotting.' The end, however, was gained, and the Dean was treated
+with the honours of a conqueror. On his return from England in 1726, a
+guard of honour conducted him through the streets, and the city bells
+sounded a joyful peal. Wherever he went he was received with something
+like royal honours, and when Walpole talked of arresting him, he was
+told that 10,000 soldiers would be needed to make the attempt
+successful. The Dean's hatred of oppression and injustice had its
+limits. He defended the Test Act, and assailed all dissenters with
+ungovernable fury. It was his aim to exclude them from every kind of
+power.
+
+In 1729, with a passion outwardly calm and in a moderate style, which
+makes his amazing satire the more appalling, Swift published _A Modest
+Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from
+being a Burden to their Parents or Country and for making them
+Beneficial to the Public_. A more hideous piece of irony was never
+written; it is the fruit of an indignation that tore his heart. The
+_Proposal_ is, that considering the great misery of Ireland, young
+children should be used for food. 'I grant,' he says,'this food will be
+somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they
+have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title
+to the children. 'A very worthy person, he says, considers that young
+lads and maidens over twelve would supply the want of venison, but 'it
+is not improbable that some scrupulous people might be apt to censure
+such a practice (although, indeed, very unjustly), as a little bordering
+upon cruelty; which I confess has always been with me the strongest
+objection against any project, how well soever intended.' The
+business-like way in which the argument is conducted throughout, adds
+greatly to its force. Swift has written nothing so terrible as this
+satire, and nothing that surpasses it in power.
+
+The Dean was fretting away his life when he wrote this pamphlet. Two
+years before he had paid his last visit to the country where, as he said
+in a letter to Gay, he had made his friendships and left his desires. On
+the death of George I. he visited England, vainly hoping to gain some
+preferment there through the aid of Mrs. Howard, the mistress of George
+II., and returned to 'wretched Dublin,' to lose the woman he had loved
+so well and treated so strangely, and to 'die in a rage like a poisoned
+rat in a hole.' After Stella's death, in 1728, Swift's burden of
+misanthropy was never destined to be lightened. His rage and gloom
+increased as the years moved on, and in penning his lines of savage
+invective against the Irish House of Commons, the Dean had a fit and
+wrote no more verse. Here is a specimen of his _sæva indignatio_:
+
+    'Could I from the building's top
+    Hear the rattling thunder drop,
+    While the devil upon the roof
+    (If the devil be thunder-proof)
+    Should with poker fiery red
+    Crack the stones and melt the lead;
+    Drive them down on every skull,
+    While the den of thieves is full;
+    Quite destroy that harpies' nest,
+    How might then our isle be blest!'
+
+It should be observed at the same time that even in his declining days,
+when his heart was heavy with bitterness, Swift indulged in practical
+jokes and in the most trivial pursuits. _Vive la bagatelle_ was his cry,
+but it was the cry of a man who had as deep a contempt for the wiser
+pursuits of life as for its frivolities. Of the mirth that is the
+natural outcome of a cheerful nature, the Dean knew nothing. His
+hilarity was but a vain attempt to escape from despair. In 1740 he
+writes of being very miserable, extremely deaf, and full of pain.
+Sometimes he gave way to furious bursts of temper, and for several years
+before the end came, he fell into a state resembling idiocy. Swift died
+on October 19th, 1745, leaving his money to a hospital for lunatics,
+
+    'And showed by one satiric touch
+    No nation needed it so much.'
+
+A brilliant writer, who has undertaken to prove the 'glaring injustice'
+of the popular estimate of Swift, and by his forcible epithets has
+strengthened the grounds on which that estimate is built, observes that
+Swift's 'philosophy of life is ignoble, base, and false,' that 'his
+impious mockery extends even to the Deity,' and that 'a large portion of
+his works exhibit, and in intense activity, all the worst attributes of
+our nature--revenge, spite, malignity, uncleanness.'[47]
+
+This harsh judgment is essentially a true one; but Swift's was a
+many-sided character. He was a misanthrope, with deep, though very
+limited affections, a man frugal to eccentricity, with a benevolence at
+once active and extensive. His powerful intellect compels our
+admiration, if not our sympathy. His irony, his genius for satire and
+humour, his argumentative skill, his language, which is never wanting in
+strength, and is as clear as the most pellucid of mountain
+streams--these gifts are of so rare an order, that Swift's place in the
+literary history of his age must be always one of high eminence.
+Doubtless, as a master of style, he has been sometimes over-praised. If
+we regard the writer's end, it must be admitted that his language is
+admirably fitted for that end. What more then, it may be asked, can be
+needed? The reply is, that in composition, as in other things, there are
+different orders of excellence. The kind, although perfect, may be a low
+kind, and Swift's style wants the 'sweetness and light,' to quote a
+phrase of his own, which distinguish our greatest prose writers. It
+lacks also the elevation which inspires, and the persuasiveness that
+convinces while it charms. With infinitely more vigour than Addison,
+Swift, apart from his _Letters_, has none of Addison's attractiveness.
+No style, perhaps, is better fitted to exhibit scorn and contempt; but
+its author cannot express, because he does not possess, the sense of
+beauty.
+
+Unlike Pope, Swift was a man of affairs rather than of letters. He wrote
+neither for literary fame nor for money. His ambition was to be a ruler
+of men, and in imperious will he was strong enough to make a second
+Strafford. 'When people ask me,' said Lord Carteret, 'how I governed
+Ireland, I say that I pleased Dr. Swift, "_quæsitam meritis sume
+superbiam_."' As a political pamphleteer he succeeded, because he was
+savagely in earnest, and had the special genius of a combatant. If
+argument was against him he used satire; if satire failed he tried
+invective; his armoury was full of weapons, and there was not one of
+them he could not wield. He loved power, and exercised it on the
+ministers who needed the services of his pen. And, as we have already
+said, he dispensed his favours like a king! Swift's commanding genius
+gives even to his most trivial productions a measure of vitality. The
+student of our eighteenth century literature is arrested by the man and
+his works, and to treat either him or them with indifference would be to
+neglect a significant chapter in the history of the time.
+
+[Sidenote: John Arbuthnot (1667-1735).]
+
+John Arbuthnot, one of the most prominent of the Queen Anne wits, and
+the warm friend of Swift and Pope, was born at Arbuthnot, near Montrose,
+in 1667. He studied medicine at Aberdeen, and having taken his doctor's
+degree at St. Andrews, came, after the wont of ambitious Scotchmen, to
+seek his fortune in London, where in 1700 he published an _Essay on the
+Usefulness of Mathematical Learning_, and having won high reputation as
+a man of science, was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. A few years
+later he was made Physician Extraordinary to Queen Anne; and it was not
+long before he had as high a repute among men of letters as with men of
+science. He suffered frequently from illness; but no pain, it has been
+said, could extinguish his gaiety of mind. In the last century Hampstead
+was a favourite resort of invalids. Arbuthnot had sent Gay there on one
+occasion, and thither in 1734 he went himself, so ill that he 'could
+neither sleep, breathe, eat, nor move.' Contrary to his expectation he
+regained a little strength, and lived until the following spring. 'Pope
+and I were with him,' Lord Chesterfield wrote, 'the evening before he
+died, when he suffered racking pains.... He took leave of us with
+tenderness, without weakness, and told us that he died not only with the
+comfort, but even the devout assurance of a Christian.'
+
+There is not one of Pope's circle who holds a more enviable position
+than Arbuthnot. In strength of intellect and readiness of wit Swift only
+was his equal, and in classical learning he was Swift's superior. Like
+Othello, Arbuthnot was of a free and open nature, and his friends clung
+to him with an affection that was almost womanly. He had the fine
+impulses of Goldsmith combined with the manliness and practical sagacity
+of Dr. Johnson, and Johnson recognized in this celebrated physician a
+kindred spirit. 'I think Dr. Arbuthnot,' he said, 'the first man among
+the wits of the age. He was the most universal genius, being an
+excellent physician, a man of deep learning, and a man of much humour.'
+His genius and generous qualities were amply acknowledged by his
+contemporaries, Pope calls Arbuthnot 'as good a doctor as any man for
+one that is ill, and a better doctor for one that is well;' Swift said
+he had every virtue which could make a man amiable; Berkeley wrote of
+him as a great philosopher who was reckoned the first mathematician of
+the age and had the character 'of uncommon virtue and probity,' and
+Chesterfield, who declared that his knowledge and 'almost inexhaustible
+imagination' were at every one's service, added that 'charity,
+benevolence, and a love of mankind appeared unaffectedly in all he said
+and did.'
+
+Strange to say we know little of Arbuthnot but what is to be gleaned
+from the correspondence of his friends, and it is only of late years
+that an attempt has been made to write the doctor's biography, and to
+collect his works.[48] To edit these works satisfactorily is a difficult
+and a doubtful task--several of Arbuthnot's writings having been
+produced in connection with Swift, Pope, and Gay. So indifferent was he
+to literary fame, that his children are said to have made kites of
+papers in which he had jotted down hints that would have furnished good
+matter for folios. His most famous work is _The History of John Bull_
+(1713), which Macaulay considered the most humorous political satire in
+the language. It was designed to help the Tory party at the expense of
+the Duke of Marlborough, whose genius as a military leader was probably
+equal to that of Wellington, while he fell far below the 'Great Duke' in
+the virtues which form a noble character. The irony and dry humour of
+the satire remind one of Swift, and, like Arbuthnot's _Art of Political
+Lying_, is so much in Swift's vein throughout that M. Taine may be
+excused for attributing both of these pieces to the Dean of St.
+Patrick's.
+
+The _History of John Bull_ is not fitted to attain lasting popularity.
+It will be read from curiosity and for information; but the keen
+excitement, the amusement, and the irritation caused by a brilliant
+satire of living men and passing events can be but vaguely imagined by
+readers whose interest in the statecraft of the age is historical and
+not personal. Arbuthnot, like Swift, belonged to the Tory camp, and both
+did their utmost to depreciate the great General who never knew defeat,
+and to promote the designs of Harley. When Arbuthnot produced his
+satire, all the town laughed at the representation of Marlborough as an
+old smooth-tongued attorney who loved money, and was said by his
+neighbours to be hen-pecked, 'which was impossible by such a
+mild-spirited woman as his wife was.' That an 'honest plain-dealing
+fellow' like John Bull the Clothier, should be deceived by such wily men
+of business as Lewis Baboon of France, and Lord Strutt of Spain, and
+also that other tradesmen should be willing to join John and Nic Frog,
+the linen-draper of Holland, in the lawsuit, provided that Bull and
+Frog, or Bull alone, would bear the law charges, is made to appear
+likely enough; and Scott says truly that 'it was scarce possible so
+effectually to dim the lustre of Marlborough's splendid achievements as
+by parodying them under the history of a suit conducted by a wily
+attorney who made every advantage gained over the defendant a reason for
+protracting law procedure, and enhancing the expense of his client.' In
+this long lawsuit everybody is represented as gaining something except
+_John Bull_, whose ready money, book debts, bonds, and mortgages go into
+the lawyer's pockets. Whether the nickname of _John Bull_ originated
+with Arbuthnot or was merely adopted by him is not known.
+
+Arbuthnot was an active member of the Scriblerus Club, and wrote the
+larger portion of the _Memoirs of Martin Scriblerus_ (1741), the design
+of which was, as Pope said, to ridicule false tastes in learning, in the
+character of a man 'that had dipped into every art and science, but
+injudiciously in each.' Dr. Johnson says of this work that no man can be
+wiser, better, or merrier for remembering it. Perhaps he is right; but
+the _Memoirs_ contain some humorous points which, if they do not create
+merriment, may yield some slight amusement. The pedant's endeavours to
+make a philosopher of his child are sufficiently ludicrous. He is
+delighted to find that the infant has the wart of Cicero and the very
+neck of Alexander, and hopes that he may come to stammer like
+Demosthenes, 'and in time arrive at many other defects of famous men.'
+As the boy grows up his father invents for him a geographical suit of
+clothes, and stamps his gingerbread with the letters of the Greek
+alphabet, which proved so successful a mode of teaching the language,
+that on the very first day the child 'ate as far as iota.' He also
+taught him as a diversion 'an odd and secret manner of stealing,
+according to the custom of the Lacedemonians, wherein he succeeded so
+well that he practised it till the day of his death.' Martin studies
+logic, philosophy, and medicine, and discovers that the seat of the soul
+is not confined to one place in all persons, but resides in the stomach
+of epicures, in the brain of philosophers, in the fingers of fiddlers,
+and in the toes of rope-dancers. His discoveries, it may be added, are
+made 'without the trivial help of experiments or observations.'
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[43] _Life of Jonathan Swift_, by John Forster, vol. i., pp. 164-174.
+Mr. Forster did not live to produce more than one volume of a work to
+which for many years he had given 'much labour and time.'
+
+[44] _English Men of Letters--Jonathan Swift_, by Leslie Stephen, p. 43.
+
+[45] Mrs. Pendarves writes (1733) 'The day before we came out of town we
+dined at Doctor Delany's, and met the usual company. The Dean of St.
+Patrick's was there _in very good humour_, he calls himself "_my
+master_," and corrects me when I speak bad English or do not pronounce
+my words distinctly. I wish he lived in England, I should not only have
+a great deal of entertainment from him, but improvement.'--_Life and
+Correspondence of Mrs Delany_, vol. i., p. 407.
+
+[46] _Life of Swift_, p. 299.
+
+[47] _Jonathan Swift, a Biographical and Critical Study_, by J. Churton
+Collins, p. 267.
+
+[48] See _The Life and Works of Dr. Arbuthnot_, by George A. Aitken.
+Oxford, Clarendon Press.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+DANIEL DEFOE--JOHN DENNIS--COLLEY CIBBER--LADY MARY WORTLEY
+    MONTAGU--EARL OF CHESTERFIELD--LORD LYTTELTON--JOSEPH SPENCE.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Daniel Defoe (1661-1731).]
+
+The most voluminous writer of his century is popularly remembered as the
+author of one book, published in old age. Everybody has read _Robinson
+Crusoe_, and knows the name of its author; but few readers outside the
+narrow circle of literary students are aware of Defoe's exhaustless
+labours as a politician, social reformer, projector, pamphleteer, and
+novelist.
+
+It would be well for the author's reputation if we knew less about him
+than we do. There was a time when he was regarded as a noble sufferer in
+the cause of civil and religious liberty. His faults were credited to
+his age while his virtues were supposed to place him on an eminence far
+above the time-servers who despised him. He has been praised as a man
+courageously living for great aims, who was maligned by the malice of
+party, and to whose memory scant justice has been done. 'No one,' says
+Henry Kingsley, 'could come up to the standard of his absolute
+precision,' and his 'inexorable honesty alienated everyone.' These words
+were written in 1868. Four years previously, however, the discovery of
+six letters in the State Paper Office, in Defoe's own hand, had entirely
+destroyed his character for inexorable honesty, and the researches of
+his latest and most exhaustive biographer,[49] who regards his hero's
+vices as virtues, do but serve to give greater prominence to the
+baseness of his conduct. Defoe, by his own confession, was for many
+years in the pay of the Government for secret services, taking shares in
+Tory papers and supervising them as editor, in order to defeat the aims
+of the party to which he professed to be allied, and of the proprietors
+with whom he was in partnership. Thus in 1718, he writes as a plea that
+his labours should be remembered: 'I am, Sir, for this service, posted
+among Papists, Jacobites, and enraged High Tories--a generation who I
+profess my very soul abhors; I am obliged to hear traitorous expressions
+and outrageous words against his majesty's person and government, and
+his most faithful servants, and smile at it all as if I approved it; I
+am obliged to take all the scandalous and indeed villainous papers that
+come, and keep them by me as if I would gather materials from them to
+put them into the _News_; nay, I often venture to let things pass which
+are a little shocking that I may not render myself suspected. Thus I bow
+in the House of _Rimmon_, and must humbly recommend myself to his
+lordship's protection, or I may be undone the sooner, by how much the
+more faithfully I execute the commands I am under.' It would not be fair
+to judge Defoe altogether by the moral standard of our own day, but the
+part he played as a servant and spy of the government would have been an
+act of baseness in any age, and of this he seems to have been conscious.
+
+Daniel Foe, who about 1703 assumed the prefix of De, for no assignable
+reason, was the son of a butcher and Nonconformist in Cripplegate, who
+had the youth educated for the ministry. Daniel, however, preferred a
+more exciting occupation, and took part in the unfortunate expedition of
+the Duke of Monmouth. Escaping from that peril he began business as a
+hose factor in Cornhill, and carried it on until he failed about the
+year 1692. Already he had learnt to use the pen, and a loyal pamphlet
+secured for him a public appointment which lasted for some years. He was
+also connected with a brick manufactory at Tilbury. Meanwhile he wrote
+for the press, and showed himself the possessor of a clear and masculine
+style, which could be 'understanded of the people.'
+
+In 1698 Defoe published his _Essay on Projects_, 'which perhaps,'
+Benjamin Franklin says, 'gave me a turn of thinking that had an
+influence on some of the principal future events of my life.'
+
+One of the most interesting projects in the book is the proposal to form
+an Academy on the French model. In 1712 Swift wrote a pamphlet (the only
+piece he published with his name) entitled _A proposal for correcting,
+improving, and ascertaining the English tongue_, in which he suggests
+the foundation of an Academy under the protection of the Queen and her
+ministers. The idea it will be seen had been anticipated fifteen years
+before.
+
+    'The peculiar study of the Academy of France,' Defoe writes,
+    'has been to refine and correct their own language, which they
+    have done to that happy degree that we see it now spoken in all
+    the courts of Christendom as the language allowed to be most
+    universal. I had the honour once to be a member of a small
+    society who seemed to offer at this noble design in England; but
+    the greatness of the work and the modesty of the gentlemen
+    concerned prevailed with them to desist from an enterprise which
+    appeared too great for private hands to undertake. We want
+    indeed a Richelieu to commence such a work, for I am persuaded
+    were there such a genius in our kingdom to lead the way, there
+    would not want capacities who could carry on the work to a
+    glory equal to all that has gone before them. The English tongue
+    is a subject not at all less worthy the labours of such a
+    society than the French, and capable of a much greater
+    perfection. The learned among the French will own that the
+    comprehensiveness of expression is a glory in which the English
+    tongue not only equals, but excels its neighbours.... It is a
+    great pity that a subject so noble should not have some as noble
+    to attempt it; and for a method what greater can be set before
+    us than the Academy of Paris, which, to give the French their
+    due, stands foremost among all the great attempts in the learned
+    part of the world.'
+
+Defoe also projected a Royal Military Academy, and an academy for women
+which should have only one entrance and a large moat round it. With
+these precautions, spies, he observes, would be unnecessary, since, in
+his opinion, 'there needs no other care to prevent intriguing than to
+keep the men effectually away.' He had the Eastern notion of guarding
+women from danger by preventing the access to it, yet he could write:
+
+    'A woman of sense and manners is the finest and most delicate
+    part of God's creation; the glory of her Maker, and the great
+    instance of His singular regard to man, His darling creature, to
+    whom He gave the best gift either God could bestow or man
+    receive. And it is the sordidest piece of folly and ingratitude
+    in the world to withhold from the sex the due lustre which the
+    advantages of education gives to the natural beauty of their
+    minds. A woman well bred and well taught, furnished with the
+    additional accomplishments of knowledge and behaviour, is a
+    creature without comparison; her society is the emblem of
+    sublime enjoyments; her person is angelic and her conversation
+    heavenly.... She is every way suitable to the sublimest wish,
+    and the man that has such a one to his portion has nothing to do
+    but to rejoice in her and be thankful.'
+
+In verse Defoe published the _True Born Englishman_ (1701), in defence
+of King William and his Dutch followers:
+
+    'William's the name that's spoke by every tongue,
+    William's the darling subject of my song;
+    Listen, ye virgins, to the charming sound,
+    And in eternal dances hand it round.
+    Your early offerings to this altar bring,
+    Make him at once a lover and a king.'
+
+The nonsense deepens as the rhyme goes on. For William every tender vow
+is to be made, he is to be the first thought in the morning, and his
+name will act as a charm, affrighting the infernal powers and guarding
+from the terror of the night.
+
+The poem proved very popular, and Defoe writes that had he been able to
+enjoy the profit of his own labour he would have gained above £1,000. He
+printed nine editions at the price of one shilling a copy, but meanwhile
+twelve surreptitious editions were published and sold for a few pence, a
+fraud for which he says he had no remedy but patience. Throughout his
+busy life of authorship he was indeed continually victimized by pirates.
+
+While in verse Defoe extolled the king as if he were a demi-god, he did
+William good service by his pamphlets, and was in some degree admitted
+into his confidence.
+
+Up to the king's death in 1702 his course appears to have been
+straightforward; after the accession of Anne he acted a less honourable
+part. No fault can be found with his design that year in writing _The
+Shortest Way with the Dissenters_, a piece of irony unsurpassed in that
+age until the publication of Swift's _Modest Proposal_, twenty-seven
+years later. The satire was at first accepted as a serious argument. The
+Dissenters were alarmed, and the most bigoted of High Churchmen
+delighted. Then, Defoe's aim being discovered, both parties joined in
+the cry for vengeance. He was condemned to stand for three days in the
+pillory, and was afterwards imprisoned in Newgate. To the 'hieroglyphic
+state machine, contrived to punish Fancy in,' the undaunted man
+addressed a hymn which was hawked about the streets, and the mob instead
+of pelting him with offensive missiles, covered him with flowers.
+'Earless on high stood unabashed Defoe,' says Pope. He was unabashed,
+but he was not earless.
+
+In Newgate he remained until 1704, when he was released by Harley. In
+prison he wrote a minutely circumstantial account of the great storm
+commemorated in Addison's _Campaign_. How much of Defoe's narrative is
+truth and how much invention it is impossible to say. The fact that he
+solemnly vouches for the accuracy of his statements inclines one to
+believe that they are not to be trusted, for this was always Defoe's
+_rôle_ as a writer of fiction. His first and most deliberate effort is
+to impose upon his readers, and in this art he is without a rival.
+
+While in Newgate he began his _Review_, a political journal of great
+ability. The first number was published in February, 1704, and it
+existed, though not in its original form, for more than nine years.
+
+'When it is remembered that no other pen was ever employed than that of
+Defoe, upon a work appearing at such frequent intervals, extending over
+more than nine years, and embracing, in more than five thousand printed
+pages, essays on almost every branch of human knowledge, the achievement
+must be pronounced a great one, even if he had written nothing else. If
+we add that between the dates of the first and last numbers of the
+_Review_ he wrote and published no less than eighty other distinct
+works, containing 4,727 pages, and perhaps more not now known, the
+fertility of his genius must appear as astonishing as the greatness of
+his capacity for labour.'[50]
+
+Defoe was permitted to leave his prison upon condition that he should
+act in the secret service of the Government, and his work was that of an
+hireling writer unburdened by principle. When Harley was ejected he made
+himself useful to Godolphin; when Godolphin was dismissed he went back
+to Harley, and 'the spirit of the _Review_ changed abruptly.' A more
+useful man for the work he had undertaken could not be found. His
+dexterity, his boldness, his knowledge of men and of affairs, his
+readiness as a writer, and it must be added his unscrupulousness, fitted
+him admirably for services which had to be done in secret.
+
+Much that he did openly was deserving of high praise. He was tolerant in
+an intolerant age, he did his best to forward the Union of England and
+Scotland, his patriotic spirit was not feigned, his words are often
+weighty with wisdom, and it has been truly said, that 'his powerful
+advocacy was enlisted in favour of almost every practicable scheme of
+social improvement that came to the front in his time.'[51]
+
+With equal truth the writer adds that Defoe was 'a wonderful mixture of
+knave and patriot.' The knavery is seen to some extent in his method of
+workmanship as a man of letters. In _A True Relation of the Apparition
+of one Mrs. Veal[52] the next day after her Death to one Mrs. Bargrave
+at Canterbury, 8th September, 1705_ (1706) Defoe's art of mystification
+is skilfully practised.
+
+'This relation,' he says in the Preface, 'is matter of fact, and
+attended with such circumstances as may induce any reasonable man to
+believe it. It was sent by a gentleman, a Justice of Peace at Maidstone,
+in Kent, and a very intelligent person, to his friend in London as it is
+here worded; which discourse is here attested by a very sober and
+understanding gentleman, who had it from his kinswoman who lives in
+Canterbury, within a few doors of the house in which the within-named
+Mrs. Bargrave lives ... and who positively assured him that the whole
+matter as it is related and laid down is really true, and what she
+herself had in the same words, as near as may be, from Mrs. Bargrave's
+own mouth.'
+
+In addition to this circumstantial statement, the veritable appearance
+of the ghostly lady is confirmed by the fact that she wore a scoured
+silk gown, newly made up, which, as Mrs. Bargrave told a friend, she
+felt and commended. 'Then Mrs. Watson cried out, "you have seen her
+indeed, for none knew but Mrs. Veal and myself that the gown was
+scoured."' The ghost came chiefly for the purpose of recommending
+Drelincourt's volume, _A Christian's Defence Against the Fear of Death_,
+then in its third edition. The fourth edition contained Mrs. Bargrave's
+story. 'I am unable to say,' Mr. Lee writes, 'when Defoe's "Apparition"
+became a necessary appendage to the book; but think, that since the
+eleventh edition, to the present time, Drelincourt has never been
+published without it.'
+
+When in 1719, at the age of fifty-nine, he produced his first and
+greatest work of fiction, _Robinson Crusoe_, he aimed by the constant
+reiteration of commonplace details to give a matter-of-fact aspect to
+the narrative, and in most of his later novels, with the exception of
+_Colonel Jack_ (1722), which he allows to be in part a 'moral romance,'
+Defoe boldly maintains that his relations are in every respect true to
+biography and to history. To make this more probable he overloads his
+pages with a number of business-like statements, and with affairs so
+insignificant and sordid that only his genius can save the narrative
+from being wearisome. To inculcate morality he carries his readers into
+the worst dens of vice--his heroes being pickpockets, pirates, and
+convicts, and his heroines depraved women of the lowest order. The
+interest felt in _Captain Singleton_ (1720), in _Moll Flanders_ (1722),
+in _Colonel Jack_ (1722), and in _Roxana_ (1724), is to be found in the
+minute record of their shameless adventures, their miseries and vices.
+When the characters reform, Defoe's occupation is gone. The atmosphere
+the reader is forced to breathe in these tales is indeed so oppressive
+that he will be glad to escape from it into the pure and exhilarating
+air of a Shakespeare or a Scott.
+
+A critic has asserted that as models of fictitious narrative these tales
+are supreme, but it is impossible to agree with this judgment. The
+highest imaginative art is not deceptive art. The fact that Lord Chatham
+thought the _Memoirs of a Cavalier_[53] (1720) a true history, is not to
+the credit of the work as fiction. As well, it has been said, might you
+claim the highest genius for the painter, whose fruit and flowers were
+so deceptively painted as to tempt birds to peck at the canvas.
+
+Whatever interest the reader feels in Defoe's 'secondary novels,' of
+which _Roxana_ is the most powerful, is due to scenes which disgust as
+much as they impress. The vividness with which they are depicted is
+undeniable, but one does not desire to inspect filth with a microscope.
+Happily _Robinson Crusoe_, on which the author's fame rests, is a
+thoroughly healthy book that still holds its place as the best, or one
+of the best, volumes ever written for boys. There is genius as well as
+extraordinary skill in the way this admirable story is told, but it is
+not among the fictions which are read with as much pleasure in old age
+as in youth. Defoe's amazing gift of invention does not compensate for
+the want of a creative and elevating imagination.
+
+_The History of the Plague in London_ (1722) stands next to _Robinson
+Crusoe_ in literary merit. Had Defoe been a witness, as he pretends to
+have been, of the scenes which he describes, the record could not be
+more vivid. It professes to have been 'written by a citizen who
+continued all the while in London,' and 'lived without Aldgate Church
+and Whitechapel Bars, on the left hand or north side of the street.' In
+this case, as in others, the circumstantial character of the narrative
+led readers to regard it as a true history, and Dr. Mead, in his
+_Discourse on the Plague_ (1744), quotes the book as an authority.
+
+Highly characteristic of Defoe's style, and of his art as a moralist is
+the _Religious Courtship_, also published in 1722. It is the fictitious
+history of a family told partly in dialogue, and so written as to
+attract the reader in spite of repetitions and of reflections as
+praiseworthy as they are commonplace. It appeals to a class whose
+attention would not be won by fine literature, and has not appealed in
+vain, for the book, after passing through a large number of editions,
+has not yet lost its popularity. Morally the work is unobjectionable,
+though not a little narrow, and it is strange that it should have
+appeared about the same time as a story so offensively coarse as _Moll
+Flanders_.
+
+The most veracious book written by Defoe is _A Tour through the Whole
+Island of Great Britain, By a Gentleman_, 1724, in three volumes. The
+full title of the work is too long to quote, but it may be observed that
+the promises it holds out under five headings are satisfactorily
+fulfilled. The _Tour_ bears the marks of having been written with great
+care and from personal observation throughout. Defoe states that before
+publishing the book he had made seventeen large circuits or separate
+journeys, and three general tours through the whole island. It contains
+curious information as to the state of England and Scotland one hundred
+and seventy years ago, and readers interested in our social progress and
+the industrial life of the country will find much to interest them in
+the traveller's shrewd observations and careful details. The love of
+mountain and lake scenery felt by Gray more than forty years later was a
+passion unknown to Defoe and to most of his contemporaries. In the
+_Tour_ Westmoreland is described as the wildest, most barbarous and
+frightful country of any which the author had passed over. He observes
+that it is 'of no advantage to represent horror,' and the impassable
+hills with their snow-covered tops 'seemed,' he says, 'to tell us all
+the pleasant part of England was at an end.' The _Tour_ exhibits Defoe's
+literary gift of expressing what he has to say in the clearest language.
+A homely style which fulfils its purpose has a merit deserving of
+recognition. For steady work upon the road the sober hackney is of more
+service than the race-horse.
+
+Defoe was a husband and father and a man of affairs, yet, like his own
+Crusoe, he lived a lonely life, and in 1731, owing to some strange
+circumstance of which there is no record, died a lonely death at a
+lodging-house at Moorfields. He has been called the father of the
+English novel, and deserves the title, although on a slighter scale
+Steele and Addison preceded him as writers of fiction. As a novelist he
+is without refinement, without ideality, without passion; he looks at
+life from a low level, but in the narrow territory of which he is
+master--the art of realistic invention--his power of insight is
+incontestible. Defoe adopted a method dear in our day to some of the
+least worthy of French novelists, who while aiming to copy Nature debase
+her. For Nature must be interpreted by Art, since only thus can we
+obtain a likeness that shall be both beautiful and true. Defoe,
+nevertheless, has contributed one book of lasting value to the
+literature of his country, and such a gift, in the eyes of the literary
+chronicler, hides a multitude of faults.
+
+[Sidenote: John Dennis (1657-1733-4).]
+
+John Dennis was born in London and educated at Harrow and Caius College,
+Cambridge. His relations with Pope give him a more prominent position
+among men of letters than he would otherwise deserve, and mark with
+unpleasing distinctness the coarse methods of literary warfare adopted
+in Pope's day. The poet began the attack in his _Essay on Criticism_.
+Dennis had written a tragedy called _Appius and Virginia_, and Pope, who
+had a grudge against him for not admiring his _Pastorals_, showed his
+spite in the following lines:
+
+    'But Appius reddens at each word you speak,
+    And stares tremendous, with a threatening eye,
+    Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.'
+
+It was perilous in Pope to allude to the personal defects of an
+antagonist, and Dennis attacked him coarsely in return as a 'young,
+squab, short gentleman, an eternal writer of amorous pastoral madrigals,
+and the very bow of the god of Love.' 'He has reason,' he adds, 'to
+thank the good gods that he was born a modern; for had he been born of
+Grecian parents, and his father by consequence had by law the absolute
+disposal of him, his life had been no longer than one of his poems--the
+life of half a day.'
+
+Dennis's pamphlet on the _Essay_ caused Pope some pain when he heard of
+it, 'But it was quite over,' he told Spence, 'as soon as I came to look
+into his book and found he was in such a passion.'
+
+The critic, however, was a thorn in Pope's flesh for many a year, and
+the poet showed his irritation by assaulting him in prose and verse.
+Dennis was equally ready, although not equally capable of returning the
+poet's blows, and when free from the impotence of anger, made several
+shrewd critical thrusts which his antagonist felt keenly.
+
+Dennis aspired to be a poet and dramatist. He wrote a bombastic poem in
+blank verse called _The Monument_, sacred to the immortal memory of 'the
+good, the great, the god-like, William III.'; a poem, also in blank
+verse, and still more 'tremendous,' to quote his favourite word, on the
+_Battle of Blenheim_, in which he frequently invokes his soul to say and
+sing a thousand things far beyond his soul's reach--and a poem equally
+laboured and grandiloquent, on the Battle of Ramillies, in which there
+are passages that read like a burlesque of Milton. Dennis observes in
+his _Grounds of Criticism in Poetry_ (1704) that 'poetry unless it
+pleases, nay, and pleases to a height, is the most contemptible thing in
+the world.' This is just criticism, but the writer did not recognize
+that his own verse was contemptible. In this essay, which contains many
+sound critical remarks and an appreciation of Milton seldom felt at that
+time, he has the bad taste to quote as an illustration of the sublime, a
+passage from his own paraphrase of the Te Deum:
+
+    'Where'er at utmost stretch we cast our eyes
+    Through the vast frightful spaces of the skies,
+    Ev'n there we find Thy glory, there we gaze
+    On Thy bright Majesty's unbounded blaze;
+    Ten thousand suns prodigious globes of light
+    At once in broad dimensions strike our sight;
+    Millions behind, in the remoter skies,
+    Appear but spangles to our wearied eyes;
+    And when our wearied eyes want farther strength
+    To pierce the void's immeasurable length
+    Our vigorous towering thoughts still further fly,
+    And still remoter flaming worlds descry;
+    But even an Angel's comprehensive thought
+    Cannot extend so far as Thou hast wrought;
+    Our vast conceptions are by swelling, brought,
+    Swallowed and lost in Infinite, to nought.'
+
+It is significant of Dennis's judgment of his own verse that these
+inflated lines follow one of the loveliest passages contained in
+_Paradise Lost_. Milton describes the moon unveiling her peerless light;
+and the poet-critic exhibits in juxtaposition his 'vigorous towering
+thoughts' about the stars. The comparison forced upon the reader is
+unfortunate.
+
+His tragedies, _Iphigenia_ (1704), _Liberty Asserted_ (1704), _Appius
+and Virginia_ (1709), and a comedy called _A Plot and No Plot_ (1697)
+were brought upon the stage. _Liberty Asserted_, which was received with
+applause due to the violence of its attacks upon the French, although
+called a tragedy, does not end tragically. The heroine's patriotism is
+so fervid that she professes herself willing, while loving one man, to
+marry another whom she does not love, if her country deems him the more
+worthy.
+
+Among other poetical attempts, Dennis addressed a Pindaric Ode to
+Dryden, and the great poet, with the flattery which he was always ready
+to lavish on his well-wishers, called him 'one of the greatest masters'
+in that kind of verse. 'You have the sublimity of sense as well as
+sound,' he wrote, 'and know how far the boldness of a poet may lawfully
+extend.'
+
+It may be added that Dennis on one occasion successfully opposed one of
+the ablest controversialists of the age. In _The Absolute Unlawfulness
+of Stage Entertainments fully demonstrated_, William Law attacked
+dramatic representations, not on account of the evils at that time
+associated with them, but as 'in their own nature grossly sinful.' 'To
+suppose an innocent play,' Law says, 'is like supposing innocent lust,
+sober rant, or harmless profaneness,' and throughout the pamphlet this
+strain of fierce hostility is maintained.
+
+'Law,' says his biographer,'measured his strength with some of the very
+ablest men of his day, with men like Hoadly and Warburton, and Tindal
+and Wesley; and it may safely be said that he never came forth from the
+contest defeated. But, absurd as it may sound, it is perfectly true that
+what neither Hoadly nor Warburton, nor Tindal, nor Wesley could do, was
+done by John Dennis.... "Plays," wrote Law, "are contrary to Scripture
+as the devil is to God, as the worship of images is to the second
+commandment." To this Dennis gave the obvious and unanswerable retort
+that "when St. Paul was at Athens, the very source of dramatic poetry,
+he said a great deal publicly against the idolatry of the Athenians, but
+not one word against their stage. At Corinth he said as little against
+theirs. He quoted on one occasion an Athenian dramatic poet, and on
+others Aratus and Epimenides. He was educated in all the learning of the
+Grecians, and could not but have read their dramatic poems; and yet, so
+far from speaking a word against them, he makes use of them for the
+instruction and conversion of mankind."'
+
+Dennis's pamphlet, _The Stage defended from Scripture, Reason,
+Experience, and the Common Sense of Mankind for Two Thousand Years_, was
+published in 1726. In his latter days he suffered from two grievous
+calamities, poverty and blindness. In 1733 Vanbrugh's play, _The
+Provoked Husband_, was acted for his benefit, and his old enemy Pope
+wrote the prologue, of which the sarcasm is more conspicuous than the
+kindness. There is a story, to which allusion is made in the _Dunciad_,
+that Dennis had invented some kind of theatrical thunder, and how, being
+once present at a tragedy, he fell into a great passion because his art
+had been appropriated, and cried out ''Sdeath! that is _my_ thunder.'
+The critic was also known to have an intense hatred of the French and of
+the Pope, and these peculiarities are not forgotten in the prologue.
+
+After saying that Dennis lay pressed by want and weakness, his doubtful
+friend adds:
+
+    'How changed from him who made the boxes groan,
+    And shook the stage with thunders all his own!
+    Stood up to dash each vain Pretender's hope,
+    Maul the French tyrant, or pull down the Pope!
+    If there's a Briton then, true bred and born,
+    Who holds Dragoons and wooden shoes in scorn;
+    If there's a critic of distinguished rage;
+    If there's a senior who contemns this age;
+    Let him to-night his just assistance lend,
+    And be the Critic's, Briton's, Old Man's friend.'
+
+Dennis got £100 by this benefit, but had little time in which to spend
+it, for he died about a fortnight afterwards at the age of
+seventy-seven. Upon his death Aaron Hill wrote some memorial verses, in
+which he prophesies that, while the critic's frailties will be no longer
+remembered,
+
+    'The rising ages shall redeem his name,
+    And nations read him into lasting fame.'
+
+It will be seen that the poets did not all treat Dennis unkindly. If
+praise were substantial food, he would have had enough to sustain him
+from 'glorious John' alone.
+
+[Sidenote: Colley Cibber (1671-1757).]
+
+Colley Cibber holds a more prominent place than Dennis in the list of
+men whom Pope selected for attack. He could not have chosen one more
+impervious to assault. The poet's anger excited Cibber's mirth, his
+satire contributed to his content. The comedian's unbounded
+self-satisfaction and good humour, his vivacity and spirits, were proof
+against Pope's malice. Graceless he may have been, but a dullard the
+mercurial 'King Colley' was not.
+
+Born in 1671, he disappointed the hopes of his father, the famous
+sculptor, and at the age of eighteen made his first appearance on the
+stage. As actor and as dramatist, the theatre throughout his life was
+Cibber's all-absorbing interest. His first play, _Love's Last Shift_
+(1696), kept possession of the stage for forty years, and his best play,
+_The Careless Husband_ (1704), received a like welcome. As an actor he
+was also successful, and played for £50 a night, the highest sum ever
+given at that time to any English player. His career was as long as it
+was prosperous. 'Old Cibber plays to-night,' Horace Walpole wrote in
+1741, 'and all the world will be there.'
+
+It was only as Poet Laureate, for he could not write poetry, that Cibber
+displayed his inferiority. The honour was conferred in 1730, two years
+after Gay had produced the _Beggar's Opera_, when Pope was in the height
+of his fame, when Thomson had published his _Seasons_ and Young _The
+Universal Passion_. Pope, as a Roman Catholic, was out of the running,
+but there were poets living who would have saved the office from the
+disgrace brought upon it by Cibber. 'As to Cibber,' Swift wrote to Pope,
+'if I had any inclination to excuse the Court, I would allege that the
+Laureate's place is entirely in the Lord Chamberlain's gift; but who
+makes Lord Chamberlains is another question.' The sole result of the
+appointment that deserves to be recorded is an epigram by Johnson, as
+just as it is severe:
+
+    'Augustus still survives in Maro's strain,
+    And Spenser's verse prolongs Eliza's reign;
+    Great George's acts let tuneful Cibber sing,
+    For Nature formed the Poet for the King!'
+
+Of poetry there is no trace in the five volumes of his dramatic works;
+there are few touches of nature, and little genuine wit, but these
+defects are to some extent supplied by sparkling dialogue and lively
+badinage. Cibber is often sentimental, and when he is sentimental he is
+odious. His attempts to express strong emotion and honourable feeling
+excite laughter instead of sympathy, and on this account it is difficult
+to accept without some deduction Mr. Ward's favourable judgment of _The
+Careless Husband_,[54] which, if it be one of the cleverest of Cibber's
+dramas, is also one of the most conspicuous for this defect. Here, as
+elsewhere, Cibber should have left sentiment alone. Imagine a lover
+exclaiming to a relenting mistress, 'Oh, let my soul thus bending to
+your power, adore this soft descending goodness!' or a man conversing in
+the following strain with a wife who has discovered and forgiven his
+infidelities:
+
+    '_Sir Charles._ Come, I will not shock your softness by any
+    untimely blush for what is past, but rather soothe you to a
+    pleasure at my sense of joy for my recovered happiness to come.
+    Give then to my new-born love what name you please, it cannot,
+    shall not be too kind. Oh! it cannot be too soft for what my
+    soul swells up with emulation to deserve. Receive me then entire
+    at last, and take what yet no woman ever truly had, my conquered
+    heart.
+
+    '_Lady Easy._ Oh, the soft treasure! Oh, the dear reward of
+    long-desiring love--thus, thus to have you mine is something
+    more than happiness, 'tis double life and madness of abounding
+    joy....
+
+    '_Sir Charles._ Oh, thou engaging virtue! But I'm too slow in
+    doing justice to thy love. I know thy softness will refuse me;
+    but remember, I insist upon it--let thy woman be discharged this
+    minute.'
+
+It has been said that Cibber wrote genteel comedy because he lived in
+the best society. If this assertion be true, the reader of his plays
+will decide that the best society of those days was unrefined and
+immoral, and that genteel comedy can be extremely vulgar. Cibber's
+dramas are coarse in incident, and often offensive in suggestion. The
+language is frequently gross, and even when he writes, or professes to
+write, with a moral purpose, his method may justly offend a rigid
+moralist. Moreover his comedy, like that of the dramatists of the
+Restoration, is of a wholly artificial type. Human nature has
+comparatively little place in it, and the fine ladies and gentlemen, the
+fops and fools who play their parts in his scenes, belong to a world
+which has no existence off the boards of the theatre.
+
+His one work which is still read by all students of the drama, and by
+many who are not students, is the _Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley
+Cibber_ (1740), which Dr. Johnson, who sneered at actors, allowed to be
+very entertaining. It is that, and something more, for it contains much
+just and generous criticism. Cibber was the author or adapter of about
+thirty plays, and in the latter vocation did not spare Shakespeare.
+
+[Sidenote: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762).]
+
+Letter writing, a delightful branch of literature, attained its highest
+excellence in the eighteenth century. It is an art which gains most, if
+the paradox may be allowed, by being artless. The carefully studied
+epistle, written with a view to publication, may have its value, but it
+cannot have the charm of a letter written in the familiar intercourse of
+friendship. It is the correspondence prompted by the heart which reaches
+the heart of the reader. The humour, the gaiety, the tenderness, and the
+chatty details that make a letter attractive, should be prompted by the
+feelings and events of the hour. Carefully constructed sentences and
+rhetorical flourishes ring hollow; to write for effect is to write
+badly, and to make a display of knowledge is to reveal an ignorance of
+the art.
+
+For letter writing, although the most natural of literary gifts, is not
+wholly due to nature. It is the outcome of many qualities which need
+cultivation; the soil that produces such fruit must have been carefully
+tilled. In our day epistolary correspondence has been in great measure
+destroyed by the penny post and by rapidity of communication. In the
+last century postage was costly: and although the burden was frequently
+and unjustly lightened by franks, the transmission of letters was slow
+and uncertain. Letters, therefore, were seldom written unless the writer
+had something definite to say, and had leisure in which to say it. Much
+time was spent in the occupation, letters were carefully preserved as
+family heirlooms, and thus it has come to pass that much of our
+knowledge of the age, and very much of the pleasure to be gained from a
+study of the period, is due to its letter writers. The list of them is a
+striking one, for it includes the names of Swift and Steele, of Pope and
+Gay, of Bolingbroke and Chesterfield, of Mrs. Delany and Mrs. Thrale,
+and of the three gifted rivals in the art, Gray, Horace Walpole, and
+Cowper.
+
+In the band of authors famous for their correspondence, Lady Mary
+Wortley Montagu holds a conspicuous place. Reference has been already
+made to the Pope correspondence, large in bulk and large too in
+interest. To this Lady Mary contributed slightly, and the greater
+portion of her letters were addressed to her husband, to her sister,
+Lady Mar, and to her daughter, the Countess of Bute. She was shrewd
+enough to know their value: 'Keep my letters,' she wrote, 'they will be
+as good as Madame de Sévigné's forty years hence;' and they are,
+perhaps, as good as letters can be which are written with a sense of
+their value, which Madame de Sévigné's were not. Lady Mary, who may be
+said to have belonged to the wits from her infancy, for in her eighth
+year she was made the toast of the Kit Kat Club, was not only a beauty,
+but a woman of some learning and of the keenest intelligence. At twenty
+she translated the _Encheiridion_ of Epictetus. She was a great reader
+and a good critic, unless, which often happened, political prejudices
+warped her judgment. She had considerable facility in rhyming, and both
+with tongue and pen cultivated many enmities, the deadliest of her foes
+being the poet who was at one time her most ardent admirer. The story of
+Lady Mary's career, with its vicissitudes and singularities, may be read
+in Lord Wharncliffe's edition of her _Life and Letters_. She is a
+prominent figure in the literature of the period, and made several
+passing contributions to it, but apart from a few facile and far from
+decent verses her letters are the sole legacy she has left behind her
+for the literary student. Some of them, and especially those addressed
+to her sister the Countess of Mar, are often coarse; those to her
+daughter the Countess of Bute exhibit good sense, and all abound in
+lively sallies, interesting anecdotes, and the personal allusions which
+give a charm to correspondence. The section containing the letters
+written during her husband's embassy to Constantinople (1716-1718) is
+perhaps the best known.
+
+Among the strangest of Lady Mary's letters are those addressed to her
+future husband, whom she requests to settle an annuity upon her in
+order to propitiate her friends. In one of them she describes her
+father's purpose to marry her as he thought fit without regarding her
+inclinations, and observes that having declined to marry 'where it is
+impossible to love,' she is bidden to consult her relatives: 'I told my
+intention to all my nearest relations. I was surprised at their blaming
+it to the greatest degree. I was told they were sorry I would ruin
+myself; but if I was so unreasonable they could not blame my F. [father]
+whatever he inflicted on me. I objected I did not love him. They made
+answer they found no necessity of loving; if I lived well with him that
+was all was required of me; and that if I considered this town I should
+find very few women in love with their husbands and yet a many happy. It
+was in vain to dispute with such prudent people.'
+
+This incident is characteristic of the period, but Lady Mary's letters
+to Wortley Montagu are more characteristic of the woman who had her own
+views of female propriety, and of the right method of love-making. To
+escape from the man she hated, she eloped with Wortley, and if, in
+story-book phrase, the curiously-matched couple 'lived happily ever
+afterwards,' it was probably because for more than twenty years they
+lived apart.
+
+Of the following letter, written in her old age, it has been aptly said
+that 'the graceful cynicism of Horace and Pope has perhaps never been
+more successfully reproduced in prose.'[55]
+
+    'Daughter, daughter! Don't call names; You are always abusing my
+    pleasures, which is what no mortal will bear. Trash, lumber and
+    stuff are the titles you give to my favourite amusement. If I
+    called a white staff a stick of wood, a gold key gilded brass,
+    and the ensigns of illustrious orders coloured strings, this
+    may be philosophically true, but would be very ill received. We
+    have all our playthings; happy are they that can be contented
+    with those they can obtain; those hours are spent in the wisest
+    manner that can easiest shade the ills of life, and are the
+    least productive of ill-consequences.... The active scenes are
+    over at my age. I indulge with all the art I can my taste for
+    reading. If I would confine it to valuable books, they are
+    almost as rare as valuable men. I must be content with what I
+    can find. As I approach a second childhood, I endeavour to enter
+    into the pleasures of it. Your youngest son is perhaps at this
+    very moment riding on a poker with great delight, not at all
+    regretting that it is not a gold one, and much less wishing it
+    an Arabian horse which he would not know how to manage. I am
+    reading an idle tale, not expecting wit or truth in it, and am
+    very glad it is not metaphysics to puzzle my judgment, or
+    history to mislead my opinion. He fortifies his health by
+    exercise; I calm my cares by oblivion. The methods may appear
+    low to busy people; but if he improves his strength, and I
+    forget my infirmities, we both attain very desirable ends.'
+
+Lady Mary, it may be added, deserves to be remembered for her courage in
+trying inoculation on her own children, and then introducing it into
+this country. This was in 1721, seventy-eight years before Jenner
+discovered a more excellent way of grappling with the small pox.
+
+[Sidenote: Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773).]
+
+Lord Chesterfield's position in the literature of the period is also
+among the letter writers. He was emphatically a man of affairs, and as
+Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1745, gained a high reputation. He entered
+upon his labours with the resolution to be independent of party, and
+during his brief administration did all that man could do for the
+benefit of the country. In his public career, Chesterfield has the
+reputation of an orator who spoke 'most exquisitely well;' he was an
+able diplomatist, and probably no man of the time took a wider interest
+in public affairs. In a corrupt age, too, he appears to have been
+politically incorruptible: 'I call corruption,' he writes, 'the taking
+of a sixpence more than the just and known salary of your employment
+under any pretence whatsoever.' The reform of the Calendar, in which he
+was assisted by two great mathematicians, Bradley and the Earl of
+Macclesfield, is also one of his honourable claims to remembrance.
+
+On the other hand, Chesterfield, whom George II. called 'a tea-table
+scoundrel,' was an inveterate gambler, he mistook vice for virtue,
+practised dissimulation as an art, and studied men's weaknesses in order
+that he might flatter them. One of the chief ends of man, in the Earl's
+opinion, was to shine in society; we need not therefore wonder that
+Johnson, with his sturdy honesty, revolted from Chesterfield's
+insincerity, and we have to thank the Earl's character for, perhaps, the
+noblest piece of invective in the language. If, however, he neglected
+Johnson at the time when his help would have been of service, he
+appreciated the society of men of letters, and took his part among the
+wits of the age. 'I used,' he tells his son, 'to think myself in company
+as much above me when I was with Mr. Addison and Mr. Pope as if I had
+been with all the princes in Europe.'
+
+As an essayist, although Chesterfield cannot compete with Addison or
+Steele, he is far from contemptible, and his twenty-three papers in the
+_World_ (1753-1756) may still be read with pleasure. His literary
+reputation is based upon the _Letters_ (1774)[56] to his illegitimate
+son written for the purpose of making him a fine gentleman, but the
+young man had no aptitude for the part. His father offered him 'a
+present of the Graces,' and he despised the gift. The _Letters_, which
+Johnson denounced in language better fitted for his day than for ours,
+abound in worldly sagacity and wise counsels; the best that can be said
+of them from a moral point of view is that they show the extremely low
+standpoint of the writer. He is honestly desirous of benefiting his son
+and advancing his interest in life, and so far as morality will do this
+it is earnestly inculcated. 'A real man of fashion,' he says, 'observes
+decency; at least neither borrows nor affects vices; and, if he
+unfortunately has any, he gratifies them with choice, delicacy and
+secrecy.' He observes that an intrigue with a woman of fashion is an
+amusement which a man of sense and decency may pursue with a proper
+regard for his character; gallantry without debauchery being 'the
+elegant pleasure of a rational being.'
+
+Chesterfield's son, who was educated for a diplomatist, is told that the
+art of pleasing is more necessary in his profession than perhaps in any
+other. 'Make your court particularly, and show distinguished attentions
+to such men and women as are best at Court, highest in the fashion and
+in the opinion of the public; speak advantageously of them behind their
+backs, in companies who you have reason to believe will tell them
+again.'
+
+The necessity for dissimulation, constantly enjoined by his father was
+not forgotten by Philip Stanhope. So effectually did he conceal his
+marriage that the Earl was not aware of it until after his son's death.
+
+[Sidenote: George Lyttelton (1708-1773).]
+
+George Lyttelton, afterwards Lord Lyttelton, has a place among the poets
+in the collections of Anderson and Chalmers. Some of his best verses
+were written when a school-boy at Eton, and are worthy of a clever
+school-boy. The _Monody_ on his wife's death has the merit of sincere
+feeling, expressed in one or two passages poetically. In 1747 he
+published his _Dissertation on the Conversion of St. Paul_, 'a
+treatise,' says Dr. Johnson, 'to which infidelity has never been able to
+fabricate a specious answer.' He made himself conspicuous in parliament
+as an opponent of Walpole, and after the fall of that minister was
+appointed one of the Lords of the Treasury. In 1760 Lyttelton published
+his _Dialogues of the Dead_, a volume for which he owes much to Fénelon.
+This was followed a few years later by a History of Henry II. in three
+volumes, upon which great labour was expended. He is said to have had
+the whole history printed twice over, and many sheets four or five
+times, an amusement which cost him £1,000. The work is praised by Mr. J.
+R. Green as 'a full and sober account of the time.'
+
+Lyttelton died at Hagley Park in his sixty-fourth year. Close to Hagley,
+Shenstone had his little estate of the Leasowes, and the poet is said to
+have cherished the absurd fancy that Lord Lyttelton was envious of its
+beauty. He is now chiefly remembered as the patron of Thomson, whom he
+called 'one of the best and most beloved' of his friends.
+
+[Sidenote: Joseph Spence (1698-1768).]
+
+Joseph Spence, a warm friend and admirer of Pope in the poet's later
+life, had the happy peculiarity of keeping free from the party
+animosities of the time. His course throughout was that of a gentleman,
+and to him we owe the little volume of _Anecdotes_ which every student
+of Pope has learnt to value. Spence had much of Boswell's curiosity and
+hero-worship, but there is neither insight into character in his pages,
+nor any trace of the dramatic skill which makes Boswell's narrative so
+delightful. At the same time there is every indication that he strove
+to give the sayings of the poet, as far as possible, in his own words.
+Johnson and Warton saw the _Anecdotes_ in manuscript, but strange to
+say, the collection was not published until 1820, when two separate
+editions appeared simultaneously. The publication by Spence in 1727 of
+_An Essay on Pope's Translation of Homer's Odyssey_ led to an
+acquaintance which soon became intimate between the poet and his critic.
+Apart from literature, they had more than one point of interest in
+common. Like Pope, Spence was devoted to his mother, and like Pope he
+had a passion for landscape gardening. His mild virtues and engaging
+disposition are said to be portrayed in the _Tales of the Genii_, under
+the character of Fincal the Dervise of the Groves. In 1747 he published
+his _Polymetis, an Enquiry into the agreement between the Works of the
+Roman Poets and the Remains of Ancient Artists_. Under the _nom de
+plume_ of Sir Harry Beaumont, Spence produced a volume of _Moralities or
+Essays, Letters, Fables and Translations_ (1753), and in the following
+year an account of the blind poet Blacklock. For a learned tailor,
+Thomas Hill by name, he also performed a similarly kind office,
+comparing him in _A Parallel in the Manner of Plutarch_ with the famous
+linguist Magliabecchi. Spence was made Professor of Poetry at Oxford in
+1728, and held the post for ten years. His end was a sad one. He was
+accidentally drowned in a canal in the garden which he had loved so
+well.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[49] _Daniel Defoe: his Life and recently discovered Writings, extending
+from 1716 to 1729._ By William Lee. 3 vols.
+
+[50] Lee's _Defoe_, vol. i., p. 85. Of Defoe's fertility and capacity
+for work there cannot be a question; but the biographer's stupendous
+catalogue of his publications--254 in number--contains many which are
+ascribed to him solely on what Mr. Lee regards as internal evidence.
+
+[51] _English Men of Letters--Daniel Defoe._ By William Minto. P. 170.
+
+[52] See note on page 248.
+
+[53] There can be no doubt, I think, despite Mr. Lee's arguments, that
+the work is as much a fiction as any other historical novel. That it may
+be based upon some authentic document is highly probable, although it is
+not necessary to agree with his biographer, that 'to claim for Defoe the
+authorship of the _Cavalier_, as a work of pure fiction, would be
+equivalent to a claim of almost superhuman genius.'
+
+[54] Ward's _History of English Dramatic Literature_, vol. ii., p. 597.
+
+[55] _Four Centuries of English Letters_, edited and arranged by W.
+Baptiste Scoones, p. 214.
+
+[56] These _Letters_ were not published until after the earl's death,
+but many of them belong, chronologically, to our period. The first
+letter of the series was written in 1738.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+FRANCIS ATTERBURY--LORD SHAFTESBURY--BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE--LORD
+    BOLINGBROKE--BISHOP BERKELEY--WILLIAM LAW--BISHOP
+    BUTLER--BISHOP WARBURTON.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Francis Atterbury (1662-1732).]
+
+During the first half of the eighteenth century the position held by
+Bishop Atterbury was one of high eminence. Addison ranked him with the
+most illustrious geniuses of his age; Pope said he was one of the
+greatest men in polite learning the nation ever possessed; Doddridge
+called him the glory of English orators; and Johnson said that for style
+his sermons are among the best.
+
+Unfortunately Atterbury's literary gifts, like his oratory, lack the
+merit of permanence, and his sermons, more conspicuous for eloquence
+than for weightiness of matter, although extremely popular at the time,
+have long ceased to be read. His prominence among the Queen Anne
+wits,--and he was admired by them all,--is a sufficient reason for
+saying a few words about him in these pages.
+
+He was born in 1662, and, like Prior, educated at Westminster under the
+famous Dr. Busby. Thence he went to Christ Church, Oxford, where he
+gained a good reputation. He undertook the tutorship of the Hon. C.
+Boyle, a young man of more spirit than judgment, who had the audacity to
+enter the lists with Bentley in a matter of scholarship. For this rash
+deed Atterbury must be held responsible. Sir William Temple had
+published a foolish but eloquently written essay in defence of the
+ancient writers in comparison with the modern. In this essay he praises
+warmly the _Letters of Phalaris_. Of these letters Boyle, with the help
+of Atterbury and other members of Christ Church, published a new edition
+to satisfy the demand caused by Temple's essay. Bentley, roused to reply
+by a remark of Boyle in his preface, proved that the _Letters_ were not
+only spurious but contemptible. Under his pupil's name Atterbury replied
+to Bentley's _Dissertations_, and to the discussion, as the reader will
+remember, Swift added wit if not argument.
+
+For the moment Boyle's, or rather Atterbury's success, was great, for
+wit and rhetoric are powerful persuasives. The authors, too, had the
+Christ Church men to back them, the arch-critic having treated them with
+contempt. Atterbury's share in the work, as he tells Boyle, "consisted
+in writing more than half the book, in reviewing a great part of the
+rest, and in transcribing the whole." His _Examination of Dr. Bentley's
+Dissertations_ (1698) is a brilliant piece of work, and 'deserves the
+praise,' says Macaulay, 'whatever that praise may be worth, of being the
+best book ever written by any man on the wrong side of a question of
+which he was profoundly ignorant.' Having taken holy orders, Atterbury
+became a court preacher, and ample clerical honours fell to his share.
+In 1700 he published a book entitled, _The Rights, Powers, and
+Privileges of an English Convocation Stated and Vindicated_, which was
+warmly applauded by High Churchmen. In 1701 he was appointed Archdeacon
+of Totness, and afterwards Prebend of Exeter. He became the favourite
+chaplain of Queen Anne, and when Prince George died proved the power of
+his eloquence by representing 'his unassuming virtues in such high
+relief that his widow could not help feeling her irreparable loss.'
+
+Atterbury was made successively Dean of Carlisle and of Christ Church,
+and in 1713 succeeded Sprat as Dean of Westminster and Bishop of
+Rochester. Before making Swift's acquaintance he recommended his friend
+Trelawney, Bishop of Exeter, to read the _Tale of a Tub_, a book which
+is to be valued, 'in spite of its profaneness,' as 'an original in its
+kind, full of wit, humour, good sense, and learning.' Atterbury's taste
+for literature was not always so discriminative. He advised Pope, as has
+been already stated, to 'polish' _Samson Agonistes_, declared that all
+verses should have instruction at the bottom of them, and told the poet,
+as though he had discovered a merit, that his poetry was 'all over
+morality from the beginning to the end of it.' He ventured occasionally
+into the verse-making field himself, and wrote a song to Silvia, in
+which, after admitting that he had loved before as men worship strange
+deities, he adds:
+
+    'My heart, 'tis true, has often ranged,
+      Like bees on gaudy flowers,
+    And many a thousand loves has changed,
+      Till it was fixed on yours.
+
+    'But, Silvia, when I saw those eyes,
+      'Twas soon determined there;
+    Stars might as well forsake the skies,
+      And vanish into air.
+
+    'When I from this great rule do err,
+      New beauties to adore,
+    May I again turn wanderer,
+      And never settle more.'
+
+The close friendship between Atterbury and Pope did honour to both men,
+and when Pope went to London he would 'lie at the deanery.' There,
+unknown to his friend, the bishop carried on his Jacobite intrigues,
+and there may still be seen, in a residence made famous by more than one
+great name, a secret room in which Atterbury concealed his treasonable
+correspondence. The poet did not believe that his friend was guilty, but
+it has been well known since the publication of the Stuart papers, more
+than forty years ago, that the splendid defence made by Atterbury at his
+trial in the House of Lords was based upon a falsehood. For years the
+bishop appears to have corresponded, under feigned names and by the help
+of ciphers, with 'the king over the water;' but the plot which led to
+his imprisonment and ultimate exile was not discovered until 1722, when
+he was arrested for high treason. At his trial he called God to witness
+his innocence; and when Pope took leave of him in the Tower he told the
+poet he would allow him to call his sentence a just one if he should
+ever find that he had dealings with the Pretender in his exile. Pope
+gave evidence at his trial, and, as he told Spence, lost his
+self-possession and made two or three blunders.
+
+Atterbury was exiled in June, 1723. On reaching Calais he heard that
+Bolingbroke had just arrived there on his way to England, having had a
+royal pardon. 'Then I am exchanged,' he said.
+
+The pathetic story of his banishment, and of his devoted daughter's
+illness and voyage to the south of France, where after a union of a few
+hours, she died in her father's arms, is full of the most touching
+details, and may be read in Atterbury's correspondence. 'She is gone,'
+the bishop wrote, 'and I must follow her. When I do, may my latter end
+be like hers! It was my business to have taught her to die; instead of
+it, she has taught me.' Like Fielding's account of his _Voyage to
+Lisbon_, the letters give a picture of the time, and of travelling
+discomforts and difficulties of which we, in these more fortunate days,
+know nothing. The bishop, who did not long survive his daughter, died in
+1732, but before the end came he defended himself admirably from the
+accusation of Oldmixon, a libeller who stands in the pillory of the
+_Dunciad_, that he had helped to garble Clarendon's _History_. The body
+was carried to England and privately buried by the side of his daughter
+in Westminster Abbey. The eloquence of Atterbury's sermons--there are
+four volumes of them in print--has not secured to them a lasting place
+in literature, but they are distinguished by purity of style, and have
+enough of _unction_ to make them highly effective as pulpit discourses.
+In book form, too, they were for a long time popular, and reached an
+eighth edition about thirty years after the bishop's death. The eloquent
+sermon on the death of Lady Cutts endows the lady with such an array of
+virtues, that one is inclined to wonder how so many rare qualities could
+have been exhibited in so brief a life:
+
+    'She excelled in all the characters that belonged to her, and
+    was in a great measure equal to all the obligations that she lay
+    under. She was devout without superstition; strict, without ill
+    humour; good-natured, without weakness; cheerful, without
+    levity; regular, without affectation. She was to her husband the
+    best of wives, the most agreeable of companions, and most
+    faithful of friends; to her servants the best of mistresses; to
+    her relations extremely respectful; to her inferiors very
+    obliging; and by all that knew her, either nearly or at a
+    distance, she was reckoned and confessed to be one of the best
+    of women. And yet all this goodness and all this excellence was
+    bounded within the compass of eighteen years and as many days;
+    for no longer was she allowed to live among us. She was snatched
+    out of the world as soon almost as she had made her appearance
+    in it, like a jewel of high price just shown a little, and then
+    put up again, and we were deprived of her by that time we had
+    learnt to value her. But circles may be complete though small;
+    the perfection of life doth not consist in the length of it.'
+
+As a friend of literature and of men of letters, Atterbury claims the
+student's recognition, and the five volumes of his correspondence
+deserve to be consulted.
+
+[Sidenote: Anthony, third Lord Shaftesbury (1671-1713).]
+
+'I will tell you,' writes the poet Gray, 'how Lord Shaftesbury came to
+be a philosopher in vogue: first, he was a lord; secondly, he was as
+vain as any of his readers; thirdly, men are very prone to believe what
+they do not understand; fourthly, they will believe anything at all
+provided they are under no obligation to believe it; fifthly, they love
+to take a new road, even when that road leads nowhere; sixthly, he was
+reckoned a fine writer, and seemed always to mean more than he said.
+Would you have any more reasons? An interval of above forty years has
+pretty well destroyed the charm.'
+
+One hundred and thirty-five years have gone by since Gray wrote his
+estimate of Lord Shaftesbury, whose _Characteristics of Men, Manners,
+Opinions, Times_ (1711) passed through several editions in the last
+century. The first volume consists of: _A Letter concerning Enthusiasm_,
+_An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour_ and _Advice to an Author_;
+Vol. ii. contains _An Inquiry concerning Virtue and Merit_ (1699), and
+_The Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody_ (1709), and Vol. iii. contains
+_Miscellaneous Reflections_ and the _Judgments of Hercules_.
+
+Shaftesbury was a Deist, and while professing to honour the Christian
+faith, which he terms 'our holy religion,' exercises his wit and
+casuistry and command of English to undermine it. Pope, who shows in the
+_Essay on Man_ that he had read the _Characteristics_, said that to his
+knowledge 'the work had done more harm to revealed religion in England
+than all the works of infidelity,' a judgment which may seem
+extravagant, for Shaftesbury is too vague and rhetorical greatly to
+influence thoughtful readers, and too much of a 'virtuoso,' to use his
+own words, for readers of another class; yet the fact that the work
+passed, as we have said, through several editions, shows that the author
+had a considerable public to whom he could appeal. Moreover, it is clear
+that what Mr. Balfour calls 'the shallow optimism' of his creed was not
+deemed so inconsiderable then as it now appears, or Berkeley would not
+have deemed it necessary to controvert his arguments in the third
+Dialogue of his _Alciphron_. Like Berkeley, Shaftesbury occasionally
+makes use of the dialogue very effectively, but he has not the bishop's
+incisiveness. His style, though often faulty, and giving one the
+impression that the author is affected, and wishes to say fine things,
+is at its best fresh and lucid. The reader will observe that whatever be
+the topic Shaftesbury professes to discuss, his one aim is to assert his
+principles as a free-thinking and free-speaking philosopher. His
+inferences, his illustrations, his criticisms, and exaltation of the
+'moral sense,' are all so many underhanded blows at the faith which he
+never openly opposes.
+
+Thus his essay on the _Freedom of Wit and Humour_ is chiefly written in
+defence of raillery in the discussion of serious subjects, when managed
+'with good breeding,' and for 'a liberty in decent language to question
+everything' amongst gentlemen and friends. He regards ridicule as the
+antidote to enthusiasm, believes in the harmony and perfection of
+nature, and considers that evil only exists in our ignorance. Mr. Leslie
+Stephen, whose impartiality in estimating an author like Shaftesbury
+will not be questioned, calls him a wearisome and perplexed writer,
+whose rhetoric is flimsy, but who has 'a true vigour and originality
+which redeems him from contempt.'
+
+Judged by his influence on the age Shaftesbury's place in the history of
+literature and of philosophy is an important one. Seed springs up
+quickly when the soil is prepared for it, and Shaftesbury by his belief
+in the perfectibility of human nature through the aid of culture,
+appealed, as Mandeville also did from a lower and opposite platform, to
+the views current in polite society. According to Shaftesbury men have a
+natural instinct for virtue, and the sense of what is beautiful enables
+the virtuoso to reject what is evil and to cleave to what is good. Let a
+man once see that to be wicked is to be miserable, and virtue will be
+dear for its own sake apart from the fear of punishment or the hope of
+reward. He found salvation for the world in a cultivated taste, but had
+no gospel for the men whose tastes were not cultivated.
+
+Voltaire sneered at the optimism of the _Essay on Man_ and of the
+_Characteristics_. 'Shaftesbury,' he says, 'who made the fable
+fashionable, was a very unhappy man. I have seen Bolingbroke a prey to
+vexation and rage, and Pope, whom he induced to put this sorry jest into
+verse, was as much to be pitied as any man I have ever known; mis-shapen
+in body, dissatisfied in mind, always ill, always a burden to himself,
+and harassed by a hundred enemies to his very last moment.'
+
+[Sidenote: Bernard de Mandeville (1670?-1733).]
+
+Bernard de Mandeville gained much notoriety by his _Fable of the Bees,
+or Private Vices, Public Benefits_ (1723). The book opens with a poem in
+doggrel verse called _The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves turned honest_, the
+purport of which is to show that as the bees became virtuous, they
+ceased to be successful. He closes with the moral that
+
+    'To enjoy the world's conveniences,
+    Be famed in war, yet live in ease,
+    Without great vices is a vain
+    Utopia, seated in the brain.
+    Fraud, Luxury, and Pride must live,
+    While we the benefits receive.'
+
+In the prose which follows the fable, Mandeville may at least claim the
+credit of being outspoken, and he does not scruple to say that modesty
+is a sham and that what seems like virtue is nothing but self-love. 'I
+often,' he says, 'compare the virtues of good men to your large china
+jars; they make a fine show, but look into a thousand of them, and you
+will find nothing in them but dust and cobwebs.'
+
+While declaring that he is far from encouraging vice, he regards it as
+essential to the well-being of society. The degradation of the race
+excites his amusement, and the fact that he cannot see a way of escape
+from it, causes no regret. Shaftesbury's arguments excited the mirth of
+a man who believed neither in present nor future good 'Two systems,' he
+says, 'cannot be more opposite than his lordship's and mine. His
+notions, I confess, are generous and refined. They are a high compliment
+to human kind, and capable, by the help of a little enthusiasm, of
+inspiring us with the most noble sentiments concerning the dignity of
+our exalted nature. What pity it is that they are not true.'
+
+The author of the _Fable of the Bees_ writes coarsely for coarse
+readers, and the arguments by which he supports his graceless theory
+merit the infamy generally awarded to them.[57] The book was attacked by
+Warburton and Law, and with much force and humour by Berkeley, in the
+second Dialogue of _Alciphron_. But the bishop, to use a homely phrase,
+does not hit the right nail on the head. Instead of arguing that virtue
+and goodness are realities, while evil, being unreal and antagonistic to
+man's nature, is an enemy to be fought against and conquered, Berkeley
+takes a lower ground, and is content to show in his reply to Mandeville
+that virtue is more profitable to a state than vice. He annihilates many
+of Mandeville's arguments in a masterly style, but it was left to the
+author of the _Serious Call_ to strike at the root of Mandeville's
+fallacy, and to show how the seat of virtue, if I may apply Hooker's
+noble words with regard to law, 'is the bosom of God, her voice the
+harmony of the world; all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the
+very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from
+her power.'
+
+[Sidenote: Lord Bolingbroke (1678-1751).]
+
+The life of Henry St. John was a mass of contradictions. He was a
+brilliant politician who affected to be a wise statesman, a traitor to
+his country while pretending to be a patriot, an orator whose lips
+distilled honied phrases which his actions belied, a man of insatiable
+ambition who masked as a philosopher, a profligate without shame, a
+faithless friend, and an unscrupulous opponent. Blessed with every charm
+of manner, features, and voice, with a taste for literature and a large
+faculty of acquisition, he was a slave to the meanest vices. A Secretary
+of State at thirty-two, no man probably ever entered upon public life
+with brighter prospects, and the secret of all his failures was due to
+the want of character. 'Few people,' says Lord Hervey, 'ever believed
+him without being deceived or trusted him without being betrayed; he was
+one to whom prosperity was no advantage, and adversity no instruction.'
+
+It is said that his genius as an orator was of a high order and this we
+can believe the more readily since the style of his works is distinctly
+oratorical. In speech so much depends upon voice and manner that it is
+possible for a shallow thinker to be an extremely attractive speaker;
+Bolingbroke's speeches have not been preserved, and we may therefore
+continue, if we please, to hold with Pitt, that they are the most
+desirable of all the lost fragments of literature; his writings, far
+more showy than solid, do not convey a lofty impression of intellectual
+power. Obvious truths and well-worn truisms are uttered in high-sounding
+words, but in no department of thought can it be said that Bolingbroke
+breaks new ground. Much that he wrote was for the day and died with it,
+and if his more ambitious efforts, written with an eye to posterity,
+cannot justly be described as unreadable, they contain comparatively
+little which makes them worthy to be read.
+
+His defence of his conduct in _A Letter to Sir William Windham_, written
+in 1717, but not published until after the author's death, though
+worthless as a defence, is a fine piece of special pleading in
+Bolingbroke's best style. It could deceive no one acquainted with the
+part played by the author before the death of Queen Anne, and afterwards
+in exile, but it afforded him an opportunity for attacking his former
+colleague, Oxford, with all the weapons available by an unscrupulous and
+powerful assailant. He declares in this letter that he preferred exile
+rather than to make common cause with the man whom he abhorred. Writing
+of Oxford as a colleague in the government of the country he observes in
+a skilfully turned passage:
+
+    'The ocean which environs us is an emblem of our government; and
+    the pilot and the minister are in similar circumstances. It
+    seldom happens that either of them can steer a direct course,
+    and they both arrive at their port by means which frequently
+    seem to carry them from it. But as the work advances the conduct
+    of him who leads it on with real abilities clears up, the
+    appearing inconsistencies are reconciled, and when it is once
+    consummated, the whole shows itself so uniform, so plain, and so
+    natural, that every dabbler in politics will be apt to think he
+    could have done the same. But on the other hand the man who
+    proposes no such object, who substitutes artifice in the place
+    of ability, who, instead of leading parties and governing
+    accidents, is eternally agitated backwards and forwards by both,
+    who begins every day something new, and carries nothing on to
+    perfection, may impose awhile on the world: but a little sooner
+    or a little later the mystery will be revealed, and nothing will
+    be found to be couched under it but a thread of pitiful
+    expedients, the ultimate end of which never extended farther
+    than living from day to day. Which of these pictures resembles
+    Oxford most you will determine.'
+
+It has been said with somewhat daring exaggeration, that Burke never
+produced anything nobler than this passage, and the writer regards the
+whole composition of the _Letter to Windham_ as almost faultless.[58]
+
+That it is Bolingbroke's masterpiece may be readily admitted, but in
+this _Letter_, as elsewhere, the merits of Bolingbroke's style are those
+of the popular orator who conceals repetitions, contradictory
+statements, and emptiness of thought under a dazzling display of
+rhetoric. That he had splendid gifts and exhibited an extraordinary
+ingenuity of resource was acknowledged by friend and foe. At one time
+taking a distinguished part in European affairs, at another artfully
+intriguing, sometimes posing as a moralist and philosopher while a slave
+to debauchery, and at other times affecting a love of retirement while a
+slave to ambition--Bolingbroke acted a part which made him one of the
+most conspicuous figures of the time. He knew how to fascinate men of
+greater genius than he possessed, and how to guide men intellectually
+his superiors. The witchcraft of his wit and the charm of his manners no
+longer disturb the judgment. As a statesman Bolingbroke is now
+comparatively despised, as a man of letters he is generally regarded as
+a brilliant pretender, and if his name survives in the history of
+literature it is chiefly due to the friendship of Pope. Unfortunately
+the memory of this celebrated friendship is associated with one of the
+most ignoble acts of Bolingbroke's life. When Pope lay dying,
+Bolingbroke wept over his friend exclaiming, 'O great God, what is man!'
+and Spence relates that upon telling his lordship how Pope whenever he
+was sensible said something kindly of his friends as if his humanity
+outlasted his understanding, Bolingbroke replied, '"It has so! I never
+in my life knew a man that had so tender a heart for his particular
+friends or a more general friendship for mankind. I have known him these
+thirty years, and value myself more for that man's love than"--sinking
+his head and losing himself in tears.' His sorrow was speedily changed
+to anger. Pope, no doubt in admiration of his friend's genius, had
+privately printed 1,500 copies of his _Patriot King_, one of
+Bolingbroke's ablest but most sophistical works. The philosopher had
+only allowed a few copies to be printed for his friends, and the
+discovery of Pope's conduct roused his indignation. In 1749 he put a
+corrected copy of the work into Mallet's hands for publication with an
+advertisement in which Pope is treated with contempt. He had not the
+courage to assail the memory of his friend openly, and hired an
+unprincipled man to do it. The poet had acted trickily, after his wonted
+habit, though in all likelihood with the design of doing Bolingbroke a
+service. It was a fault to be forgiven by a friend, but Bolingbroke,
+after nursing his anger for five years, gave vent to it in this
+contemptible and underhand way. He died two years afterwards, and in
+1754 the posthumous publication of Bolingbroke's _Philosophical
+Writings_ by Mallet, aroused a storm of indignation in the country,
+which his debauchery and political immorality had failed to excite.
+Johnson's saying on the occasion is well-known:
+
+'Sir, he was a scoundrel and a coward; a scoundrel for charging a
+blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward because he had not
+resolution to fire it off himself, but left half-a-crown to a beggarly
+Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death.'
+
+The most noteworthy estimate of Bolingbroke's character made in our day
+comes from the pen of Mr. John Morley,[59] who describes as follows his
+position as a man of letters. 'He handled the great and difficult
+instrument of written language with such freedom and copiousness, such
+vivacity and ease, that in spite of much literary foppery and falsetto,
+he ranks in all that musicians call execution, only below the three or
+four highest masters of English prose. Yet of all the characters in our
+history Bolingbroke must be pronounced to be most of a charlatan; of all
+the writing in our literature, his is the hollowest, the flashiest, the
+most insincere.' This is true. By his 'execution,' consummate though it
+be, he is unable to conceal his insincerity and shallowness.
+'Bolingbroke,' said Lord Shelburne, was 'all surface,' and in that
+sentence his character is written.
+
+'People seem to think,' said Carlyle, 'that a style can be put off or
+put on, not like a skin, but like a coat. Is not a skin verily a product
+and close kinsfellow of all that lies under it,--exact type of the
+nature of the beast, not to be plucked off without flaying and death?'
+
+Two years after the publication of the _Philosophical Writings_, Edmund
+Burke, then a young man of twenty-four, published _A Vindication of
+Natural Society_, in a _Letter to Lord----. By a late noble writer_, in
+which Lord Bolingbroke's style is imitated, and his arguments against
+revealed religion applied to exhibit 'the miseries and evils arising to
+mankind from every species of Artificial Society.' So close is the
+imitation of Bolingbroke's style and mode of argument in this piece of
+irony, that it was for a time believed to be a genuine production, and
+Mallet found it necessary to disavow it publicly.
+
+Of Bolingbroke's Works, the _Dissertation on Parties_ appeared in 1735.
+_Letters on Patriotism_, and _Idea of a Patriot King_, in 1749; _Letters
+on the Study of History_, in 1752; _Letter to Sir W. Windham_, 1753, and
+the _Philosophical Writings_, as already stated, in 1754.
+Chronologically, therefore, he would belong to the Handbook which deals
+with the latter half of the century, were it not that his most important
+works were posthumous, and that Bolingbroke's intimate relations with
+Pope place him among the most conspicuous figures belonging to Pope's
+age.
+
+[Sidenote: George Berkeley (1685-1753).]
+
+Among the men of high intellect who flourished in the age of Pope,
+George Berkeley is one of the most distinguished. Born in 1685 of poor
+parents, in a cottage near Dysert Castle, in Kilkenny, he went up to
+Trinity College, Dublin, in 1700, and there, first as student, and
+afterwards as tutor, he remained for thirteen years. In the course of
+them he was ordained, and gained a fellowship. In 1709 he published his
+_Essay on Vision_, and in the following year the _Principles of Human
+Knowledge_, works which thus early made him famous as a philosopher, and
+a puzzle to many who failed to understand his 'new principle' with
+regard to the existence of matter.
+
+In 1712 Berkeley visited England, probably for the first time, and was
+introduced to the London wits. Already in these youthful days there was
+in him much of that magic power which some men exercise unconsciously
+and irresistibly. Swift felt the spell, called Berkeley a great
+philosopher, and spoke of him to all the Ministers; while Atterbury,
+upon being asked what he thought of him, exclaimed: 'So much
+understanding, so much knowledge, so much innocence, and such humility,
+I did not think had been the portion of any but angels till I saw this
+gentleman.' An incident occurred, it is conjectured during the course of
+this visit, which led to memorable results. He dined once with Swift at
+Mrs. Vanhomrigh's, and met her daughter Hester. Many years later,
+_Vanessa_ destroyed the will she had made in Swift's favour, and left
+half of her property to Berkeley. While in London the future bishop was
+warmly welcomed by Steele, and wrote several essays for him in the
+_Guardian_ against the Freethinkers, and especially against Anthony
+Collins (1676-1729), whose arguments in his _Discourse on Freethinking_
+(1713) are ridiculed in the _Scriblerus Memoirs_. Collins, it may be
+observed here, wrote a treatise several years later on the _Grounds of
+the Christian Religion_ (1724) which called forth thirty-five answers.
+During this visit Berkeley also published one of his most original
+works, _Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous_, a book marked by that
+consummate beauty of style for which he is distinguished.
+
+In November, 1713, the Earl of Peterborough was sent on an embassage to
+the King of Sicily, and on Swift's recommendation took Berkeley with him
+as his chaplain and secretary. Ten months were spent on this occasion in
+France and Italy. Another continental tour followed, in the course of
+which Berkeley wrote to Arbuthnot of his ascent of Vesuvius, and to Pope
+of his life at Naples. Five years were spent abroad, and he returned to
+England to learn of the failure of the South Sea Scheme. In his _Essay
+towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain_ (1721), the main argument
+is the obvious one, that national salvation is only to be secured by
+individual uprightness. He deplores 'the trifling vanity of apparel'
+which we have learned from France, advocates the revival of sumptuary
+laws, considers that we are 'doomed to be undone' by luxury, and by the
+want of public spirit, and declares that 'neither Venice nor Paris, nor
+any other town in any part of the world ever knew such an expensive
+ruinous folly as our masquerade.'
+
+In the summer of this year he was again in London, and Pope asked him to
+spend a week in his 'Tusculum.' One promotion followed another until
+Berkeley became Dean of Derry, with an income of from £1,500 to £2,000 a
+year. He did not hold this dignified position long, having conceived the
+magnificent but Utopian idea of founding a Missionary College in the
+Bermudas--the 'Summer Isles' celebrated in the verse of Waller and of
+Marvell--for the conversion of America.
+
+And now Berkeley exhibited his amazing power of influencing other men.
+The members of the Scriblerus Club laughed at the Dean's project, but so
+powerful was his eloquence, that 'those who came to scoff remained to
+subscribe.' Moreover, with Sir Robert Walpole as Prime Minister, he
+actually obtained a grant from the State of £20,000 in order to carry
+out the project, the king gave a charter, and to crown all, Sir Robert
+put his own name down for £200 on the list of subscribers. 'The scheme,'
+says Mr. Balfour, 'seems now so impracticable that we may well wonder
+how any single person, let alone the representatives of a whole nation,
+could be found to support it. In order that religion and learning might
+flourish in America, the seeds of them were to be cast in some rocky
+islets severed from America by nearly six hundred miles of stormy ocean.
+In order that the inhabitants of the mainland and of the West Indian
+colonies might equally benefit by the new university, it was to be
+placed in such a position that neither could conveniently reach it.'[60]
+Berkeley, who had recently married, left England for Rhode Island, where
+he stayed for about three years and wrote _Alciphron_ (1732), in which
+he attacks the freethinkers under the title of _Minute Philosophers_.
+Then on learning from Walpole that the promised money 'would most
+undoubtedly be paid as soon as suits public convenience' which would be
+never, he returned to England, and through the Queen's influence was
+made Bishop of Cloyne. In that diocese eighteen years of his life were
+spent. In the course of them he published the _Querist_ (1735-1737), an
+_Essay on the Social State of Ireland_ (1744), and, in the same year,
+_Siris_, which contains the bishop's famous recipe for the use of tar
+water followed by much philosophical disquisition. The remedy, which was
+afterwards praised by the poet Dyer in _The Fleece_, became instantly
+popular. 'We are now mad about the water,' Horace Walpole wrote; 'the
+book contains every subject from tar water to the Trinity; however, all
+the women read it, and understand it no more than if it were
+intelligible.' Editions of _Siris_ followed each other in rapid
+succession, and it was translated into French and German. The work is
+that of an enthusiast, and it should be read not for its argument, but
+for its wealth of suggestiveness, and for what Mr. Balfour calls 'a
+certain quality of moral elevation and speculative diffidence alien both
+to the literature and the life of the eighteenth century.' Berkeley had
+himself the profoundest faith in the panacea which he advocated. 'From
+my representing tar water,' he writes, 'as good for so many things,
+some, perhaps, many conclude it is good for nothing. But charity
+obligeth me to say what I know, and what I think, howsoever it may be
+taken. Men may conjecture and object as they please, but I appeal to
+time and experience.'
+
+In his latter days Berkeley, feeling his health failing, desired to
+resign his bishopric and retire to Oxford, and there--while still bishop
+of Cloyne, for the king would not accept his resignation--the
+philosopher, who was blest, to use Shakespeare's fine epithet, with a
+'tender-hefted nature,' passed away in 1753, leaving behind him one of
+the most fragrant of memories.
+
+That Berkeley was a philosophical thinker from his earliest manhood is
+evident from his _Commonplace Book_ published for the first time in the
+Clarendon Press edition of his works (vol. iv., pp. 419-502).
+
+He delighted in recondite thought as much as most young men delight in
+action, and as a philosopher he is said to have commenced his studies
+with Locke, whose famous _Essay_ appeared in 1690. Of Plato, too,
+Berkeley was an ardent admirer, and the spirit of Plato pervades his
+works. His _Essay towards a New Theory of Vision_ contains some
+intimations of the famous metaphysical theory which was developed a
+little later in the _Treatise on Human Knowledge_.
+
+A good deal of foolish ridicule was excited by this book. Berkeley was
+supposed to maintain the absurd paradox that sensible things do not
+exist at all. The reader will remember how Dr. Johnson undertook to
+refute the postulate by striking his foot against a stone, while James
+Beattie (1735-1803), the poet and moral philosopher, in a volume for
+which he was rewarded with a pension of £200 a year, denounced
+Berkeley's philosophy as 'scandalously absurd.' 'If,' he writes, 'I
+were permitted to propose one clownish question, I would fain ask ...
+Where is the harm of my believing that if I were to fall down yonder
+precipice and break my neck, I should be no more a man of this world? My
+neck, Sir, may be an idea to you, but to me it is a reality, and a very
+important one too. Where is the harm of my believing that if in this
+severe weather I were to neglect to throw (what you call) the idea of a
+coat over the ideas of my shoulders, the idea of cold would produce the
+idea of such pain and disorder as might possibly terminate in my real
+death? What great offence shall I commit against God or man, church or
+state, philosophy or common sense if I continue to believe that material
+food will nourish me, though the idea of it will not, that the real sun
+will warm and enlighten me, though the liveliest idea of him will do
+neither; and that if I would obtain here peace of mind and
+self-approbation, I must not only form ideas of compassion, justice and
+generosity, but also really exert those virtues in external
+performance?'[61]
+
+Beattie continues in this foolish strain to throw contempt upon a system
+which he had not taken the trouble to understand, and upon one of the
+sanest and noblest of English philosophers, and he does so without a
+thought that the absurdity is due to his own ignorance and not to the
+theory of Berkeley. The author of the _Minstrel_ was an honest man and a
+respectable poet, but he prided himself too much on what he called
+common sense, and failed to see that in the search after truth other and
+even higher faculties may be also needed. Moreover, Berkeley, so far
+from being an enemy to common sense, endeavours, as he says, to
+vindicate it, although in so doing, he 'may perhaps be obliged to use
+some _ambages_ and ways of speech not common.' A significant passage may
+be quoted from the _Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous_ (1713)
+in illustration of his method and style so far indeed as a short extract
+can illustrate an argument sustained by a long course of reasoning.
+
+    '_Phil._ As I am no sceptic with regard to the nature of things,
+    so neither am I as to their existence. That a thing should be
+    really perceived by my senses, and at the same time not really
+    exist is to me a plain contradiction; since I cannot prescind or
+    abstract even in thought, the existence of a sensible thing from
+    its being perceived. Wood, stones, fire, water, flesh, iron, and
+    the like things, which I name and discourse of, are things that
+    I know. And I should not have known them but that I perceived
+    them by my senses; and things perceived by the senses are
+    immediately perceived; and things immediately perceived are
+    ideas; and ideas cannot exist without the mind; their existence
+    therefore consists in being perceived; when therefore they are
+    actually perceived there can be no doubt of their existence....
+    I might as well doubt of my own being, as of the being of those
+    things I actually see and feel.
+
+    '_Hyl._ Not so fast, _Philonous_; you say you cannot conceive
+    how sensible things should exist without the mind. Do you not?
+
+    '_Phil._ I do.
+
+    '_Hyl._ Supposing you were annihilated, cannot you conceive it
+    possible that things perceivable by sense may still exist?
+
+    '_Phil._ I can; but then it must be in another mind. When I deny
+    sensible things an existence out of the mind, I do not mean my
+    mind in particular, but all minds. Now, it is plain they have an
+    existence exterior to my mind; since I find them by experience
+    to be independent of it. There is therefore some other mind
+    wherein they exist, during the intervals between the times of my
+    perceiving them; as likewise they did before my birth, and
+    would do after my supposed annihilation. And as the same is true
+    with regard to all other finite created spirits, it necessarily
+    follows there is an _omnipresent, eternal Mind_, which knows and
+    comprehends all things, and exhibits them to our view in such a
+    manner, and according to such rules, as He Himself hath
+    ordained, and are by us termed the _Laws of Nature_.'
+
+    'Truth is the cry of all,' says Berkeley in the final paragraph
+    of _Siris_, 'but the game of a few. Certainly, where it is the
+    chief passion, it doth not give way to vulgar cares and views,
+    nor is it contented with a little ardour, active perhaps to
+    pursue, but not so fit to weigh and revise. He that would make a
+    real progress in knowledge, must dedicate his age as well as
+    youth, the latter growth as well as firstfruits at the altar of
+    truth.'
+
+Elsewhere in this famous treatise he writes:
+
+    'It cannot be denied that with respect to the universe of things
+    we in this mortal state are like men educated in Plato's cave,
+    looking on shadows with our backs turned to the light. But
+    though our light be dim and our situation bad, yet if the best
+    use be made of both, perhaps something may be seen. Proclus, in
+    his commentary on the theology of Plato, observes there are two
+    sorts of philosophers. The one placed body first in the order of
+    beings, and made the faculty of thinking depend thereupon,
+    supposing that the principles of all things are corporeal; that
+    body most really or principally exists, and all other things in
+    a secondary sense and by virtue of that. Others making all
+    corporeal things to be dependent upon soul or mind, think this
+    to exist in the first place, and primary senses and the being of
+    bodies to be altogether derived from, and presuppose that of the
+    mind.'
+
+This was Berkeley's creed, and his great aim throughout is to prove the
+phenomenal nature of the things of sense, or in other words the
+non-existence of independent matter. He makes, he says, not the least
+question that the things we see and touch really exist, but what he does
+question is the existence of matter apart from its perception to the
+mind. Hobbes said that the body accounted for the mind, and that matter
+was the deepest thing in the universe, while to Berkeley the only true
+reality consists in what is spiritual and eternal.
+
+'The great idealist,' says an able writer, 'certainly never denied the
+existence of matter in the sense in which Johnson understood it. As the
+touched, the seen, the heard, the smelled, the tasted, he admitted and
+maintained its existence as readily and completely as the most
+illiterate and unsophisticated of mankind,' and he adds that the
+peculiar endowment for which Berkeley was distinguished 'far beyond his
+predecessors and contemporaries, and far beyond almost every philosopher
+who has succeeded him, was the eye he had _for facts_, and the singular
+pertinacity with which he refused to be dislodged from his hold upon
+them.'[62]
+
+Pope's age produced a few great masters of style, and among them
+Berkeley holds an undisputed place. He succeeded, too, in the most
+difficult department of intellectual labour, since to express abstruse
+thought in language as beautiful as it is clear is the rarest of gifts.
+
+'His works are beyond dispute the finest models of philosophic style
+since Cicero. Perhaps they surpass those of the orator, in the wonderful
+art by which the fullest light is thrown on the most minute and
+evanescent parts of the most subtle of human conceptions.'[63]
+
+[Sidenote: William Law (1686-1761).]
+
+William Law was born in 1686 at King's Cliffe in Northamptonshire, and
+entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge, as a Sizar in 1705. He obtained a
+Fellowship, and received holy orders in 1711, but having made a speech
+offensive to the heads of houses, he was degraded. Law believed in the
+divine right of kings, and on the death of Queen Anne, declared his
+principles as a non-juror. In 1717 he published his first controversial
+work, _Three Letters to the Bishop of Bangor_; Hoadly, the famous
+bishop, having, in his opponent's judgment, uttered lax and
+latitudinarian views with regard to the Church of which he was one of
+the chief pastors. These _Letters_ have been highly praised for wit as
+well as for argument, and Dean Hook, writing of the Bangorian
+Controversy in his _Church Dictionary_, states that 'Law's _Letters_
+have never been answered and may, indeed, be regarded as unanswerable.'
+Law was also the most powerful assailant of Warburton's _Divine
+Legation_, which he opposed with a burning zeal that was not always
+wise. But as a controversialist he was an infinitely stronger man than
+his opponent, and unlike Warburton, he never debased controversy by
+scurrility, which the bishop generally found a more potent weapon than
+argument.
+
+On the publication, in 1723, of Dr. Mandeville's _Fable of the Bees_, it
+was vigorously attacked by Law. In this masterly pamphlet, instead of
+attempting to refute the physician by showing that virtue is more
+profitable to the State than vice, and that, therefore, private vices
+are not public benefits, Law takes a higher ground, and asserts that
+morality is not a question of profit and loss, but of conscience.
+Mandeville maintains that man is a mere animal governed by his passions;
+his opponent, on the other hand, argues that man is created in the image
+of God, that virtue 'is a law to which even the divine nature is
+subject,' and that human nature is fitted to rise to the angels, while
+Mandeville would lower it to the brutes.
+
+John Sterling, writing to F. D. Maurice of the first section of Law's
+remarks, says: 'I have never seen in our language the elementary
+grounds of a rational ideal philosophy, as opposed to empiricism, stated
+with nearly the same clearness, simplicity, and force,' and it was at
+Sterling's suggestion that Maurice published a new edition of Law's
+argument with an introductory essay (1844).
+
+The following passage from the _Remarks on the Fable of the Bees_ will
+illustrate Law's method as a polemic:
+
+    'Deists and freethinkers are generally considered as
+    unbelievers; but upon examination they will appear to be men of
+    the most resigned and implicit faith in the world; they would
+    believe _transubstantiation_, but that it implies a believing in
+    God; for they never resign their reason, but when it is to yield
+    to something that opposes salvation. For the Deist's creed has
+    as many articles as the Christian's, and requires a much greater
+    suspension of our reason to believe them. So that if to believe
+    things upon no authority, or without any reason, be an argument
+    of credulity, the freethinker will appear to be the most easy,
+    credulous creature alive. In the first place, he is to believe
+    almost all the same articles to be false which the Christian
+    believes to be true.
+
+    'Now, it may easily be shown that it requires stronger acts of
+    faith to believe these articles to be false, than to believe
+    them to be true. For, taking faith to be an assent of the mind
+    to some proposition, of which we have no certain knowledge, it
+    will appear that the Deist's faith is much stronger, and has
+    more of credulity in it, than the Christian's. For instance, the
+    Christian believes the resurrection of the dead, because he
+    finds it supported by such evidence and authority as cannot
+    possibly be higher, supposing the thing was true; and he does no
+    more violence to his reason in believing it, than in supposing
+    that God may intend to do some things, which the reason of man
+    cannot conceive how they will be effected.
+
+    'On the contrary, the Deist believes there will be no
+    resurrection. And how great is his faith, for he pretends to no
+    evidence or authority to support it; it is a pure naked assent
+    of his mind to what he does not know to be true, and of which
+    nobody has, or can give him, any full assurance. So that the
+    difference between a Christian and a Deist does not consist in
+    this, that the one assents to things unknown, and the other does
+    not; but in this, that the Christian assents to things unknown
+    on account of evidence; the other assents to things unknown
+    without any evidence at all. Which shows that the Christian is
+    the rational believer and the Deist the blind bigot.'
+
+It is probable that Law, like other writers on the orthodox side, did
+not sufficiently take into account the service rendered by the Deists in
+arousing a spirit of inquiry. Free-thinking is right thinking, and 'it
+was a result of the Deistic controversy, which went far to make up many
+evils in it, that in the end it widened and enlarged Christian
+thought.'[64]
+
+The author's next and weakest work, _On the Unlawfulness of Stage
+Entertainments_ (1726), is mentioned elsewhere.[65]
+
+In the same year he published _Christian Perfection_, a profoundly
+earnest but puritanically narrow work, in which our earthly life is
+regarded simply as the road to another. 'There is nothing that deserves
+a serious thought,' he writes, 'but how to get out of the world and make
+it a right passage to our eternal state.' No man ever practised what he
+preached with more sincerity and persistency than William Law, but it
+can hardly be doubted that he narrowed the range of his influence by the
+views he expressed with regard to culture and to all human learning. He
+forgot that, without the logic, the wit, the irony, the singular force
+and lucidity of style displayed in his own writings, he would have
+lost the power as a religious teacher which he was so eager to exercise.
+
+Literature _quâ_ literature Law regarded with contempt, and he is said
+to have looked upon the study even of Milton as waste of time. Yet his
+biographer states what seems likely enough, considering the fine
+qualities of Law's own writings, that 'no author was ever a favourite
+with him, unless he was a man of literary merit.'
+
+In 1727, and probably before that date, Law held the position of tutor
+to Edward Gibbon, whose famous son, the historian, in his
+_Autobiography_, gives to him the high praise of having left in the
+family 'the reputation of a worthy and pious man, who believed all that
+he professed, and practised all that he enjoined.'
+
+Law accompanied his pupil to Cambridge, and it is conjectured that
+during this residence at the university he wrote what Gibbon justly
+called his 'master work,' _A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life_
+(1729), the most impressive book of its class produced in the eighteenth
+century. The historian's father was a man of feeble character. He left
+Cambridge without a degree, and went on his travels, the tutor meanwhile
+remaining in the family house at Putney, where he seems to have gathered
+round him a number of disciples.
+
+The _Serious Call_ had an immediate and strong influence on many
+thoughtful men, and Law's book stimulated in no common measure the
+religious life of the country. John Wesley spoke of it as a treatise
+hardly to be excelled in the English tongue 'either for beauty of
+expression, or for justness and depth of thought.' Whitefield, Venn, and
+Thomas Scott, the commentator, acknowledged their indebtedness to the
+work, and Dr. Johnson, speaking of his youthful days, said: 'I became a
+sort of lax _talker_ against religion, for I did not much _think_
+against it; and this lasted till I went to Oxford, when I took up Law's
+_Serious Call to a Holy Life_, expecting to find it a dull book (as such
+books generally are), but I found Law quite an over-match for me; and
+this was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest.' The first Lord
+Lyttelton, the historian and friend of Thomson, is said to have taken up
+the book one night at bed-time, and to have read it through before he
+went to bed; but, perhaps, the most unimpeachable evidence in its favour
+comes from the pen of Gibbon, who writes: 'Mr. Law's precepts are rigid,
+but they are founded on the Gospel. His satire is sharp, but it is drawn
+from the knowledge of human life, and many of his portraits are not
+unworthy of the pen of La Bruyère. If he finds a spark of piety in his
+reader's mind he will soon kindle it to a flame.'
+
+Law's art as a portrait painter will be seen in the following sketch of
+Flavia:
+
+    '_Flavia_ would be a miracle of piety if she was but half so
+    careful of her soul as she is of her body. The rising of a
+    _pimple_ on her face, the sting of a gnat, will make her keep
+    her room two or three days, and she thinks they are very rash
+    people that do not take care of things in time. This makes her
+    so over careful of her health that she never thinks she is well
+    enough, and so over indulgent that she never can be really well.
+    So that it costs her a great deal in sleeping draughts and
+    waking draughts, in spirits for the head, in drops for the
+    nerves, in cordials for the stomach, and in saffron for her tea.
+
+    'If you visit _Flavia_ on the Sunday, you will always meet good
+    company, you will know what is doing in the world, you will hear
+    the last lampoon, be told who wrote it, and who is meant by
+    every name that is in it. You will hear what plays were acted
+    that week, which is the finest song in the opera, who was
+    intolerable at the last assembly, and what games are most in
+    fashion. _Flavia_ thinks they are atheists who play at cards on
+    the Sunday, but she will tell you the nicety of all the games,
+    what cards she held, how she played them, and the history of all
+    that happened at play, as soon as she comes from church. If you
+    would know who is rude and ill-natured, who is vain and foppish,
+    who lives too high and who is in debt; if you would know what is
+    the quarrel at a certain house, or who and who are in love; if
+    you would know how late Belinda comes home at night, what
+    clothes she has bought, how she loves compliments, and what a
+    long story she told at such a place; if you would know how cross
+    Lucius is to his wife, what ill-natured things he says to her,
+    when nobody hears him; if you would know how they hate one
+    another in their hearts though they appear so kind in public;
+    you must visit _Flavia_ on the Sunday. But still she has so
+    great a regard for the holiness of the Sunday, that she has
+    turned a poor old widow out of her house as a _profane wretch_,
+    for having been found once mending her clothes on the Sunday
+    night.'
+
+Between the years 1733-37, owing to his acquaintance with the writings
+of the famous mystic, Jacob Boehme, Law became a mystic himself. The
+'blessed Jacob' as he calls him exercised an influence which colours all
+his later writings and lasted till his death. In 1740 he retired to his
+native village and to solitude; but after a while two wealthy and devout
+ladies, one of them a widow, the other the historian's aunt, Miss Hester
+Gibbon, joined him in his retreat and devoted to charitable objects
+their labours and their fortunes. 'Out of a joint income of not less
+than three thousand pounds a year, only about three hundred pounds were
+spent upon the frugal expenses of the household and the simple personal
+wants of the three inhabitants. The whole of the remainder was spent
+upon the poor.'[66] Report says, let us hope it may be scandal, that
+after the master's death the love of earthly vanities revived in two of
+his pupils. His favourite niece had a new dress every month, and Miss
+Gibbon 'appeared resplendent in yellow stockings.' This is not the place
+to follow Law's self-denying career, neither are we concerned with the
+volumes which contain his later views. Admirably written though they be,
+these works do not belong to the field of literature. Law lived in
+vigour both of mind and body to a good old age, and died in 1761.
+
+[Sidenote: Joseph Butler (1692-1752).]
+
+Joseph Butler, whose _Sermons_ (1726), and _Analogy of Religion Natural
+and Revealed to the Constitution and Course of Nature_ (1736), are among
+the highest contributions to theology produced in the last century,
+called the imagination 'a forward, delusive faculty,' and he could have
+boasted that it was a faculty of which no trace is to be found in his
+works. Moreover, he is generally regarded as wholly destitute of style,
+and in a sense this is true, for Butler is so intent upon what he has to
+say that he cares little how he says it. His sense of beauty if he
+possessed it, was absorbed in a supreme allegiance to truth, and his
+life was that of a Christian philosopher intent upon one object. His
+sermons, preached at the Rolls Chapel, which contain the germ of his
+philosophy, are too closely packed with argument and too recondite in
+thought to fit them for pulpit discourses. The _Analogy_, which occupied
+seven years of Butler's life, is better known and more generally
+interesting. 'There is,' he says, 'a much more exact correspondence
+between the natural and the moral world than we are apt to take notice
+of.' His aim is to show that the difficulties which meet us in
+Revelation are to be found also in nature, that as our happiness or
+misery in this world largely depends upon conduct, so it is reasonable
+to suppose, apart from what Revelation teaches, that we are also in a
+state of probation with regard to a future life. As youth is an
+education for mature age, so may the whole of our earthly life be an
+education for a future existence.
+
+    'And if we were not able at all to discern how or in what way
+    the present life could be our preparation for another, this
+    would be no objection against the credibility of its being so.
+    For we do not discern how food and sleep contribute to the
+    growth of the body; nor could have any thought that they would
+    before we had experience. Nor do children at all think on the
+    one hand that the sports and exercises, to which they are so
+    much addicted, contribute to their health and growth; nor, on
+    the other, of the necessity which there is for their being
+    restrained in them; nor are they capable of understanding the
+    use of many parts of discipline, which, nevertheless, they must
+    be made to go through in order to qualify them for the business
+    of mature age. Were we not able, then, to discover in what
+    respects the present life could form us for a future one, yet
+    nothing would be more supposable than that it might, in some
+    respects or other, from the general analogy of Providence. And
+    this, for aught I see, might reasonably be said, even though we
+    should not take in the consideration of God's moral government
+    over the world. But, take in this consideration, and
+    consequently, that the character of virtue and piety is a
+    necessary qualification for the future state, and then we may
+    distinctly see how and in what respects the present life may be
+    a preparation for it.
+
+Butler's style is uniform throughout, and if it have no other merit, may
+be praised for honesty. It is wholly free from the artifices of the
+rhetorician; if it is wanting in charm, it is never weak; if it is
+sometimes obscure, it must be remembered that the author does not write
+for readers who find it a trouble to think. The bishop's obscurity was
+not due to negligence. 'Confusion and perplexity in writing,' he says,
+'is indeed without excuse; because anyone may, if he pleases, know
+whether he understands and sees through what he is about; and it is
+unpardonable for a man to lay his thoughts before others when he is
+conscious that he himself does not know whereabouts he is, or how the
+matter before him stands. It is coming abroad in disorder, which he
+ought to be dissatisfied to find himself in at home.'
+
+Butler weighed his thoughts rather than his words in an age when many
+distinguished writers were tempted to regard form as of more consequence
+than substance. It must be admitted, however, that if the ideal of fine
+literature be the expression of beautiful and richly suggestive thoughts
+in a style elevated by the imagination, and by a sense of rhythmical
+harmony, Bishop Butler's place is not among men of letters. His profound
+sense of the seriousness of life limited his range; but as a thinker,
+what he lost in versatility he probably gained in depth. The _Analogy_
+is a striking instance of a great work wholly without imagination, while
+full of the intellectual life which sustains the student's attention.
+There is not a dull page in the book, or one in which the author's
+meaning cannot be grasped by thoughtful readers. The work is full of
+weighty sayings on the power of conscience, the rule of right which a
+man has within him, the force of habit, the necessity of action in
+relation to belief, and the uselessness of passive impressions. It has
+been said that the defect of the eighteenth century theology 'was not in
+having too much good sense, but in having nothing besides,' and the
+straining after good sense, so prominent in Pope's age, affected alike,
+men of letters, philosophers, and theologians. The virtue was carried to
+excess and is conspicuous in Butler. He has his weaknesses both as a
+philosopher and a theologian, but the reader of the _Analogy_ and of the
+three sermons on Human Nature, will be conscious that he is in the
+presence of a great mind.
+
+[Sidenote: William Warburton (1698-1779).]
+
+William Warburton, Pope's commentator, was born at Newark-upon-Trent in
+1698, and died as Bishop of Gloucester in 1779. The main argument of his
+principal work, _The Divine Legation of Moses_ (1738-41), is based upon
+the astounding paradox that the legation of Moses must have been divine
+because he never invoked the promises or threatenings of a future state.
+The book is remarkable for its arrogance and lack of 'sweet
+reasonableness.' It claims no attention from the student of English
+literature, neither would Warburton himself were it not for his
+association with Pope. Allusion has been already made to Crousaz's
+hostile criticism of the _Essay on Man_ (1737) on the ground that it led
+to fatalism, and was destructive of the foundations of natural religion.
+Warburton, who had previously denounced the 'rank atheism' of the poem,
+now endeavoured to defend it, and how effectually he did so in Pope's
+judgment is seen in his grateful acknowledgment of the critic's labours.
+'I know I meant just what you explain,' he wrote, 'but I did not explain
+my own meaning as well as you. You understand me as well as I do myself,
+but you express me better than I could express myself.'
+
+Dr. Conyers Middleton's estimate of what Warburton had done for Pope is
+more accurate: 'You have evinced the orthodoxy of Mr. Pope's
+principles,' he says, 'but, like the old commentators on his _Homer_,
+will be thought, perhaps, in some places to have provided a meaning for
+him that he himself never dreamt of.'[67]
+
+The poet and Warburton met for the first time in 1740, and the
+bookseller, Dodsley, who was present at the interview, was astonished at
+the compliments which Pope lavished on his apologist. Henceforth,
+until the poet's death, Warburton, who, according to Bishop Hurd, 'found
+an image of himself in his new acquaintance,' became his counsellor and
+supporter, and among other achievements added, as Ricardus Aristarchus,
+to the confusion of the _Dunciad_. Ultimately, as Pope's annotator, he
+produced much laborious and comparatively worthless criticism, and
+contrived by his immense fighting qualities as a critic and polemic to
+make a considerable noise in the world. One incident in the friendship
+of the poet and of the divine is worth recording. In 1741 Pope and
+Warburton were at Oxford together, and while there the Vice-Chancellor
+offered to confer on the poet the degree of D.C.L., and on Warburton
+that of D.D. Some hesitation, however, on the part of the university
+having occurred with regard to the latter, Pope wrote to his friend
+saying, 'As for mine I will die before I receive one, in an art I am
+ignorant of, at a place where there remains any scruple of bestowing one
+on you, in a science of which you are so great a master. In short I will
+be doctored with you, or not at all.'
+
+Warburton's stupendous self-assertion concealed to some extent his heavy
+style and poverty of thought. His aim was to startle by paradoxes, since
+he could not convince by argument. No one could call an opponent names
+in the Billingsgate style more effectively, and every man who ventured
+to differ from him was either a knave or a fool. 'Warburton's stock
+argument,' it has been said, 'is a threat to cudgel anyone who disputes
+his opinion.' He was a laborious student, and the mass of work he
+accomplished exhibits his robust energy, but he has left nothing which
+lives in literature or in theology. He was, however, a man of various
+acquisitions, and won, for that reason, the praise of Dr. Johnson. 'The
+table is always full, sir. He brings things from the north and the
+south and from every quarter. In his _Divine Legation_ you are always
+entertained. He carries you round and round without carrying you forward
+to the point, but then you have no wish to be carried forward.'
+
+Bentley's more concise description of Warburton's attainments deserves
+to be recorded. He was, he says, 'a man of monstrous appetite, but bad
+digestion.'
+
+Warburton's _Shakespeare_ appeared in 1747, his _Pope_ in 1751. It
+cannot be said that either poet has cause to be grateful to his
+commentator. Of his _Shakespeare_ a few words may be appropriately said
+here. In this pretentious and untrustworthy edition, Warburton accuses
+Theobald of plagiarism, treats him with contempt, and then uses his text
+to print from. In his Preface he declares that his own Notes 'take in
+the whole compass of Criticism,' and he professes to restore the poet's
+genuine Text. Yet, as the editors of the _Cambridge Shakespeare_
+observe, there is no trace, so far as they have discovered, 'of his
+having collated for himself either the earlier Folios or any of the
+Quartos.' Warburton professed to observe the severe canons of literal
+criticism, and this suggested the title to Thomas Edwards of a volume in
+which the critic's editorial pretensions are attacked with some humour
+and much justice.[68]
+
+We may add that Bishop Hurd, Warburton's most intimate friend, edited
+his works in seven volumes (1788), and six years later, by way of
+preface to a new edition, published an _Account of the Life, Writings,
+and Character of the Author_.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[57] Readers who remember Mr. Browning's estimate of 'sage Mandeville'
+in his _Parleyings with Certain Persons_ may deem this criticism unjust;
+but the De Mandeville who speaks in that poem is the creation of the
+poet's imagination, or rather he is Mr. Browning himself.
+
+[58] _Bolingbroke: a Historical Study_, p. 133. By J. Churton Collins.
+
+[59] _Walpole_, p. 79. By John Morley. Macmillan.
+
+[60] _Works of George Berkeley._ Edited by George Sampson. With
+introduction by the Rt. Hon. Arthur J. Balfour, M.P. Vol. i., p. xxxi
+(London, 1897).
+
+[61] _An Essay on Truth_, 2nd edit., p. 298. 1771.
+
+[62] _Blackwood's Magazine_, June, 1842.
+
+[63] Sir James Macintosh, _Encyclopædia Britannica_.
+
+[64] _The English Church and its Bishops._ By Charles J. Abbey. Vol. i.,
+p. 236.
+
+[65] See p. 194.
+
+[66] _The Life and Opinions of the Rev. William Law, M.A._ By J. H.
+Overton, M.A. P. 243.
+
+[67] Middleton's _Miscellaneous Works_, vol. i., p. 402.
+
+[68] The first edition of Edwards's work was entitled _Supplement_ to
+Mr. Warburton's edition of _Shakespeare_, 1747. The third edition (1750)
+was called _The Canons of Criticism and Glossary_ by Thomas Edwards. Of
+this volume seven editions were published. Edwards, who was born in
+1699, died in 1757.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX OF MINOR POETS AND PROSE WRITERS.
+
+
+JOHN ARMSTRONG (1709-1779), a Scotchman by birth, practised in London as
+a physician after some surgical experience in the navy. Believing any
+subject suitable for poetry, he wrote in blank verse, reminding one of
+Thomson, _The Art of Preserving Health_ (1744), a poem containing some
+powerful passages, and many which are better fitted for a medical
+treatise than for poetry. An earlier and licentious poem _The Economy of
+Love_, which injured him in his profession, was 'revised and corrected
+by the author' in 1768.
+
+If bulk were a sign of merit SIR RICHARD BLACKMORE (1650-1729) would not
+rank with the minor poets. He wrote several long and wearisome epics,
+his best work in Dr. Johnson's judgment being _The Creation_ (1712),
+which was praised by Addison in the _Spectator_ as 'one of the most
+useful and noble productions in our English verse,' a judgment the
+modern reader is not likely to endorse.
+
+HENRY BROOKE (1706-1783), an Irishman, was the author of a poem entitled
+_Universal Beauty_ (1735). Four years later he published _Gustavus
+Vasa_, a tragedy, which was not allowed to be acted, the sentiments
+being too liberal for the government. His _Fool of Quality_ (1766) a
+novel in five volumes, delighted John Wesley, and in our day, Charles
+Kingsley, who praises its 'broad and genial humanity.' Brooke was a
+follower of William Law, whose mysticism is to be seen in the story.
+
+WILLIAM BROOME (1689-1745) is chiefly known from his association with
+Pope in the translation of the _Odyssey_, of which enough has been said
+elsewhere (p. 38). His name suggested the following epigram to Henley:
+
+    'Pope came off clean with Homer; but they say
+    _Broome_ went before and kindly swept the way.'
+
+He entered holy orders, had two livings in Suffolk and one in Norfolk,
+and married a wealthy widow. His verses are mechanically correct, but
+are empty of poetry.
+
+JOHN BYROM (1691-1763), the friend and disciple of William Law, the
+author of the _Serious Call_, is best remembered for his system of
+shorthand. In a characteristic, copious, and not very attractive
+journal, he describes, for the consolation of his fellow mortals, how he
+makes resolutions and breaks them. Byrom wrote rhyme with ease and on
+subjects with which poetry has nothing to do. His most successful
+achievement was a pastoral, _Colin and Phoebe_, which appeared in the
+_Spectator_ (Vol. viii., No. 603). It was written in honour of the
+daughter of Dr. Bentley, Master of Trinity, 'not,' it has been said,
+'because he wished to win her affections, but because he desired to
+secure her father's interest for the Fellowship for which he was a
+candidate.' The plan was successful. The one verse of Byrom's that every
+one has read is the happy epigram:
+
+    'God bless the King!--I mean the faith's defender--
+    God bless (no harm in blessing!) the Pretender!
+    But who Pretender is, or who is King--
+    God bless us all!--that's quite another thing.'
+
+SAMUEL CLARKE (1675-1729), a man of large attainments in science and
+divinity, was the favourite theologian of Queen Caroline, who admired
+his latitudinarian views, and delighted in his conversation. His works,
+edited by Bishop Hoadly, were published in 1738 in four folio volumes.
+In 1704 he delivered the Boyle lectures on _The Being and Attributes of
+God_, and in 1705 _On Natural and Revealed Religion_. His _Scripture
+Doctrine of the Trinity_ (1712) was condemned by convocation. In defence
+of Sir Isaac Newton, Clarke had a controversy with Leibnitz, and having
+published the correspondence dedicated it to the Queen. His sermons, Mr.
+Leslie Stephen says, are 'for the most part not sermons at all, but
+lectures upon metaphysics.' In Addison's judgment Clarke was one of the
+most accurate, learned, and judicious writers the age had produced.
+
+ELIJAH FENTON (1683-1730) wrote poems and _Mariamne_ a tragedy, in
+which, according to his friend Broome, 'great Sophocles revives and
+reappears.' It was acted with applause, and brought nearly one thousand
+pounds to its author. His name is now chiefly known as having assisted
+Pope in his translation of the _Odyssey_.
+
+RICHARD GLOVER (1712-1785), the son of a London merchant, was himself a
+merchant of high reputation in the city. He also 'cultivated the Muses,'
+and his _Leonidas_ (1737), an elaborate poem in blank verse, preferred
+by some critics of the day to _Paradise Lost_, passed through several
+editions and was praised by Fielding and by Lord Chatham. Power is
+visible in this epic, which displays also a large amount of knowledge,
+but the salt of genius is wanting, and the poem, despite many estimable
+qualities, is now forgotten. _Leonidas_ was followed by _Boadicea_
+(1758), and _The Atheniad_, published after his death in 1788. Glover
+was a politician as well as a verseman. His party feeling probably
+inspired _Admiral Hosier's Ghost_ (1739), a ballad still remembered and
+preserved in anthologies.
+
+MATTHEW GREEN (1696-1737) is the author of _The Spleen_, an original and
+brightly written poem. _The Grotto_, printed but not published in 1732,
+is also marked by freshness of treatment. Green's poems, written in
+octosyllabic metre, were published after his death.
+
+JAMES HAMMOND (1710-1742) produced many forlorn elegies on a lady who
+appears to have scorned him, and who lived in 'maiden meditation' for
+nearly forty years after the poet's death. His love is said to have
+affected his mind for a time. 'Sure Hammond has no right,' says
+Shenstone, 'to the least inventive merit. I do not think that there is a
+single thought in his elegies of any eminence that is not literally
+translated.'
+
+NATHANIEL HOOKE (1690-1763), the author of a _Roman History_, is better
+known as the editor of _An Account of the conduct of the Dowager Duchess
+of Marlborough, from her first coming to Court in the year 1710, in a
+letter from herself to Lord ---- in 1742_. The duchess is said to have
+dictated this letter from her bed, and to have been so eager for its
+completion that she insisted on Hooke's not leaving the house till he
+had finished it. He was munificently rewarded for his labour by a
+present of £5,000. It was Hooke, a zealous Roman Catholic, who, when
+Pope was dying, asked him if he should not send for a priest, and
+received the poet's hearty thanks for putting him in mind of it.
+
+JOHN HUGHES (1677-1719) was the author of poems, an opera, a masque,
+several translations, and a tragedy, _The Siege of Damascus_, which was
+well received, and kept its place on the stage for some years. He died
+on the first night's performance of the play. Several articles in the
+_Tatler_ and _Spectator_ are from his pen. In 1715 he published an
+edition of Spenser in six volumes. Hughes received warm praise from
+Steele, and enjoyed also the friendship of Addison.
+
+CONYERS MIDDLETON (1683-1750) is now chiefly known for an extravagantly
+eulogistic life of _Cicero_ (1741), in which, as Macaulay observes, he
+'resorted to the most disingenuous shifts, to unpardonable distortions
+and suppressions of facts.' The book is written in a forcible and lively
+style. A man of considerable learning, Middleton was a violent
+controversialist, who liked better to attack and to defend than to dwell
+in the serene atmosphere of literature or of practical divinity. He
+assailed the famous Richard Bentley with such rancour that he had to
+apologize and was fined £50 by the Court of King's Bench. Middleton was
+a doctor of divinity, but his controversial works, while never directly
+attacking the chief tenets of the religion he professed, lean far more
+to the side of the Deists than to the orthodox creed, and, indeed, it
+would not be uncharitable to class him among them. He appears, like
+Swift, to have chiefly regarded the Christian religion as an institution
+of service to the stability of the State. Of the _Miscellaneous Works_
+which were published after his death in five volumes, the most elaborate
+and the most provocative of disputation is _A Free Inquiry into the
+Miraculous Powers which are supposed to have subsisted in the Christian
+Church through several successive centuries_ (1749). Middleton was
+educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1734 was elected
+librarian of the University.
+
+RICHARD SAVAGE (1698-1743), whose fate is one of the most melancholy in
+the annals of versemen, lives in the admirable though neither impartial
+nor wholly accurate biography of Dr. Johnson. In 1719 he produced _Love
+in a Veil_, a comedy from the Spanish; and in 1723 his tragedy _Sir
+Thomas Overbury_ was acted, but with little success. In the same year he
+published _The Bastard_, a poem which is said to have driven his mother
+out of society. _The Wanderer_, in five cantos, appeared in 1729, and
+was regarded by the author as his masterpiece. It has some vigorous
+lines and several descriptive passages that are not conventional. Savage
+died in prison at Bristol, a city which recalls the equally painful
+story of Chatterton.
+
+LEWIS THEOBALD (1688-1744), the original hero of the _Dunciad_, was a
+dramatist and translator, but is chiefly known as the author of
+_Shakespeare Restored; or specimens of blunders committed or unamended
+in Pope's edition of the poet_ (1726). This was followed two years later
+by _Proposals for Publishing Emendations and Remarks on Shakespeare_,
+and in 1733 by his edition of the dramatist in seven volumes. 'Theobald
+as an editor,' say the editors of the _Cambridge Shakespeare_, 'is
+incomparably superior to his predecessors and to his immediate successor
+Warburton, although the latter had the advantage of working on his
+materials. He was the first to recall a multitude of readings of the
+first Folio unquestionably right, but unnoticed by previous editors.
+Many most brilliant emendations ... are due to him.'
+
+WILLIAM WALSH (1663-1708) has chronologically little claim to be noticed
+here, for his poems were published before the beginning of the century,
+but he is to be remembered as the early friend and wise counsellor of
+Pope, and also as the author, I believe, of the only English sonnet
+between Milton's in 1658, and Gray's, on Richard West, in 1742.
+
+ANNE FINCH, Countess of Winchelsea (1660-1720), published a volume of
+verse in 1713 under the title of _Miscellany Poems on Several Occasions,
+Written by a Lady_. The book contains a _Nocturnal Reverie_, which has
+some lines showing a close and faithful observation of rural sounds and
+sights, as for example:
+
+    'When the loosed horse, now as his pasture leads,
+    Comes slowly grazing through the adjoining meads,
+    Whose stealing pace and lengthened shade we fear,
+    Till torn-up forage in his teeth we hear;
+    When nibbling sheep at large pursue their food,
+    And unmolested kine rechew the cud;
+    When curlews cry beneath the village walls,
+    And to her straggling brood the partridge calls.'
+
+The _Nocturnal Reverie_, however, is an exception to the general
+character of Lady Winchelsea's poems, which consist chiefly of odes
+(including the inevitable Pindaric), fables, songs, affectionate
+addresses to her husband, poetical epistles, and a tragedy,
+_Aristomenes; or the Royal Shepherd_. The _Petition for an Absolute
+Retreat_ is one of the best pieces in the volume. It displays great
+facility in versification, and a love of country delights.
+
+THOMAS YALDEN (1670-1736), born in Exeter, and educated at Magdalen
+College, Oxford, entered into holy orders (1711), and was appointed
+lecturer of moral philosophy. 'Of his poems,' writes Dr. Johnson, 'many
+are of that irregular kind which, when he formed his poetical character,
+was supposed to be Pindaric.' Pindarics were indeed the bane of the age.
+Every minor poet, no matter however feeble his poetical wings might be,
+endeavoured to fly with Pindar. Like Gay, Yalden tried his skill as a
+writer of fables.
+
+    NOTE.
+
+    _Mrs. Veal's Ghost_ (see pp. 186-187). A curious discovery, made
+    by Mr. G. A. Aitken (see _Nineteenth Century_, January, 1895),
+    makes it certain, he thinks, that 'the whole narrative is
+    literally true.' He even hopes that the receipt for scouring
+    Mrs. Veal's gown may some day be found. Mr. Aitken seems to
+    infer that Defoe's other tales will also turn out to be true
+    histories, but Defoe avers, with all the seriousness he expends
+    on Mrs. Veal, that he witnessed the great Plague of London,
+    which it is needless to say he did not.
+
+
+
+
+CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.
+
+
+=1667.=       =Swift born.=
+=1672.=       =Steele born.=
+=1672.=       =Addison born.=
+ 1674.        Milton died.
+=1688.=       =Gay born.=
+=1688.=       =Pope born.=
+ 1688.        Bunyan died.
+ 1690.        Locke's _Essay Concerning Human Understanding_.
+ 1694.        Voltaire born.
+ 1699.        Racine died.
+=1700.=       =Thomson born.=
+=1700.=       =Dryden died.=
+ 1700.        Fénelon's _Télémaque_.
+ 1703.        John Wesley born.
+ 1704.        Locke died.
+=1704.=       =Addison's= _Campaign_.
+=1704.=       =Swift's= _Tale of a Tub_ and _Battle of the Books_.
+ 1707.        Fielding born.
+ 1709.        Johnson born.
+=1709.=       =Pope's= _Pastorals_.
+=1709-1711.=  _The Tatler._
+=1710.=       =Berkeley's= _Principles of Human Knowledge_.
+=1711.=       =Pope's= _Essay on Criticism_.
+1711-1712,}   _The Spectator._
+and 1714. }
+ 1711.        Hume born.
+=1712.=       =Pope's= _Rape of the Lock_.
+ 1712.        Rousseau born.
+=1713.=       =Addison's= _Cato_.
+ 1713.        Sterne born.
+=1714.=       =Mandeville's= _Fable of the Bees_.
+=1715.=       =Gay's= _Trivia_.
+=1715-1720.=  =Pope's= _Translation of Homer's Iliad_.
+ 1715.        Wycherley died.
+=1718.=       =Prior's= _Poems on Several Occasions_ =(folio)=.
+=1719-1720.=  =Defoe's= _Robinson Crusoe_ =(first part)=.
+=1719.=       =Addison died.=
+=1721.=       =Prior died.=
+ 1721.        Smollett born.
+=1723-1725.=  =Pope's= _Translation of Homer's Odyssey_.
+=1724.=       =Swift's= _Drapier's Letters_.
+ 1724.        Kant born.
+ 1724.        Klopstock born.
+=1725-1730.=  =Thomson's= _Seasons_.
+=1725.=       =Ramsay's= _Gentle Shepherd_.
+=1725.=       =Young's= _Universal Passion_.
+=1726.=       =Swift's= _Gulliver's Travels_.
+=1727.=       =Gay's= _Fables_.
+=1728.=       =Pope's= _Dunciad_.
+=1728.=       =Gay's= _Beggar's Opera_.
+ 1728.        Goldsmith born.
+=1729.=       =Law's= _Serious Call_.
+ 1729.        Burke born.
+ 1729.        Lessing born.
+=1729.=       =Steele died.=
+=1731.=       =Defoe died.=
+ 1731.        Cowper born.
+=1732-1735.=  =Pope's= _Moral Essays_.
+=1732-1734.=  =Pope's= _Essay on Man_.
+=1732.=       =Gay died.=
+=1733-1737.=  =Pope's= _Imitations of Horace_.
+=1735.=       =Pope's= _Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot_.
+=1736.=       =Butler's= _Analogy of Religion_.
+ 1737.        Gibbon born.
+=1738.=       =Hume's= _Treatise of Human Nature_.
+=1740.=       =Cibber's= _Apology for his Life_.
+ 1740.        Richardson's _Pamela_.
+ 1742.        Fielding's _Joseph Andrews_.
+=1742.=       =Pope's= _Dunciad_ =(fourth book added)=.
+=1742.=       =Young's= _Night Thoughts_.
+=1743.=       =Blair's= _Grave_.
+=1744.=       =Akenside's= _Pleasures of Imagination_.
+=1744.=       =Pope died.=
+=1745.=       =Swift died.=
+=1748.=       =Thomson died.=
+ 1748.        Hume's _Inquiry concerning Human Understanding_.
+ 1748.        Richardson's _Clarissa Harlowe_.
+ 1748.        Smollett's _Roderick Random_.
+ 1749.        Goethe born.
+ 1749.        Fielding's _Tom Jones_.
+
+
+ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WRITERS
+
+ADDISON, JOSEPH                         1672-1719
+AKENSIDE, MARK                          1721-1770
+ARBUTHNOT, JOHN                         1667-1735
+ARMSTRONG, JOHN                         1709-1779
+ATTERBURY, FRANCIS                      1662-1732
+BENTLEY, RICHARD                        1662-1742
+BERKELEY, GEORGE                        1685-1753
+BINNING, LORD                           1696-1732
+BLACKMORE, SIR RICHARD                  1650-1729
+BLAIR, ROBERT                           1699-1746
+BOLINGBROKE, LORD                       1678-1751
+BOYLE, CHARLES                          1676-1731
+BROOKE, HENRY                           1706-1783
+BROOME, WILLIAM                         1689-1745
+BUTLER, JOSEPH                          1692-1752
+BYROM, JOHN                             1691-1763
+CHESTERFIELD, LORD                      1694-1773
+CIBBER, COLLEY                          1671-1757
+CLARKE, SAMUEL                          1675-1729
+COLLINS, ANTHONY                        1676-1729
+CRAWFORD, ROBERT                       1695?-1732
+DEFOE, DANIEL                           1661-1731
+DENNIS, JOHN                          1657-1733-4
+DORSET, EARL OF                       1637-1705-6
+DYER, JOHN                             1698?-1758
+EDWARDS, THOMAS                         1699-1757
+FENTON, ELIJAH                          1683-1730
+GARTH, SIR SAMUEL                    1660-1717-18
+GAY, JOHN                               1685-1732
+GLOVER, RICHARD                         1712-1785
+GREEN, MATTHEW                          1696-1737
+HALIFAX, CHARLES MONTAGUE, EARL OF      1661-1715
+HAMILTON, WILLIAM (OF BANGOUR)          1704-1754
+HAMMOND, JAMES                          1710-1742
+HILL, AARON                             1684-1749
+HOOKE, NATHANIEL                        1690-1763
+HUGHES, JOHN                            1677-1719
+KING, ARCHBISHOP                        1650-1729
+LAW, WILLIAM                            1686-1761
+LILLO, GEORGE                           1693-1739
+LYTTELTON, GEORGE, LORD                 1708-1773
+MALLET, DAVID                           1700-1765
+MANDEVILLE, BERNARD DE                 1670?-1733
+MIDDLETON, CONYERS                      1683-1750
+MONTAGU, LADY MARY WORTLEY              1689-1762
+PARNELL, THOMAS                         1679-1718
+PHILIPS, AMBROSE                        1671-1749
+PHILIPS, JOHN                           1676-1708
+POPE, ALEXANDER                         1688-1744
+PRIOR, MATTHEW                          1664-1721
+RAMSAY, ALLAN                           1686-1758
+ROWE, NICHOLAS                          1673-1718
+SAVAGE, RICHARD                         1698-1743
+SHAFTESBURY, LORD                       1671-1713
+SHENSTONE, WILLIAM                      1714-1764
+SOMERVILLE, WILLIAM                     1692-1742
+SPENCE, JOSEPH                          1698-1768
+STEELE, SIR RICHARD                     1672-1729
+SWIFT, JONATHAN                         1667-1745
+THEOBALD, LEWIS                         1688-1744
+THOMSON, JAMES                          1700-1748
+TICKELL, THOMAS                         1686-1740
+WALSH, WILLIAM                          1663-1708
+WARBURTON, WILLIAM                      1698-1779
+WARDLAW, LADY                           1677-1727
+WATTS, ISAAC                            1674-1748
+WESLEY, CHARLES                         1708-1788
+WINCHELSEA, COUNTESS OF                 1660-1720
+YALDEN, THOMAS                          1670-1736
+YOUNG, EDWARD                           1684-1765
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+Addison, Joseph, 4, 5, 15, 16, 19, 20, 35, 59, 62, 125-136, 145, 146.
+
+_Addison, Address to Mr._, 112.
+
+_Admiral Hosier's Ghost_, 244.
+
+_Agamemnon_, 88.
+
+Akenside, Mark, 117.
+
+_Alciphron_, 216, 224.
+
+_Alfred, Masque of_, 88, 119.
+
+_Alma_, 67, 71.
+
+_Ambitious Step-mother, the_, 103.
+
+_Amyntor and Theodora_, 119.
+
+_Analogy of Religion_, 236.
+
+_Appius and Virginia_, 191, 193.
+
+Arbuthnot, John, 45, 49, 175-179.
+
+_Arbuthnot, Epistle to Dr._, 59.
+
+Armstrong, John, 242.
+
+_Art of Political Lying, the_, 177.
+
+_Art of Preserving Health, the_, 242.
+
+_Atheniad, the_, 244.
+
+Atterbury, Bishop, 45, 70, 207-212.
+
+Atticus, character of, 59.
+
+Augustan Age, origin of the term, 10.
+
+
+_Baucis and Philemon_, 157.
+
+_Bangor, three Letters to the Bishop of_, 230.
+
+Bangorian Controversy, the, 9.
+
+_Bathos, treatise on the_, 39.
+
+Bathurst, Lord, 46, 49.
+
+_Battle of Blenheim, the_, 192.
+
+_Battle of the Books, the_, 160.
+
+_Beggar's Opera, the_, 73, 74.
+
+Bentley, Richard, 36, 48, 160, 207, 208, 243.
+
+_Bentley's Dissertations, Examination of_, 208.
+
+Berkeley, Bishop, 46, 215, 221-229.
+
+Bickerstaff, Isaac, 161;
+  _Lucubrations of_ 140, 141.
+
+Binning, Lord, 121.
+
+_Black-eyed Susan_, 74.
+
+Blackmore, Sir Richard, 47, 242.
+
+Blair, Robert, 84.
+
+_Blenheim_, 101.
+
+Blount, Martha and Teresa, 44, 56.
+
+_Boadicea_, 244.
+
+Boehme, Jacob, 235.
+
+Boileau and Pope compared, 4, 47;
+  his _Art Poétique_, 29.
+
+Bolingbroke, Lord, 8, 44, 51, 52, 59, 216-221.
+
+Boyle, Charles, 160, 207, 208.
+
+_Braes of Yarrow, the_, 121.
+
+Bribery, prevalence of, 19.
+
+_Britannia_ (Thomson's), 87;
+  (Mallet's), 119.
+
+Brooke, Henry, 242.
+
+Broome, William, 38, 243.
+
+_Brothers, the_, 79.
+
+Buckingham, Duke of, 57, 70.
+
+_Busiris_, 79.
+
+Butler, Bishop, 236.
+
+Byrom, John, 243.
+
+
+_Cadenus and Vanessa_, 154, 165.
+
+_Campaign, the_, 126.
+
+_Captain Singleton_, 188.
+
+_Careless Husband, the_, 196, 197.
+
+Caroline, Queen, 9.
+
+_Castle of Indolence, the_, 93.
+
+_Cato_, 128, _et seq._
+
+Chandos, Duke of, 57.
+
+_Characteristics of Men, Manners, etc._, 19, 52, 212.
+
+Charke, Mrs., _Narrative of her Life_, 11.
+
+_Chase, the_, 112.
+
+Chesterfield, Lord, 202-204.
+
+_Chit-Chat_, 144.
+
+_Christian Hero, the_, 137.
+
+_Christianity, argument against abolishing_, 161.
+
+_Christian Perfection_, 232.
+
+_Christian Religion, Grounds of the_, 222.
+
+Cibber, Colley, 48, 196-198;
+  _Apology for the Life of_, 198.
+
+_Cider_, 101.
+
+Clarke, Dr. Samuel, 9, 243.
+
+_Colin and Lucy_, 110.
+
+_Colin and Phoebe_, 243.
+
+Collier, Jeremy, 137.
+
+Collins, Anthony, 222.
+
+_Colonel Jack_, 187, 188.
+
+_Conscious Lovers, the_, 137.
+
+_Contentment, Hymn to_, 107.
+
+_Conversion of St. Paul, Dissertation on the_, 205.
+
+_Coriolanus_, 88.
+
+_Country Mouse and City Mouse, the_, 66.
+
+_Country Walk, the_, 114.
+
+Craggs, James, 45, 56.
+
+Crawford, Robert, 121.
+
+_Creation, the_, 242.
+
+_Crisis, the_, 143, 144.
+
+_Criticism, the Essay on_, 29, 191.
+
+_Criticism in Poetry, grounds of_, 192.
+
+Crousaz, M., 54, 238.
+
+Cruelty of the age, 18.
+
+Curll, Edmund, 42.
+
+
+Defoe, Daniel, 180-191.
+
+Delany, Mrs., _Life and Correspondence of_, 12, 164.
+
+Dennis, John, 191-196.
+
+_Dialogues of the Dead_, 205.
+
+_Dispensary, the_, 96.
+
+_Distrest Mother, the_, 98.
+
+_Divine Legation of Moses, the_, 230, 239.
+
+Dorset, Earl of, 65.
+
+_Drapier's Letters_, 170.
+
+Drelincourt's _Christian's Defence, etc._, 187.
+
+Dryden, John, death of, 1;
+  and Pope, 28, 58.
+
+_Dryden, Ode to_, 193.
+
+_Drummer, the_, 134.
+
+Drunkenness, prevalence of, 17.
+
+Duelling, 13.
+
+_Dunciad, the_, 39, 48, _et seq._, 240.
+
+Dyer, John, 113, 224.
+
+
+_Edward and Eleanora_, 88.
+
+Edwards, Thomas, 241.
+
+_Edwin and Emma_, 118.
+
+_Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady_, 33.
+
+_Eloisa to Abelard_, 33.
+
+_Elvira_, 119.
+
+_English Convocation, Rights, Powers and Privileges of_, 208.
+
+_Englishman, the_, 144.
+
+_English Poets, Account of the greatest_, 131.
+
+_Epistle to a Friend in Town_, 114.
+
+_Epistles of Phalaris, Dissertations on the_, 160, 208.
+
+_Essay on Man, the_, 51, 238.
+
+_Eurydice_, 119.
+
+Eusden, Lawrence, 47.
+
+_Evergreen, the_, 120.
+
+_Examiner, the_, 162.
+
+_Excursion, the_, 118.
+
+
+_Fable of the Bees, the_, 214, 230;
+  _Remarks on the_, 231.
+
+_Fables_ (Gay's), 73.
+
+_Fair Penitent, the_, 103.
+
+_Fatal Curiosity, the_, 138.
+
+Fenton, Elijah, 38, 244.
+
+_Fleece, the_, 113, 224.
+
+_Fool of Quality, the_, 243.
+
+_Force of Religion, the_, 78.
+
+_Freedom of Wit and Humour, the_, 213.
+
+_Freeholder, the_, 132.
+
+_Freethinking, Discourse on_, 222.
+
+French Literature, influence of, 3, 4, 5.
+
+French Customs, 14.
+
+_Funeral, the_, 137.
+
+
+Gambling, 21, 22.
+
+Garth, Sir Samuel, 96.
+
+Gay, John, 40, 49, 72-76.
+
+_Gentle Shepherd, the_, 120.
+
+_George Barnwell_, 138.
+
+_Gideon_, 104.
+
+Glover, Richard, 244.
+
+_God, the Being and Attributes of_, 244.
+
+Granville, George, Lord Lansdowne, 40.
+
+_Grave, the_, 84.
+
+Green, Matthew, 245.
+
+_Grongar Hill_, 113.
+
+_Grotto, the_, 244.
+
+_Grub Street Journal, the_, 51.
+
+_Grumbling Hive, the_, 214.
+
+_Guardian, the_, 125, 142.
+
+_Gulliver's Travels_, 167.
+
+_Gustavus Vasa_, 243.
+
+
+Halifax, Montague, Earl of, 65, 66.
+
+Hamilton, William, of Bangour, 121.
+
+Hammond, James, 245.
+
+_Health, an Eclogue_, 108.
+
+_Henry and Emma_, 67.
+
+_Hermit, the_, 107.
+
+Hervey, Lord, 47, 59, 61.
+
+Hill, Aaron, 104-106, 195.
+
+Hoadly, Bishop, 9, 230.
+
+Homer, Pope's Translation of, 34, _et seq._, 206, 243, 244.
+  Tickell's translation, 35, 111.
+
+Hooke, Nathaniel, 245.
+
+Horace, _Ars Poetica_, 29.
+
+_Horace, Imitations from_, 55, 59, 60.
+
+Hughes, John, 40, 245.
+
+_Human Knowledge, Treatise on_, 221, 225.
+
+_Hylas and Philonous, Dialogue between_, 222, 227.
+
+_Hymn to Contentment_, 107.
+
+_Hymn to the Naiads_, 118.
+
+
+_Imperium Pelagi_, 76.
+
+_Instalment, the_, 79.
+
+_Iphigenia_, 193.
+
+_Italy, Letter from_, 131.
+
+_Italy, Remarks on Several Parts of_, 126.
+
+
+_Jane Shore_, 103.
+
+_John Bull, History of_, 177.
+
+Johnson, Esther, 152, 164, 166, 172.
+
+_Judgment Day, the_, 104.
+
+_Judgment of Hercules, the_, 116.
+
+
+_Kensington Gardens_, 111.
+
+King, _on the Origin of Evil_, 52.
+
+
+_Lady Jane Grey_, 103.
+
+_Lansdowne, Epistle to Lord_, 77.
+
+_Last Day, the_, 77.
+
+Law, William, 194, 230-236, 243.
+
+_Law, Elegy in Memory of William_, 85.
+
+Leibnitz, _Essais de Théodicée_, 52.
+
+_Leonidas_, 244.
+
+_Liberty Asserted_, 193.
+
+Lillo, George, 138.
+
+_Love in a Veil_, 246.
+
+_Lover, the_, 144.
+
+_Love's Last Shift_, 196.
+
+_Lying Lover, the_, 137.
+
+Lyttelton, George, Lord, 204.
+
+
+Mallet, David, 88, 118, 219, 220.
+
+_Man, Allegory on_, 107.
+
+Mandeville, Bernard de, 214, 230.
+
+_Mariamne_, 244.
+
+Marlborough, Duchess of, 13, 57.
+
+_Marlborough, Duchess of, Account of the Conduct of_, 245.
+
+Marriages in the Fleet, 11, 12.
+
+_Mathematical Learning, Essay on the Usefulness of_, 175.
+
+_Memoirs of a Cavalier_, 188.
+
+_Merope_, 106.
+
+Middleton, Conyers, 246.
+
+_Modest Proposal, etc._, 172, 184.
+
+Mohocks, the, 11.
+
+_Moll Flanders_, 188, 190.
+
+Montagu, Lady M. W., 14, 42, 44, 57, 198-202.
+
+Montague, Charles, Earl of Halifax, 65, 66.
+
+_Monument, the_, 192.
+
+_Moral Essays, the_, 55, _et seq._
+
+_Moralties or Essays, Letters, etc._, 206.
+
+_Mrs. Veal, Apparition of_, 186.
+
+
+_Namur, Taking of_, 70.
+
+_Night Piece on Death_, 107, 108.
+
+_Night Thoughts_, 76, 81.
+
+_Northern Star, the_, 104.
+
+
+_Ocean_, 76.
+
+_Ode on St. Cecilia's day_, 40.
+
+Opera, Italian, 127.
+
+Oxford, Harley, Earl of, 49.
+
+
+_Parallel in the Manner of Plutarch_, 206.
+
+Parnell, Thomas, 107.
+
+_Parties, Dissertation on_, 221.
+
+Partridge, John, 161.
+
+Party feeling, excess of, 19, 20.
+
+_Pastoral Ballad_, 116.
+
+_Pastorals_ (Pope's), 29, 191;
+  (Philips'), 98.
+
+_Patriotism, Letters on_, 221.
+
+_Patriot King, the_, 219, 221.
+
+Patronage of Literature, 5, 6.
+
+_Peace of Ryswick, the_, 126.
+
+_Persian Tales, the_, 100.
+
+Peterborough, Earl of, 45.
+
+_Phalaris, Dissertation on the Epistle of_, 160, 208.
+
+Philips, Ambrose, 11, 98.
+
+Philips, John, 101.
+
+_Plague, History of the_, 189.
+
+_Pleasures of Imagination, the_, 117.
+
+_Plot and No Plot, a_, 193.
+
+_Poetry, Rhapsody on_, 157.
+
+_Polly_, 74.
+
+_Polymetis_, 206.
+
+Pope, Alexander, a representative poet, 27;
+  his life, 28-64;
+  and Dennis, 191, 195;
+  and Cibber, 96;
+  and Lady M. W. Montagu, 14, 42, 44, 57, 199;
+  and Spence, 205;
+  and Arbuthnot, 209.
+
+_Pope, Epistle to_, 81.
+
+_Pope's Translation of Homer_, Spence's Essay on, 206.
+
+Pope, Mrs., 44, 59.
+
+Prior, Matthew, 5, 65-72.
+
+_Progress of Wit, the_, 105.
+
+_Projects, Essay on_, 182.
+
+_Prospect of Peace, the_, 109.
+
+_Public Spirit of the Whigs, the_, 143.
+
+
+_Querist, the_, 224.
+
+
+Ramsay, Allan, 120.
+
+_Rape of the Lock, the_, 31.
+
+_Reader, the_, 144.
+
+Religion, Condition of, 9.
+
+_Religion, Natural and Revealed_, 244.
+
+_Religious Courtship, the_, 189.
+
+_Remarks on Several Parts of Italy_, 126.
+
+_Revenge, the_, 79.
+
+_Review, the_ (Defoe's), 185.
+
+_Rise of Women, the_, 108.
+
+_Robinson Crusoe_, 180, 187, 189.
+
+_Rosamond_, 128.
+
+Roscommon's _Essay on Translated Verse_, 29.
+
+Rowe, Nicholas, 102.
+
+_Roxana_, 188, 189.
+
+_Royal Convert, the_, 103.
+
+_Ruin of Great Britain, Essay towards Preventing the_, 223.
+
+_Ruins of Rome, the_, 115.
+
+_Rule Britannia_, 95.
+
+
+Savage, Richard, 246.
+
+_Schoolmistress, the_, 115, 116.
+
+_Scriblerus, Martin, Memoirs of_, 178, 222.
+
+_Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, the_, 244.
+
+_Seasons, the_, 86, 87, 88-92.
+
+_Sentiments of a Church of England Man_, 162.
+
+_Serious Call_, 216, 233.
+
+Shaftesbury, Lord, 19, 52, 212-215.
+
+Shakespeare, Pope and Theobald's Editions of, 39;
+  Rowe's Edition, 132;
+  Warburton's Edition, 241.
+
+Sheffield, John, Earl of, 29, 40.
+
+Shenstone, William, 115, 205.
+
+_Shepherd's Week, the_, 73.
+
+_Shortest Way with Dissenters, the_, 184.
+
+_Siege of Damascus, the_, 245.
+
+_Siris_, 224, 228.
+
+_Sir Thomas Overbury_, 246.
+
+Social Condition of the time, 10.
+
+_Social State of Ireland, Essay on the_, 224.
+
+_Solomon_, 67, 71.
+
+Somerville, William, 40, 112.
+
+_Sophonisba_, 87.
+
+South Sea Company, the, 21.
+
+_Spectator, the_, 11, 14, 16, 19, 20, 98, 117, 125, 127, 128, 141, 142.
+
+Spence, Joseph, 59, 205.
+
+_Spleen, the_, 244.
+
+_Splendid Shilling, the_, 101.
+
+_Stage defended from Scripture, etc., the_, 194.
+
+_Stage Entertainments, Absolute Unlawfulness of_, 194, 232.
+
+Steele, Sir Richard, 125, 136-150.
+
+_Stella, Journal to_, 164, 166.
+
+_Study of History, Letters on the_, 221.
+
+Swift, Jonathan, 34, 42, 44, 48, 49, 50, 51, 62, 151-175.
+
+_Swift, on the Death of Dr._, 154.
+
+
+_Tale of a Tub, the_, 153, 158, 209.
+
+_Tales of the Genii_, 206.
+
+_Tamerlane_, 103.
+
+_Tancred and Sigismunda_, 88.
+
+_Tatler, the_, 125, 140, 148, 162.
+
+_Tea Table, the_, 144.
+
+_Tea Table Miscellany, the_, 120.
+
+Temple, Sir William, 152, 160, 208.
+
+_Temple of Fame, the_, 33.
+
+_Tender Husband, the_, 137.
+
+_Theatre, the_, 144.
+
+Theobald, Lewis, 39, 47, 48.
+
+_Theory of Vision, Essay towards a new_, 221, 225.
+
+Thomson, James, 44, 47, 85-95.
+
+Tickell, Thomas, 35, 109-111, 135.
+
+_Tour through Great Britain_, 190.
+
+_Town Talk_, 144.
+
+_Trivia_, 11, 73.
+
+_True Born Englishman, the_, 184.
+
+Trumbull, Sir William, 29, 34.
+
+
+_Ulysses_, 103.
+
+_Ungrateful Nanny_, 121.
+
+_Universal Passion_, 80.
+
+
+Vanhomrigh, Hester, 164, 222.
+
+_Verbal Criticism_, 118.
+
+Vida's _Scacchia Ludus_, 32.
+
+_Vision of Mirza, the_, 146.
+
+_Voltaire_, 5, 41.
+
+
+Walpole, Sir Robert, 6, 8, 21, 41, 79.
+
+Walsh, William, 28, 247.
+
+_Wanderer, the_, 247.
+
+Warburton, Bishop, 55, 56, 62, 230, 239-241.
+
+Wardlaw, Lady, 120.
+
+Warton, Joseph, 63.
+
+Watts, Isaac, 131.
+
+_Welcome from Greece, a_, 75.
+
+Welsted, Leonard, 47.
+
+Wesley, Charles, 131.
+
+Wesley, John, 67.
+
+_Whig Examiner, the_, 162.
+
+_William and Margaret_, 118.
+
+Winchelsea, Countess of, 247.
+
+_Windham, Sir W., Letter to_, 217, 221.
+
+_Windsor Forest_, 30.
+
+Women, position of, 14, 15.
+
+Wood's Halfpence, 169, 170.
+
+_World, the_, 203.
+
+Wycherley, William, 28.
+
+
+Yalden, Thomas, 248.
+
+Young, Edward, 15, 76-83.
+
+
+_Zara_, 106.
+
+
+
+
+HANDBOOKS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
+
+
+EDITED BY PROFESSOR HALES
+
+"The admirable series of handbooks edited by Professor Hales is rapidly
+taking shape as one of the best histories of our literature that are at
+the disposal of the student.... [When complete] there is little doubt
+that we shall have a history of English literature which, holding a
+middle course between the rapid general survey and the minute
+examination of particular periods, will long remain a standard
+work."--_Manchester Guardian._
+
+_Crown 8vo, 5s. net each._
+
+THE AGE OF ALFRED (664-1154). By F. J. SNELL, M.A.
+
+THE AGE OF CHAUCER (1346-1400). By F. J. SNELL, M.A., with an
+    Introduction by PROFESSOR HALES. 3rd edition.
+
+THE AGE OF TRANSITION (1400-1580). By F. J. SNELL, M.A. In 2 vols.
+    Vol. I.: The Poets. Vol. II.: The Dramatists and Prose Writers.
+    With an Introduction by PROFESSOR HALES. 3rd edition.
+
+THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE (1579-1631). By THOMAS SECCOMBE and J. W.
+    ALLEN. In 2 vols. Vol. I.: Poetry and Prose, with an
+    Introduction by PROFESSOR HALES. Vol. II: Drama. 7th edition.
+
+THE AGE OF MILTON (1632-1660). By the REV. J. H. B. MASTERMAN, M.A.,
+    with an Introduction, etc., by J. BASS MULLINGER, M.A. 8th
+    edition.
+
+THE AGE OF DRYDEN (1660-1700). By RICHARD GARNETT, C.B., LL.D. 8th
+    edition.
+
+THE AGE OF POPE (1700-1744). By JOHN DENNIS. 11th edition.
+
+THE AGE OF JOHNSON (1744-1798). By THOMAS SECCOMBE. 7th edition.
+
+THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH (1798-1832). By PROFESSOR C. H. HERFORD,
+    Litt.D. 12th edition.
+
+THE AGE OF TENNYSON (1830-1870). By PROFESSOR HUGH WALKER, M.A. 9th
+    edition.
+
+
+OPINIONS OF THE PRESS
+
+
+THE AGE OF CHAUCER
+
+"This little monograph may lay fair claim to be regarded as complete,
+acute, stimulating, and scholarly."--_School World._
+
+"The book is thoroughly up-to-date, an important consideration in
+dealing with Middle English literature, and does not lose itself in too
+minute a consideration of those works which are only of philological and
+not of literary value. The accounts of the W. Midland alliterative
+poetry, of the development of prose, and the work of the poet Gower, are
+specially good. The treatment of Chaucer is thorough and
+scholarly."--_University Correspondent._
+
+"An admirable handbook, dealing in a lucid style and in a highly
+critical spirit with one of the most important periods in the history of
+English literature."--_Westminster Review._
+
+
+THE AGE OF DRYDEN
+
+"This scholarly little volume from the learned pen of Dr. Garnett....
+Within the limits of his space Dr. Garnett surveys the several
+departments of literature in this period with singular comprehensiveness,
+broad sympathy, and fine critical sagacity."--_Times._
+
+"The series which Professor Hales is editing aims at being that very
+difficult and important something between the text-book for schools and
+the gracefully allusive literary essay. Dr. Garnett has done his part of
+the work admirably. Most readable is his book, written with a fine sense
+of proportion, and containing many independent judgements, yet even, so
+far as minor names and dates and facts are concerned, complete enough
+for all save a searcher after minutiae."--_Bookman._
+
+"Though planned on the scale of the manual, this book is actually the
+first attempt worth naming to grasp in one separate review the
+literature of the last forty years of the seventeenth century, a time
+which, as Dr. Garnett well says, 'with all its defects, had a faculty
+for producing masterpieces.' Dr. Garnett's name is a warrant for his
+acquaintance not only with the masterpieces but with much besides, and
+with more than all that need be named in the kind of survey he
+undertakes."--_Manchester Guardian._
+
+
+THE AGE OF POPE
+
+"A 'handbook' is scarcely a fair description of so readable and
+companionable a volume, which aims not only at giving accurate
+information, but at directing the reader's steps 'through a country
+exhaustless in variety and interest.'"--_Spectator._
+
+"The biographical portion of Mr. Dennis's book is really admirable. The
+accuracy of the details and the knowledge exhibited by the author of the
+social and political life of the period show how thoroughly he has
+mastered his subject."--_Westminster Review._
+
+"Mr. Dennis writes freely and simply, and with a thorough knowledge of
+the period with which he deals, and goes straight to the point without
+revelling in circumambient fancies. The result of this is that in 250
+pages of good print we have as concise a history of Queen Anne
+literature as we could wish."--_Cambridge Review._
+
+"An excellent little volume."--_Athenæum._
+
+
+THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE
+
+"Both volumes are excellently done, with knowledge, judgement, and a
+pleasant touch of vivacity. It is no easy matter to make a text-book
+both informing and readable; but here the feat is accomplished. I have
+read 'The Age of Shakespeare' with unflagging interest and pleasure....
+Everywhere one has the restful sensation of dealing with men of
+competent scholarship and sound critical instinct. Especially valuable,
+to my thinking, is the chronological table of the chief publications of
+each year from 1579 to 1630."--Mr. William Archer in the _Morning
+Leader_.
+
+"These two volumes are, in short, a notable accession to the useful
+series to which they belong, and they constitute a luminous aid to the
+interpretation alike of the scope and quality of the literary activity
+which has rendered the 'Age of Shakespeare' classic in the annals of
+English literature."--_Standard._
+
+"The book is a well-informed and well-connected and intelligent
+exposition of its subject. It is more than a mere handbook. It is a
+_history_, though on a small scale."--_Journal of Education._
+
+
+THE AGE OF MILTON
+
+"A very readable and serviceable manual of English literature during the
+central years of the seventeenth century."--_Glasgow Herald._
+
+"Mr. Masterman has written a book which combines the preciseness of a
+text-book with the fullness of thought of a monograph. Indeed, this
+compact little work will be studied with as much earnestness by the
+student as it will be read with pleasure by the lover of _belles
+lettres_.... We lay down the book delighted with what we have
+read."--_Birmingham Daily Gazette._
+
+"A work which reflects the utmost credit on its author ... luminous and
+at the same time impartial."--_Westminster Review._
+
+"This excellent epitome ... very happily indicates the golden afterglow
+of the Elizabethan sun."--_Daily Chronicle._
+
+
+THE AGE OF JOHNSON
+
+"The uniform excellence of Mr. Seccombe's manual of English literary
+history from 1748 to 1798 affords scarcely any opening for detailed
+criticism. Little can be said, except that everything is just as it
+ought to be: the arrangement perfect, the length of the notices justly
+proportioned, the literary judgements sound and illuminating; while the
+main purpose of conveying information is kept so steadily in view that,
+while the book is worthy of a place in the library, the student could
+desire no better guide for an examination."--_Bookman._
+
+"He has knowledge, he is eminently careful, and, best of all in a
+handbook-maker of this kind, he is judicial. We like Mr. Seccombe's
+arrangement. There is a capital introduction, solid and grave rather
+than brilliant, on which the student may stand in confidence before he
+dives off into the stream of his tutor's survey. Briefly, we have here a
+thorough, almost encyclopaedic, review of a great literary
+period--stimulating to the younger student, and to his elder refreshing
+by its perception."--_Outlook._
+
+"This book is one of the best of its kind, and we heartily recommend it
+to our readers."--_Journal of Education._
+
+"The young student could not read a better book to get a comprehensive
+and yet detailed account of the literary history of the latter half of
+the eighteenth century."--_Morning Post._
+
+
+THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH
+
+"It is an admirable little work all the way through and one which the
+ripest students of the period may read with interest and
+profit."--_Guardian._
+
+"The desiderated text-book of the period 1798 to 1830 A.D. is no longer
+to seek. More than that, it has been written by the one Englishman most
+competent to deal with it. Whatever Professor Herford does he does well;
+but he has given us nothing at once so good and so helpful as this
+book."--_University Correspondent._
+
+"The introductory essay on Romanticism in our literature is an admirable
+piece of work, full of suggestive thought, but Professor Herford is at
+his best--and a very fine best it is--in his brief summaries of the
+lives and works of individual writers. His Cobbett, his Lamb, and
+others that might be instanced, are veritable gems of biographical and
+critical compression presented with true literary finish."--_Literary
+World._
+
+"A book which is remarkable for freshness and distinction of style,
+philosophic grasp of first principles, and critical insight.... When we
+add that the book is also conspicuous for delicacy of literary
+appreciation and ripe judgement, both of men and movements, we have said
+enough to show that we consider its claims are unusual."--_Speaker._
+
+
+THE AGE OF TENNYSON
+
+"A capital little handbook of modern English literature."--_Times._
+
+"An instructive and readable manual ... an admirable first text-book on
+the subject."--_Scotsman._
+
+"Professor Walker has done his allotted task with singular skill,
+wonderful judiciousness, critical insight, adequate knowledge and
+mastery of facts, keen discernment of qualities and effectiveness of
+grouping.... We have read no review of the whole of the Tennysonian age
+so genuinely fresh in matter, method, style, critical canons, and
+selectedness of phrase. As a small book on a great subject, it is a
+special treasure."--_Educational News._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+UNIFORM WITH THE HANDBOOKS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
+
+_Fourth Edition Enlarged. 725 pages. Small Crown 8vo. 6s. net._
+
+INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE
+
+BY
+
+HENRY S. PANCOAST
+
+"Seems to me to fulfil better, on the whole, than any other
+'Introduction' known to me, the real requirements of such a book as
+distinguished from a 'Sketch' or a 'Summary.' It rightly does not
+attempt to be cyclopaedic, but isolates a number of figures of
+first-rate importance, and deals with these in a very attractive way.
+The directions for reading are also excellent."--Professor C. H.
+HERFORD, Litt.D.
+
+LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
+YORK HOUSE, PORTUGAL STREET, W.C.
+
+
+LITERATURE OF THE AGE OF POPE.
+
+PUBLISHED BY
+
+G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
+
+=ADDISON'S= WORKS. With the Notes of Bishop Hurd, a short Memoir,
+    and a Portrait of Addison after G. Kneller, and 8 Plates of
+    Medals and Coins. Edited by H. G. Bohn. 6 vols. Small post 8vo.
+    3_s._ 6_d._ each.                        [_Bohn's Standard Library._
+
+    This is the most complete edition of Addison's Works ever
+    issued. It contains much new matter, and upwards of 100 Letters
+    not before published. A very full Index (108 pages) is appended
+    to the 6th vol.
+
+Vol. I.--Plays--Poems--Poemata--Dialogues on Medals--Remarks on Italy.
+
+    II.--Tatler and Spectator.
+
+   III.--Spectator.                                     [_Out of print._
+
+    IV.--Spectator--Guardian--Lover--State of the War--Trial of Count
+         Tariff--Whig Examiner--Freeholder.
+
+     V.--Freeholder--Christian Religion--Drummer, or Haunted
+         House--Various short Pieces hitherto unpublished--Letters.
+
+    VI.--Letters--Poems--Translations--Official Documents--Addisoniana.
+
+THE MISCELLANEOUS WORKS OF ADDISON. Edited by the late A.
+    Guthkelch, M.A. 2 vols. Vol. I, Poems and Plays. Vol. II,
+    Prose. Large Post 8vo, 10_s._ 6_d._ net each.
+
+=BERKELEY'S= WORKS. Edited by George Sampson. With a Biographical
+    Introduction by the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, M.P. 3 vols. Small
+    post 8vo. 6_s._ each.               [_Bohn's Philosophical Library._
+
+=BUTLER'S= ANALOGY OF RELIGION, Natural and Revealed, to the
+    Constitution and Course of Nature; together with Two
+    Dissertations on Personal Identity and on the Nature of Virtue,
+    and Fifteen Sermons. Edited, with Analytical Introductions,
+    Explanatory Notes, a short Memoir, and a Portrait. Small post
+    8vo. 6_s._                               [_Bohn's Standard Library._
+
+=DEFOE'S= NOVELS and MISCELLANEOUS WORKS. With Prefaces and Notes,
+    including those attributed to Sir W. Scott. 7 vols. Small post
+    8vo. 6_s._ each.                         [_Bohn's Standard Library._
+
+Vol. I.--Life, Adventures and Piracies of Capt. Singleton, and Life of
+         Colonel Jack. With Portrait of Defoe.          [_Out of print._
+
+    II.--Memoirs of a Cavalier, Memoirs of Captain Carleton, Dickory
+         Cronke, &c.
+
+   III.--Life of Moll Flanders, and the History of the Devil.
+                                                        [_Out of print._
+
+    IV.--Roxana, or the Fortunate Mistress; and Life of Mrs. Christian
+         Davies.                                        [_Out of print._
+
+     V.--History of the Great Plague of London, 1665 (to which is added
+         the Fire of London, 1666, by an anonymous writer)--The Storm
+         (1703)--and the True-born Englishman.          [_Out of print._
+
+    VI.--Life and Adventures of Duncan Campbell--New Voyage round the
+         World, and Tracts relating to the Hanoverian Accession.
+
+   VII.--Robinson Crusoe. With a Short Biographical Account of Defoe.
+
+=MONTAGU=, THE LETTERS AND WORKS OF LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU.
+    Edited by her great-grandson, Lord Wharncliffe, with Additions
+    and Corrections derived from Original Manuscripts, Illustrative
+    Notes, and a Memoir by W. Moy Thomas. New edition, revised,
+    with 5 Portraits. 2 vols. Small post 8vo. 6_s._ each.
+                                                 [_Vol. I out of print._
+                                             [_Bohn's Standard Library._
+
+=PARNELL'S= POETICAL WORKS. Edited, with Memoir, by G. A. Aitken.
+    Fcap. 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._ net.                       [_Aldine Edition._
+
+=POPE'S= POETICAL WORKS. Edited by G. R. Dennis, with Memoir by John
+    Dennis. 3 vols. Fcap. 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._ net each.
+                                                      [_Aldine Edition._
+
+---- HOMER'S ILIAD. With Introduction and Notes by the Rev. J. S.
+    Watson, M.A. Illustrated by the entire Series of Flaxman's
+    Designs. Small post 8vo. 6_s._
+
+---- HOMER'S ODYSSEY. With Introduction and Notes by the Rev. J. S.
+    Watson, M.A. With the entire Series of Flaxman's Designs. Small
+    post 8vo. 6_s._
+
+---- LIFE OF POPE, including many of his Letters. By Robert
+    Carruthers. With numerous Illustrations. Small post 8vo. 6_s._
+
+=PRIOR'S= POETICAL WORKS. Edited, with Memoir, by Reginald Brimley
+    Johnson. 2 vols. Fcap. 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._ net each.
+                                                      [_Aldine Edition._
+
+=SWIFT'S= PROSE WORKS. Edited by Temple Scott. With a Biographical
+    Introduction by the Right Hon. W. E. H. Lecky, M.P., and a
+    Bibliography by the Editor. With Portraits and other
+    Illustrations. 12 vols. Small post 8vo. 6_s._ each.
+                                             [_Bohn's Standard Library._
+
+   Vol. I.--Edited by Temple Scott. With a Biographical Introduction by
+            the Right Hon. W. E. H. Lecky, M.P. Containing:--A Tale of a
+            Tub, The Battle of the Books, and other early works. With
+            _Portrait_ and Facsimiles.
+
+       II.--The Journal to Stella. Edited by Frederick Ryland, M.A. With
+            _2 Portraits of Stella_, and a Facsimile of one of the
+            Letters.
+
+III. & IV.--Writings on Religion and the Church. Edited by Temple Scott.
+            With Portraits and Facsimiles of title-pages.
+
+        V.--Historical and Political Tracts (English). Edited by Temple
+            Scott. With Portrait and Facsimiles of title-pages.
+
+       VI.--The Drapier's Letters. Edited by Temple Scott. With
+            Portrait, reproduction of Wood's Coinage, and Facsimiles of
+            title-pages.
+
+      VII.--Historical and Political Tracts (Irish). Edited by Temple
+            Scott. With Portrait and Facsimiles of title-pages.
+
+     VIII.--Gulliver's Travels. Edited by G. Ravenscroft Dennis. With
+            the original Portrait and Maps.
+
+       IX.--Contributions to the 'Examiner,' 'Tatler,' 'Spectator,' etc.
+            Edited by Temple Scott.
+
+        X.--Historical Writings. Edited by Temple Scott. With Portrait.
+
+       XI.--Literary Essays. Edited by Temple Scott. With Portrait.
+
+      XII.--Index and Bibliography.
+
+POEMS. Edited by W. Ernst Browning. 2 vols. 6_s._
+
+=SWIFT'S= POETICAL WORKS. Edited, with Memoir, by the Rev. John
+    Mitford, M.A. Fcap. 8vo. 3 vols. 3_s._ 6_d._ net each.
+                                 [_Aldine Edition. Vol. I out of print._
+
+LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
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+TRANSCRIBERS' NOTES
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+General: Corrections to punctuation have not been individually noted.
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+General: Bold text in the original is marked with ==. Italic text is
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+
+Pages 57, 159: Variable hyphenation of death-bed as in the original.
+
+Pages 222, 232, 257: Variable hyphenation of Free(-)thinking as in the
+original.
+
+
+
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30421 ***</div>
+
+<div class="bbox" style="margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%">
+<p class="larger center">HANDBOOKS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Edited by Professor Hales.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Crown 8vo, 5s. net each.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class="hangadvert"><p>THE AGE OF ALFRED (664-1154). By <span class="smcap">F. J. Snell, M.A.</span></p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF CHAUCER (1346-1400). By <span class="smcap">F. J. Snell,
+M.A.</span> With an Introduction by Professor <span class="smcap">Hales</span>. <i>3rd
+Edition, revised.</i></p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF TRANSITION (1400-1580). By <span class="smcap">F. J.
+Snell, M.A.</span> 2 vols. Vol. I. The Poets. Vol. II. The
+Dramatists and Prose Writers. With an Introduction
+by Professor <span class="smcap">Hales</span>. <i>3rd Edition.</i></p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE (1579-1631). By <span class="smcap">Thomas
+Seccombe</span> and <span class="smcap">J. W. Allen</span>. With an Introduction
+by Professor <span class="smcap">Hales</span>. 2 vols. Vol. I. Poetry and
+Prose. Vol. II. The Drama. <i>8th Edition, revised.</i></p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF MILTON (1632-1660). By the Rev.
+<span class="smcap">J. H. B. Masterman, M.A.</span> With Introduction, etc.,
+by <span class="smcap">J. Bass Mullinger, M.A.</span> <i>8th Edition, revised.</i></p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF DRYDEN (1660-1700). By <span class="smcap">R. Garnett,
+C.B., LL.D.</span> <i>8th Edition.</i></p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF POPE (1700-1748). By <span class="smcap">John Dennis</span>.
+<i>11th Edition.</i></p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF JOHNSON (1748-1798). By <span class="smcap">Thomas
+Seccombe</span>. <i>7th Edition, revised.</i></p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH (1698-1832) By Professor
+<span class="smcap">C. H. Herford</span>, Litt.D. <i>12th Edition.</i></p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF TENNYSON (1830-1870). By Professor
+<span class="smcap">Hugh Walker</span>. <i>9th Edition.</i></p></div>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[Pg i]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<h1 class="gap3">HANDBOOKS</h1>
+
+<h3>OF</h3>
+
+<h1>ENGLISH LITERATURE</h1>
+
+<h3>EDITED BY PROFESSOR HALES</h3>
+
+<h2>THE AGE OF POPE</h2>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[Pg ii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<div style="padding-left:50%;" class="gap3">
+<div style="margin-left:-8em;">
+<p>LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS LTD.</p>
+
+<p>PORTUGAL STREET, KINGSWAY, W.C.</p>
+
+<p>CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL &amp; CO.</p>
+
+<p>NEW YORK: HARCOURT BRACE &amp; CO.</p>
+
+<p>BOMBAY: A. H. WHEELER &amp; CO.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[Pg iii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h3 class="gap3">THE</h3>
+
+<h1>AGE OF POPE</h1>
+
+<h2>(1700-1744)</h2>
+
+<h4 class="gap3">BY</h4>
+
+<h2>JOHN DENNIS</h2>
+
+<h4>AUTHOR OF "STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE" ETC.</h4>
+
+<h3 class="gap3"><i>ELEVENTH EDITION</i></h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter gap3" style="width: 137px;">
+<img src="images/front.png" width="137" height="173" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="center gap3">LONDON</p>
+<p class="center">G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.</p>
+<p class="center">1921</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div style="margin-left:20%;margin-right:20%;font-size:small;" class="gap3">
+<p>First Published, 1894.</p>
+
+<p>Reprinted, 1896, 1899, 1901, 1906, 1908, 1909,
+           1913, 1917, 1918, 1921.</p></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The <i>Age of Pope</i> is designed to form one of a series of
+Handbooks, edited by Professor Hales, which it is hoped
+will be of service to students who love literature for its
+own sake, instead of regarding it merely as a branch of
+knowledge required by examiners. The period covered by
+this volume, which has had the great advantage of Professor
+Hales's personal care and revision, may be described
+roughly as lying between 1700, the year in which Dryden
+died, and 1744, the date of Pope's death.</p>
+
+<p>I believe that no work of the class will be of real value
+which gives what may be called literary statistics, and has
+nothing more to offer. Historical facts and figures have
+their uses, and are, indeed, indispensable; but it is possible
+to gain the most accurate knowledge of a literary period
+and to be totally unimpressed by the influences which a
+love of literature inspires. The first object of a guide is
+to give accurate information; his second and larger object
+is to direct the reader's steps through a country exhaustless
+in variety and interest. If once a passion be awakened for
+the study of our noble literature the student will learn to
+reject what is meretricious, and will turn instinctively to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span>
+what is worthiest. In the pursuit he may leave his guide
+far behind him; but none the less will he be grateful to
+the pioneer who started him on his travels.</p>
+
+<p>If the <i>Age of Pope</i> proves of help in this way the wishes
+of the writer will be satisfied. It has been my endeavour
+in all cases to acknowledge the debt I owe to the authors
+who have made this period their study; but it is possible
+that a familiar acquaintance with their writings may have
+led me occasionally to mistake the matter thus assimilated
+for original criticism. If, therefore&mdash;to quote the phrase
+of Pope's enemy and my namesake&mdash;I have sometimes
+borrowed another man's 'thunder,' the fault of having
+'made a sinner of my memory' may prove the reader's
+gain, and will, I hope, be forgiven.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align:right;padding-right:2em;">J. D.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hampstead</span>,</p>
+<p style="padding-left:3em;"><i>August, 1894</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<table summary="Contents" style="margin-left:0em;margin-right:0em;width:100%;">
+<tr>
+<td colspan="3" class="ralign small">PAGE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Introduction</span></td>
+<td class="ralign"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="3" class="center" style="padding-top:2em;">PART I. THE POETS.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="3" class="small">CHAP.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop">I.</td>
+<td class="hangindent"><span class="smcap">Alexander Pope</span></td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom"><a href="#Page_27">27</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop">II.</td>
+<td class="hangindent"><span class="smcap">Matthew Prior&mdash;John Gay&mdash;Edward Young&mdash;Robert Blair&mdash;James
+     Thomson</span></td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop">III.</td>
+<td class="hangindent"><span class="smcap">Sir Samuel Garth&mdash;Ambrose Philips&mdash;John Philips&mdash;Nicholas
+     Rowe&mdash;Aaron Hill&mdash;Thomas Parnell&mdash;Thomas Tickell&mdash;William
+     Somerville&mdash;John Dyer&mdash;William Shenstone&mdash;Mark Akenside&mdash;David
+     Mallet&mdash;Scottish Song-Writers</span></td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom"><a href="#Page_96">96</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="3" class="center" style="padding-top:2em;">PART II. THE PROSE WRITERS.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop">IV.</td>
+<td class="hangindent"><span class="smcap">Joseph Addison&mdash;Sir Richard Steele</span></td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom"><a href="#Page_125">125</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop">V.</td>
+<td class="hangindent"><span class="smcap">Jonathan Swift&mdash;John Arbuthnot</span></td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom"><a href="#Page_151">151</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop">VI.</td>
+<td class="hangindent"><span class="smcap">Daniel Defoe&mdash;John Dennis&mdash;Colley Cibber&mdash;Lady Mary
+     Wortley Montagu&mdash;Earl of Chesterfield&mdash;Lord Lyttelton&mdash;Joseph
+     Spence</span></td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom"><a href="#Page_180">180</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop">VII.</td>
+<td class="hangindent"><span class="smcap">Francis Atterbury&mdash;Lord Shaftesbury&mdash;Bernard de
+     Mandeville&mdash;Lord Bolingbroke&mdash;George Berkeley&mdash;William
+     Law&mdash;Joseph Butler&mdash;William Warburton</span></td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom"><a href="#Page_207">207</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2" style="padding-top:2em;"><span class="smcap">Index of Minor Poets and Prose Writers</span></td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom"><a href="#Page_242">242</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Chronological Table</span></td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom"><a href="#Page_249">249</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Alphabetical List of Writers</span></td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom"><a href="#Page_253">253</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Index</span></td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom"><a href="#Page_255">255</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="THE_AGE_OF_POPE" id="THE_AGE_OF_POPE"></a>THE AGE OF POPE.</h2>
+
+<h3>INTRODUCTION.</h3>
+
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+<p>The death of John Dryden, on the first of May, 1700,
+closed a period of no small significance in the history of
+English literature. His faults were many, both as a man
+and as a poet, but he belongs to the race of the giants,
+and the impress of greatness is stamped upon his works.
+No student of Dryden can fail to mark the force and sweep
+of an intellect impatient of restraint. His 'long-resounding
+march' reminds us of a turbulent river that overflows its
+banks, and if order and perfection of art are sometimes
+wanting in his verse, there is never the lack of power.
+Unfortunately many of the best years of his life were
+devoted to a craft in which he was working against the
+grain. His dramas, with one or two noble exceptions, are
+comparative failures, and in them he too often</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza12">
+<span class="i0">'Profaned the God-given strength, and marred the lofty line.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In two prominent respects his influence on his successors
+is of no slight significance. As a satirist Pope acknowledged
+the master he was unable to excel, and so did
+many of the eighteenth century versemen, who appear to
+have looked upon satire as the beginning and the end of
+poetry. Moreover Dryden may be regarded, without much<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>
+exaggeration, as the father of modern prose. Nothing can
+be more lucid than his style, which is at once bright and
+strong, idiomatic and direct. He knows precisely what he
+has to say, and says it in the simplest words. It is the
+form and not the substance of Dryden's prose to which
+attention is drawn here. There is a splendour of imagery,
+a largeness of thought, and a grasp of language in the
+prose of Hooker, of Jeremy Taylor, and of Milton which is
+beyond the reach of Dryden, but he has the merit of using
+a simple form of English free from prolonged periods and
+classical constructions, and fitted therefore for common
+use. The wealthy baggage of the prose Elizabethans and
+their immediate successors was too cumbersome for ordinary
+travel; Dryden's riches are less massive, but they can
+be easily carried, and are always ready for service.</p>
+
+<p>In these respects he is the literary herald of a century
+which, in the earlier half at least, is remarkable in the use
+it makes of our mother tongue for the exercise of common
+sense. The Revolution of 1688 produced a change in
+English politics scarcely more remarkable than the change
+that took place a little later in English literature and is to
+be seen in the poets and wits who are known familiarly
+as the Queen Anne men. It will be obvious to the most
+superficial student that the gulf which separates the literary
+period, closing with the death of Milton in 1674, from
+the first half of the eighteenth century, is infinitely wider
+than that which divides us from the splendid band of poets
+and prose writers who made the first twenty years of the
+present century so famous. There is, for example, scarcely
+more than fifty years between the publication of Herrick's
+<i>Hesperides</i> and of Addison's <i>Campaign</i>, between the <i>Holy
+Living</i> of Taylor and the <i>Tatler</i> of Steele, and less
+than fifty years between <i>Samson Agonistes</i>, which Bishop
+Atterbury asked Pope to polish, and the poems of Prior.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>
+Yet in that short space not only is the form of verse
+changed but also the spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Speaking broadly, and allowing for exceptions, the
+literary merits of the Queen Anne time are due to invention,
+fancy, and wit, to a genius for satire exhibited in verse
+and prose, to a regard for correctness of form and to the sensitive
+avoidance of extremes. The poets of the period are
+for the most part without enthusiasm, without passion, and
+without the 'fine madness' which, as Drayton says, should
+possess a poet's brain. Wit takes precedence of imagination,
+nature is concealed by artifice, and the delight afforded
+by these writers is not due to imaginative sensibility. Not
+even in the consummate genius of Pope is there aught of
+the magical charm which fascinates us in a Wordsworth
+and a Keats, in a Coleridge and a Shelley. The prose
+of the age, masterly though it be, stands also on a comparatively
+low level. There is much in it to attract, but
+little to inspire.</p>
+
+<p>The difference between the Elizabethan and Jacobean
+authors, and the authors of the Queen Anne period cannot
+be accounted for by any single cause. The student will
+observe that while the inspiration is less, the technical skill
+is greater. There are passages in Addison which no seventeenth
+century author could have written; there are couplets
+in Pope beyond the reach of Cowley, and that even Dryden
+could not rival. In these respects the eighteenth century
+was indebted to the growing influence of French literature,
+to which the taste of Charles II. had in some degree contributed.
+One notable expression of this taste may be seen
+in the tragedies in rhyme that were for a time in vogue, of
+which the plots were borrowed from French romances.
+These colossal fictions, stupendous in length and heroic in
+style, delighted the young English ladies of the seventeenth
+century, and were not out of favour in the eighteenth,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+for Pope gave a copy of the <i>Grand Cyrus</i> to Martha
+Blount.</p>
+
+<p>The return, as in Addison's <i>Cato</i>, to the classical
+unities, so faithfully preserved in the French drama, was
+another indication of an influence from which our literature
+has never been wholly free. That importations so alien to
+the spirit of English poetry should tend to the degeneration
+of the national drama was inevitable. For a time, however,
+the study of French models, both in the drama and in other
+departments of literature, may have been productive of
+benefit. Frenchmen knew before we did, how to say what
+they wanted to say in a lucid style. Dryden, who was
+open to every kind of influence, bad as well as good, caught
+a little of their fine tact and consummate workmanship
+without lessening his own originality; so also did Pope,
+who, if he was considerably indebted to Boileau, infinitely
+excelled him. That, in M. Taine's judgment, would have
+been no great difficulty. 'In Boileau,' he writes, 'there
+are, as a rule, two kinds of verse, as was said by a man of
+wit (M. Guillaume Guizot); most of which seem to be those
+of a sharp school-boy in the third class; the rest those of a
+good school-boy in the upper division.' And Mr. Swinburne,
+who holds a similar opinion of the famous French
+critic's merit, observes, that while Pope is the finest,
+Boileau is 'the dullest craftsman of their age and
+school.'<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<p>With the author of the <i>Lutrin</i> Addison, unlike Pope, was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>
+personally acquainted. Boileau praised his Latin verses,
+and although his range was limited, like that of all critics
+lacking imagination, Addison, then a comparatively youthful
+scholar, was no doubt flattered by his compliments and
+learnt some lessons in his school. Prior, who acquired a
+mastery of the language, was also sensitive to French
+influence, and shows how it affected him by irony and
+satire. It would be difficult to estimate with any measure
+of accuracy the effect of French literature on the Queen Anne
+authors. There is no question that they were considerably
+attracted by it, but its sway was, I think, never strong enough
+to produce mere imitative art. While the most illustrious
+of these men acknowledged some measure of fealty to our
+'sweet enemy France,' they were not enslaved by her, and
+French literature was but one of several influences which
+affected the literary character of the age. If Englishmen
+owed a debt to France the obligation was reciprocal.
+Voltaire affords a prominent illustration of the power
+wielded by our literature. He imitated Addison, he imitated,
+or caught suggestions from Swift, he borrowed
+largely from Vanbrugh, and although, in his judgment of
+English authors, he made many critical blunders, they
+were due to a want of taste rather than to a want of
+knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>A striking contrast will be seen between the position of
+literary men in the reign of Queen Anne and under her
+Hanoverian successors. Literature was not thriving in
+the healthiest of ways in the earlier period, but from the
+commercial point of view it was singularly prosperous.
+Through its means men like Addison and Prior rose to some
+of the highest offices in the service of their country. Tickell
+became Under-Secretary of State. Steele held three or four
+official posts, and if he did not prosper like some men of less
+mark, had no one but himself to blame. Rowe, the author<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
+of the <i>Fair Penitent</i>, was for three years of Anne's reign
+Under-Secretary, and John Hughes, the friend of Addison,
+who is poet enough to have had his story told by Johnson,
+had 'a situation of great profit' as Secretary to the Commissions
+of the Peace. Prizes of greater or less value fell
+to some men whose abilities were not more than respectable,
+but under Walpole and the monarch whom he served literature
+was disregarded, and the Minister was content to
+make use of hireling writers for whatever dirty work he
+required; spending in this way, it is said, £50,000 in ten
+years.</p>
+
+<p>It was far better in the long run for men of letters to be
+free from the servility of patronage, but there was a wearisome
+time, as Johnson and Goldsmith knew to their cost,
+during which authors lost their freedom in another way,
+and became the slaves of the booksellers. It is pleasant to
+observe that the last noteworthy act of patronage in the
+century was one that did honour to the patron without
+lessening the dignity and independence of the recipient.
+Literature owes much to the noblest of political philosophers
+for discovering and fostering the genius of one of
+the most original of English poets, and every reader of
+Crabbe will do honour to the generous friendship of
+Edmund Burke.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+<p>The lowest stage in our national history was reached
+in the Restoration period. The idealists, who had aimed at
+marks it was not given to man to reach, were superseded by
+men with no ideal, whether in politics or religion. The extreme
+rigidity in morals enjoined by State authority in
+Cromwell's days, when theological pedantry discovered sin
+in what had hitherto been regarded as innocent, led, among<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
+the unsaintly mass of the people, to a hypocrisy even more
+corrupting than open vice, and the advent of the most
+publicly dissolute of English kings opened the floodgates
+of iniquity. The unbridled vice of the time is displayed
+in the Restoration dramatists, in the Grammont
+memoirs, in the diary of Pepys, and also in that of the
+admirable John Evelyn, 'faithful among the faithless.'
+Charles II. was considered good-natured because his
+manners, unlike those of his father, were sociable, and unrestrained
+by Court etiquette. Londoners liked a monarch
+who fed ducks in St. James's Park before breakfast; but
+an easy temper did not prevent the king from sanctioning
+the most unjust and cruel laws, and it allowed him to sell
+Dunkirk and basely to accept a pension from France. The
+corruption of the age pervaded politics as well as society,
+and the self-sacrificing spirit which is the salt of a nation's
+life seemed for the time extinct among public men.</p>
+
+<p>When Dutch men-of-war appeared at the Nore the confusion
+was great, but there were few resources and few
+signs of energy in the men to whom the people looked for
+guidance. A man conversant with affairs expressed to
+Pepys his opinion that nothing could be done with 'a lazy
+Prince, no Council, no money, no reputation at home or
+abroad,' and Pepys also gives the damning statement which
+is in harmony with all we know of the king, that he 'took
+ten times more care and pains in making friends between
+my Lady Castlemaine and Mrs. Stewart, when they have
+fallen out, than ever he did to save his kingdom.'</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing in the brief reign of James, a reign
+for ever made infamous by the atrocious cruelty of
+Jeffreys, that calls for comment here, but the Revolution,
+despite the undoubted advantages it brought with it, among
+which must be mentioned the abolition of the censorship of
+the press, brought also an element of discord and of poli<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>tical
+degradation. The change was a good one for the
+country, but it caused a large number of influential men to
+renounce on oath opinions which they secretly held, and it
+led, as every reader of history knows, to an unparalleled
+amount of double-dealing on the part of statesmen, which
+began with the accession of William and Mary and did not
+end until the last hopes of the Jacobites were defeated in
+1746. The loss of principle among statesmen, and the
+bitterness of faction, which seemed to increase in proportion
+as the patriotic spirit declined, had a baleful influence on
+the latter days of the seventeenth century and on the entire
+period covered by the age of Pope. The low tone of the
+age is to be seen in the almost universal corruption which
+prevailed, in the scandalous tergiversation of Bolingbroke,
+and in the contempt for political principle openly avowed
+by Walpole, who, as Mr. Lecky observes, 'was altogether
+incapable of appreciating as an element of political calculation
+the force which moral sentiments exercise upon
+mankind.'<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+<p>The enthusiasm and strong passions of the first half of
+the seventeenth century, which had been crushed by the
+Restoration, were exchanged for a state of apathy that led
+to self-seeking in politics and to scepticism in religion.
+There was a strong profession of morality in words, but in
+conduct the most open immorality prevailed. Virtue was
+commended in the bulk of the churches, while Christianity,
+which gives a new life and aim to virtue, was practically
+ignored, and the principles of the Deists, whose opinions
+occupied much attention at the time, were scarcely more
+alien to the Christian revelation than the views often advocated
+in the national pulpits. The religion of Christ
+seems to have been regarded as little more than a useful
+kind of cement which held society together. The good sense<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
+advocated so constantly by Pope in poetry was also considered
+the principal requisite in the pulpit, and the careful
+avoidance of religious emotion in the earlier years of
+the century led to the fervid and too often ill-regulated
+enthusiasm that prevailed in the days of Whitefield and
+Wesley. At the same time there appears to have been no
+lack of religious controversy. 'The Church in danger' was
+a strong cry then, as it is still. The enormous excitement
+caused in 1709 by Sacheverell's sermon in St. Paul's
+Cathedral advocating passive obedience, denouncing toleration,
+and aspersing the Revolution settlement, forms a
+striking chapter in the reign of Queen Anne. Extraordinary
+interest was also felt in the Bangorian controversy raised
+by Bishop Hoadly, who, in a sermon preached before the
+king (1717), took a latitudinarian view of episcopal authority,
+and objected to the entire system of the High Church
+party.</p>
+
+<p>Queen Caroline, whose keen intellect was allied to a
+coarseness which makes her a representative of the age,
+was considerably attracted by theological discussion. She
+obtained a bishopric for Berkeley, recommended Walpole to
+read Butler's <i>Analogy</i>, which was at one time her daily companion
+at the breakfast-table, and made the preferment of
+its author one of her last requests to the king. She liked
+well to reason with Dr. Samuel Clarke, 'of Providence,
+Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate,' and wished to make him
+Archbishop of Canterbury, but was told that he was not
+sufficiently orthodox. Theology was not disregarded under
+the first and second Georges; it was only religion that had
+fallen into disrepute. The law itself was calculated to excite
+contempt for the most solemn of religious services. 'I was
+early,' Swift writes to Stella, 'with the Secretary (Bolingbroke),
+but he was gone to his devotions and to receive the
+sacrament. Several rakes did the same. It was not for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>
+piety, but for employment, according to Act of Parliament.'</p>
+
+<p>A glance at some additional features in the social condition
+of the age will enable us to understand better the
+character of its literature.</p>
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+<p>It is a platitude to say that authors are as much
+affected as other men by the atmosphere which they
+breathe. Now and then a consummate man of genius
+seems to stand so much above his age as for all high
+purposes of art to be untouched by it. Like Milton as a
+poet, though not as a prose writer, his 'soul is like a star
+and dwells apart;' but in general, imaginative writers,
+are intensely affected by the society from which they draw
+many of their intellectual resources. In the so-called
+'Augustan age'<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> this influence would have been felt more
+strongly than in ours, since the range of men of letters was
+generally restricted to what was called the Town. They
+wrote for the critics in the coffee-houses, for the noblemen
+from whom they expected patronage, and for the political
+party they were pledged to support.</p>
+
+<p>England during the first half of the eighteenth century
+was in many respects uncivilized. London was at that
+time separated from the country by roads that were often
+impassable and always dangerous. Travellers had to protect
+themselves as they best could from the attacks of
+highwaymen, who infested every thoroughfare leading from
+the metropolis, while the narrow area of the city was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+guarded by watchmen scarcely better fitted for its protection
+than Dogberry and Verges. Readers of the <i>Spectator</i>
+will remember how when Sir Roger de Coverley went to
+the play, his servants 'provided themselves with good
+oaken plants' to protect their master from the Mohocks, a
+set of dissolute young men, who, for sheer amusement,
+inflicted the most terrible punishments on their victims.
+Swift tells Stella how he came home early from his walk
+in the Park to avoid 'a race of rakes that play the devil
+about this town every night, and slit people's noses,' and
+he adds, as if party were at the root of every mischief in the
+country, that they were all Whigs. 'Who has not trembled
+at the Mohock's name?' is Gay's exclamation in his <i>Trivia</i>;
+and in that curious poem he also warns the citizens not to
+venture across Lincoln's Inn Fields in the evening. Colley
+Cibber's brazen-faced daughter, Mrs. Charke, in the <i>Narrative</i>
+of her life, describes also with sufficient precision the
+dangers of London after dark.</p>
+
+<p>The infliction of personal injury was not confined to the
+desperadoes of the streets. Men of letters were in danger
+of chastisement from the poets or politicians whom they
+criticised or vilified. De Foe often mentions attempts upon
+his person. Pope, too, was threatened with a rod by
+Ambrose Philips, which was hung up for his chastisement
+in Button's Coffee-house; and at a later period, when his
+satires had stirred up a nest of hornets, the poet was in the
+habit of carrying pistols, and taking a large dog for his
+companion when walking out at Twickenham.</p>
+
+<p>Weddings within the liberties of the Fleet by sham
+clergymen, or clergymen confined for debt, were the source
+of numberless evils. Every kind of deception was practised,
+and the victims once in the clutches of their reverend
+captors had to pay heavily for the illegal ceremony. Ladies
+were trepanned into matrimony, and Smollett in his <i>History</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
+observes, that the Fleet parsons encouraged every kind of
+villainy. It is astonishing that so great an evil in the
+heart of London should have been allowed to exist so long,
+and it was not until the Marriage Act of Lord Hardwicke
+in 1753, which required the publication of banns, that the
+Fleet marriages ceased. On the day before the Act came
+into operation three hundred marriages are said to have
+taken place.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+
+<p>Marriages of a more lawful kind were generally conducted
+on business principles. Young women were expected
+to accept the husband selected for them by their parents or
+guardians, and the main object considered was to gain a
+good settlement. It was for this that Mary Granville, who
+is better known as Mrs. Delany, was sacrificed at seventeen
+to a gouty old man of sixty, and when he died she was
+expected to marry again with the same object in view.
+Mrs. Delany detested, with good cause, the commercial
+estimate of matrimony. Writing, in 1739, to Lady Throckmorton,
+she says, 'Miss Campbell is to be married to-morrow
+to my Lord Bruce. Her father can give her no
+fortune; she is very pretty, modest, well-behaved, and just
+eighteen, has two thousand a year jointure, and four
+hundred pin-money; <i>they say</i> he is cross, covetous, and
+threescore years old, and this unsuitable match is the
+<i>admiration of the old and the envy of the young</i>! For my
+part I <i>pity her</i>, for if she has any notion of social pleasures
+that arise from true esteem and sensible conversation, how
+miserable must she be.'<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p>
+
+<p>Girls dowered with beauty or with fortune were not
+always suffered to marry in this humdrum fashion. Ab<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>duction
+was by no means an imaginary peril. Mrs. Delany
+tells the story of a lady in Ireland, from whom she received
+the relation, who was entrapped in her uncle's house,
+carried off by four men in masks, and treated in the most
+brutal manner. And in 1711 the Duke of Newcastle,
+having become acquainted with a design for carrying off
+his daughter by force, was compelled to ask for a guard of
+dragoons.</p>
+
+<p>Duelling, against which Steele, De Foe, and Fielding
+inveighed with courage and good sense, was a danger to
+which every gentleman was liable who wore a sword.
+Bullies were ready to provoke a quarrel, the slightest cause
+of offence was magnified into an affair of honour, and the
+lives of several of the most distinguished men of the
+century were imperilled in this way. 'A gentleman,' Lord
+Chesterfield writes, 'is every man who, with a tolerable
+suit of clothes, a sword by his side, and a watch and snuffbox
+in his pockets, asserts himself to be a gentleman,
+swears with energy that he will be treated as such, and
+that he will cut the throat of any man who presumes to say
+the contrary.'</p>
+
+<p>The foolish and evil custom died out slowly in this
+kingdom. Even a great moralist like Dr. Johnson had
+something to say in its defence, and Sir Walter Scott, who
+might well have laughed to scorn any imputation of
+cowardice, was prepared to accept a challenge in his old
+age for a statement he had made in his <i>Life of Napoleon</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Ladies had a different but equally doubtful mode of
+asserting their gentility. On one occasion the Duchess of
+Marlborough called on a lawyer without leaving her name.
+'I could not make out who she was,' said the clerk afterwards,
+'but she swore so dreadfully that she must be a
+lady of quality.'</p>
+
+<p>There was a fashion which our wits followed at this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>
+time that was not of English growth, namely, the tone of
+gallantry in which they addressed ladies, no matter whether
+single or married. Their compliments seemed like downright
+love-making, and that frequently of a coarse kind,
+but such expressions meant nothing, and were understood
+to be a mere exercise of skill. Pope used them in writing
+to Judith Cowper, whom he professes to worship as much
+as any female saint in heaven; and in much ampler measure
+when addressing Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, but neither
+lady would have taken this amatory politeness seriously.
+Thus he writes after an evening spent in Lady Mary's
+society: 'Books have lost their effect upon me; and I was
+convinced since I saw you, that there is something more
+powerful than philosophy, and since I heard you, that there
+is one alive wiser than all the sages.' He tells her that he
+hates all other women for her sake; that none but her
+guardian angels can have her more constantly in mind; and
+that the sun has more reason to be proud of raising her
+spirits 'than of raising all the plants and ripening all the
+minerals in the earth.' He will fly to her in Italy at the
+least notice and 'from thence,' he adds, 'how far you might
+draw me and I might run after you, I no more know than
+the spouse in the song of Solomon.'</p>
+
+<p>This was the foible of an age in which women were
+addressed as though they were totally devoid of understanding;
+and Pope, as might have been expected, carried
+the folly to excess.</p>
+
+<p>Against another French custom Addison protests in the
+<i>Spectator</i>, namely, that of women of rank receiving gentlemen
+visitors in their bedrooms. He objects also to other
+foreign habits introduced by 'travelled ladies,' and fears
+that the peace, however much to be desired, may cause
+the importation of a number of French fopperies. But
+the proneness to follow the lead of France in matters of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+fashion is a folly not confined to the belles and beaux of
+the last century.</p>
+
+<p>If a chivalric regard for women be an indication of high
+civilization, that sign is but faintly visible in the reigns of
+Anne and of the first Georges. Sir Richard Steele paid a
+noble tribute to Lady Elizabeth Hastings when he said
+that to know her was a liberal education, but his contemporaries
+usually treat women as pretty triflers, better fitted
+to amuse men than to elevate them. Young takes this
+view in his <i>Satires</i>:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Ladies supreme among amusements reign;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By nature born to soothe and entertain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their prudence in a share of folly lies;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why will they be so weak as to be wise?'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and Chesterfield, writing to his son, treats women with
+similar contempt.... 'A man of sense,' he says, 'only trifles
+with them, plays with them, humours and flatters them as he
+does with a sprightly, forward child; but he neither consults
+them about, nor trusts them with, serious matters,
+though he often makes them believe that he does both,
+which is the thing in the world that they are proud of....
+No flattery is either too high or too low for them. They
+will greedily swallow the highest and gratefully accept of
+the lowest.'</p>
+
+<p>Nearly twenty years passed, and then Chesterfield wrote
+in the same contemptuous way of women in a letter to his
+godson, a 'dear little boy' of ten.</p>
+
+<p>'In company every woman is every man's superior, and
+must be addressed with respect, nay, more, with flattery,
+and you need not fear making it too strong ... it will be
+greedily swallowed.'</p>
+
+<p>Even Addison, while trying to instruct the 'Fair Sex' as
+he likes to call them, apparently regarded its members as
+an inferior order of beings. He delights to dwell upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>
+their foibles, on their dress, and on the thousand little
+artifices practised by the flirt and the coquette. Here is
+the view the Queen Anne moralist takes of the 'female
+world' he was so eager to improve:</p>
+
+<p>'I have often thought there has not been sufficient pains
+in finding out proper employments and diversions for the
+fair ones. Their amusements seem contrived for them,
+rather as they are women, than as they are reasonable
+creatures; and are more adapted to the sex than to the
+species. The toilet is their great scene of business, and
+the right adjustment of their hair the principal employment
+of their lives. The sorting of a suit of ribands is
+considered a very good morning's work; and if they make
+an excursion to a mercer's or a toy-shop, so great a fatigue
+makes them unfit for anything else all the day after.
+Their more serious occupations are sewing and embroidery,
+and their greatest drudgery the preparations of jellies and
+sweetmeats. This I say is the state of ordinary women;
+though I know there are multitudes of those that move in
+an exalted sphere of knowledge and virtue, that join all
+the beauties of the mind to the ornaments of dress, and
+inspire a kind of awe and respect as well as of love into
+their male beholders.'</p>
+
+<p>The qualification made at the end of this description
+does not greatly lessen the significance of the earlier
+portion, which is Addison's picture, as he is careful to tell
+us of 'ordinary women.' Much must be allowed for the
+exaggeration of a humourist, but the frivolity of women is
+a theme upon which Addison harps continually. Indeed,
+were it not for this weakness in the 'feminine world' half
+his vocation as a moralist in the <i>Spectator</i> would be gone,
+and if the general estimate in his Essays of the women
+with whom he was acquainted be to any extent a correct
+one, the derogatory language used by men of letters, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+especially by Swift, Prior, Pope, and Chesterfield may be
+almost forgiven.</p>
+
+<p>It was the aim of Addison and Steele to represent, and
+in some degree to caricature, the follies of fashionable life
+in the Town. That life had also its vices, which, if less
+unblushingly displayed than under the 'merry Monarch,'
+were visible enough. 'In the eighteenth century,' says
+Victor Hugo, in his epigrammatic way, 'the wife bolts out
+her husband. She shuts herself up in Eden with Satan.
+Adam is left outside.'</p>
+
+<p>Drunkenness was a habit familiar to the fine gentlemen
+of the town and to men occupying the highest position in
+the State. Harley went more than once into the queen's
+presence in a half-intoxicated condition; Carteret when
+Secretary of State, if Horace Walpole may be credited, was
+never sober; Bolingbroke, who practised every vice, is said
+to have been a 'four-bottle man;' and Swift found it
+perilous to dine with Ministers on account of the wine
+which circulated at their tables. 'Prince Eugene,' he
+writes, 'dines with the Secretary to-day with about seven
+or eight general officers or foreign Ministers. They will
+be all drunk I am sure.' Pope's frail body could not tolerate
+excess, and he is said to have hastened his end by
+good living. His friend Fenton 'died of a great chair and
+two bottles of port a day.' Parnell, who seems to have
+been in many respects a man of high character, is said to
+have shortened his life by intemperance; and Gay, who was
+cossetted like a favourite lapdog by the Duke and Duchess
+of Queensberry, died from indolence and good living.</p>
+
+<p>It may be questioned whether there is a single Wit
+of the age who did not love port too well, like Addison
+and Fenton, or suffer from 'carnivoracity' like Arbuthnot.
+Every section of English society was infected with the
+'devil drunkenness,' and the passion for gin created by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
+the encouragement of home distilleries produced a state of
+crime, misery, and disease in London and in the country
+which excited public attention. 'Small as is the place,'
+writes Mr. Lecky, 'which this fact occupies in English
+history, it was probably, if we consider all the consequences
+that have flowed from it, the most momentous in that of
+the eighteenth century&mdash;incomparably more so than any
+event in the purely political or military annals of the
+country.'<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+<p>The cruelty of the age is seen in a contempt for the feelings
+of others, in the brutal punishments inflicted, in the amusements
+then popular, and in a general contempt for human
+suffering. Public executions were so frequent that they were
+disregarded; and criminals of any note, like Dr. Dodd, were
+exhibited in their cells for the gaolers' benefit prior to execution;
+mad people in Bedlam, chained in their cells, also
+formed one of the sights of London. As late as 1735 men
+were pressed to death who refused to plead on a capital
+charge; and women were publicly flogged, and were also
+burnt at the stake by a law that was not repealed until
+1794. Of the heads on Temple Bar, daily exposed to
+Johnson's eyes in his beloved Fleet Street, we are reminded
+by an apposite quotation of Goldsmith; and Samuel Rogers,
+the banker-poet, who died as recently as 1855, remembered
+having seen one there in his childhood. The public
+exhibition of offenders in the pillory was not calculated to
+refine the manners of the people. It afforded a cruel entertainment
+to the mob, who may be said to have baited these
+poor victims as they were accustomed to bait bulls and
+bears. Every kind of offensive missile was thrown at them,
+and sometimes the strokes proved deadly.</p>
+
+<p>Men who could thus torture a human being were not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
+likely to abstain from cruelty to the lower animals. The
+poets indeed protested then, as poets had done before, and
+always have done since, against the unmanly treatment of
+the dumb fellow-creatures committed to our care, but their
+voices were little heeded, and even the Prince of Wales
+visited Hockley-in-the-Hole, in disguise, to witness the torturing
+of bulls. 'The gladiatorian and other sanguinary
+sports,' says the author of the <i>Characteristics</i>, 'which we
+allow our people, discover sufficiently our national taste.
+And the baitings and slaughters of so many sorts of
+creatures, tame as well as wild, for diversion merely, may
+witness the extraordinary inclination we have for amphitheatrical
+spectacles.'<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p>
+
+<p>The majesty of the law was maintained by disembowelling
+traitors, by cutting off the ears, or branding the cheeks
+of political offenders, and by the penalties inflicted on
+Roman Catholics, and on Protestant dissenters. Men who
+deemed themselves honourable gained power through
+bribery and intrigue. It was through a king's mistress
+and a heavy bribe that Bolingbroke was enabled to return
+from exile; Chesterfield intrigued against Newcastle with
+the Duchess of Yarmouth; and clergymen eager for promotion
+had no scruple in paying court to women who had
+lost their virtue.</p>
+
+<p>Never, unless perhaps during the Civil War, was the
+spirit of party more rampant in the country. Patriotism
+was a virtue more talked about than felt, and in the cause
+of faction private characters were assailed and libels circulated
+through the press. Addison, who did more than any
+other writer to humanize his age, saw the evil of the time
+and struck a blow at it with his inimitable humour. The
+<i>Spectator</i> discovers, on his journey to Sir Roger de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+Coverley's house, that the knight's Toryism grew with the
+miles that separated him from London:</p>
+
+<p>'In all our journey from London to his house we did not
+so much as bait at a Whig inn; or if by chance the coachman
+stopped at a wrong place, one of Sir Roger's servants
+would ride up to his master full speed, and whisper to
+him that the master of the house was against such an one
+in the last election. This often betrayed us into hard beds
+and bad cheer; for we were not so inquisitive about the
+inn as the innkeeper; and provided our landlord's principles
+were sound did not take any notice of the staleness
+of his provisions. This I found still the more inconvenient,
+because the better the host was, the worse generally were
+his accommodations; the fellow knowing very well that
+those who were his friends would take up with coarse diet
+and hard lodging. For these reasons, all the while I was
+upon the road, I dreaded entering into an house of anyone
+that Sir Roger had applauded for an honest man.'<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p>
+
+<p>Against the party zeal of female politicians Addison indulges
+frequently in humorous sallies. He assures them
+that it gives an ill-natured cast to the eye, and flushes the
+cheeks worse than brandy. Party rage, he says, is a male
+vice, and is altogether repugnant 'to the softness, the
+modesty, and those other endearing qualities which are
+natural to the fair sex.'</p>
+
+<p>'When I have seen a pretty mouth uttering calumnies
+and invectives, what would I not have given to have stopt
+it? how have I been troubled to see some of the finest
+features in the world grow pale and tremble with party
+rage. Camilla is one of the greatest beauties in the
+British nation, and yet values herself more upon being
+the virago of one party than upon being the toast of both.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+The dear creature about a week ago encountered the fierce
+and beautiful Penthesilea across a tea-table; but in the
+height of her anger, as her hand chanced to shake with the
+earnestness of the dispute, she scalded her fingers, and
+spilt a dish of tea upon her petticoat. Had not this accident
+broke off the debate, nobody knows where it would
+have ended.'</p>
+
+<p>The coffee-houses in which men aired their wit and discussed
+the news of the day were wholly dominated by party.
+'A Whig,' says De Foe, 'will no more go to the Cocoa
+Tree or Ozinda's than a Tory will be seen at the coffee-house
+of St. James's.' Swift declared that the Whig and
+Tory animosity infected even the dogs and cats. It was
+inevitable that it should also infect literature. Books were
+seldom judged on their merits, the praise or blame being
+generally awarded according to the political principles of
+their authors. An impartial literary journal did not exist
+in the days when Addison 'gave his little senate laws' at
+Button's, and perhaps it does not exist now, but if critical
+injustice be done in our day it is rarely owing to political
+causes.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most prominent vices of the time was gambling,
+which was largely encouraged by the public lotteries, and
+practised by all classes of the people. This evil was exhibited
+on a national scale by the establishment of the South
+Sea Company, which exploded in 1720, after creating a
+madness for speculation never known before or since.
+Even men who like Sir Robert Walpole kept their heads,
+and saw that the bubble would soon burst, invested in
+stock. Pope had his share in the speculation, and might,
+had he 'realized' in time, have been the 'lord of thousands;'
+in the end, however, he was a gainer, though not to a large
+extent. His friend Gay was less fortunate. He won
+£20,000, kept the stock too long and was reduced to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
+beggary. The South Sea Bubble and the Mississippi
+scheme of Law which burst in the same year and ruined
+tens of thousands of French families, afford illustrations
+on a gigantic scale of the prevailing passion for speculation
+and for gambling.</p>
+
+<p>'The Duke of Devonshire lost an estate at a game of
+basset. The fine intellect of Chesterfield was thoroughly
+enslaved by the vice. At Bath, which was then the centre
+of English fashion, it reigned supreme; and the physicians
+even recommended it to their patients as a form of distraction.
+In the green-rooms of the theatres, as Mrs. Bellamy
+assures us, thousands were often lost and won in a single
+night. Among fashionable ladies the passion was quite as
+strong as among men, and the professor of whist and
+quadrille became a regular attendant at their levees. Miss
+Pelham, the daughter of the prime minister, was one of
+the most notorious gamblers of her time, and Lady Cowper
+speaks in her <i>Diary</i> of sittings at Court, of which the
+lowest stake was 200 guineas. The public lotteries contributed
+very powerfully to diffuse the taste for gambling
+among all classes.'<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>
+
+<p>One of the most powerful exponents of the dark side of
+the century is Hogarth, who makes some of its worst
+features live before our eyes. So also do the novels of
+Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett. Differing as their
+works do in character, they have the common merit of
+presenting in indelible lines a picture of the time in its
+social aspects. It may have been, as Stuart Mill asserts, an
+age of strong men, but it was an age of coarse vices, an
+age wanting in the refinements and graces of life; an age of
+cruel punishments, cruel sports, and of a political corruption
+extending through all the departments of the State.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p>
+<p>But it would be a narrow view of the age to dwell wholly
+on its gloomier features, which are always the easiest to
+detect. If the period under consideration had prominent
+vices, it had also distinguished merits. Under Queen
+Anne and her immediate successors, home-keeping Englishmen
+had more space to breathe in than they have now,
+and trade was not demoralized by excessive competition.
+No attempt was made to separate class from class, and
+population was not large enough to make the battle of life
+almost hopeless in the lowest section of the community. If
+there was less refinement than among ourselves, there was
+far less of nervous susceptibility, and the country was free
+from the half-educated class of men and women who know
+enough to make them dissatisfied, without attaining to the
+larger knowledge which yields wisdom and content. To
+say that the age was better than our own would be to deny
+a thousand signs of material and intellectual progress, but
+it had fewer dangers to contend with, and if there was far
+less of wealth in the country the people were probably more
+satisfied with their lot.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p>
+
+<p>To glance at the century as a whole does not fall within
+my province, but I may be permitted to observe that in the
+course of it science and invention made rapid strides; that
+under the inspiring sway of Handel the power of music
+was felt as it was never felt before; that in the latter half of
+the period the Novel, destined to be one of the noblest
+fruits of our imaginative literature, attained a robust life
+in the hands of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett; and
+that, with Reynolds and Gainsborough, with Romney and
+Wilson, a glorious school of landscape and portrait
+painters arose, which is still the pride of England. It will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+be remembered, too, that many of the great charitable
+institutions which make our own age illustrious, had their
+birth in the last. The military genius of England was
+displayed in Marlborough and in Clive, her mercy in John
+Howard, her spirit of enterprise in Cook, her self-sacrifice
+in Wesley and Whitefield, her statesmanship in Walpole,
+in Chatham, and in William Pitt. In oratory as everyone
+knows, the eighteenth century was surpassingly great, and
+never before or since has the country produced a political
+philosopher of the calibre of Burke. What England reaped
+in literature during the period of which Pope has been
+selected as the most striking figure, it will be my endeavour
+to show in the course of these pages.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> M. Sainte-Beuve, the greatest of French critics, frankly
+acknowledges his indebtedness to Boileau, whom he styles Louis
+the Fourteenth's 'Contrôleur Général du Parnasse.' 'S'il m'est
+permis de parler pour moi-même,' he writes, 'Boileau est un des
+hommes qui m'ont le plus occupé depuis que je fais de la critique,
+et avec qui j'ai le plus vécu en idée.'&mdash;<i>Causeries du Lundi</i>, tome
+sixième, p. 495.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Lecky's <i>England</i>, vol. i. p. 373.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> The epithet is used in the Preface to the First Edition of
+Waller's <i>Posthumous Poems</i>, which Mr. Gosse believes was written
+by Atterbury, and he considers that this is the original occurrence
+of the phrase.&mdash;<i>From Shakespeare to Pope</i>, p. 248.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Messrs. Besant and Rice's novel, <i>The Chaplain of the Fleet</i>,
+gives a vivid picture of the life led in the Fleet, and also of the
+period.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> <i>Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Delany</i>, vol. ii. p. 55.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Lecky's <i>England</i>, vol. i. p. 479.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Shaftesbury's <i>Characteristics</i>, vol. i. p. 270.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> <i>Spectator</i>, No. 126.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Lecky's <i>England</i>, vol. i. p. 522.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> According to Hallam the thirty years which followed the
+Treaty of Utrecht 'was the most prosperous season that England
+had ever experienced.'&mdash;<i>Const. Hist.</i> ii. 464.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p>
+<h3 class="gap3"><a name="PART_I" id="PART_I"></a>PART I.</h3>
+
+<h2>THE POETS.</h2>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<h3>ALEXANDER POPE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>It is not unreasonable to call the period we are considering
+'the Age of Pope.' He is the representative poet of his
+century. Its literary merits and defects are alike conspicuous
+in his verse, and he stands immeasurably above
+the numerous versifiers who may be said to belong to his
+school. Savage Landor has observed that there is no such
+thing as a school of poetry, and this is true in the sense
+that the essence of this divine art cannot be transmitted,
+but the form of the art may be, and Pope's style of workmanship
+made it readily imitable by accomplished craftsmen.
+Although he affected to call poetry an idle trade he
+devoted his whole life to its pursuit, and there are few
+instances in literature in which genius and unwearied
+labour have been so successfully united. It is to Pope's
+credit, that, with everything against him in the race of
+life, he attained the goal for which he started in his
+youth. The means he employed to reach it were frequently
+perverse and discreditable, but the courage with which
+he overcame the obstacles in his path commands our
+admiration.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Alexander Pope
+(1688-1744).</div>
+
+<p>Alexander Pope was born in London on May 21st, 1688.
+He was the only son of his father, a merchant
+or tradesman, and a Roman Catholic
+at a time when the members of that church
+were proscribed by law. The boy was a cripple from his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
+birth, and suffered from great bodily weakness both in youth
+and manhood. Looking back upon his life in after years
+he called it a 'long disease.' The elder Pope seems to have
+retired from business soon after his son's birth, and at
+Binfield, nine miles from Windsor, twenty-seven years of
+the poet's life were spent. As a 'papist' Pope was excluded
+from the Universities and from every public career, but
+even under happier circumstances his health would have
+condemned him to a secluded life. He gained some instruction
+from the family priest, and also went for a short time
+to school, but for the most part he was self-educated, and
+studied so severely that at seventeen his life was probably
+saved by the sound advice of Dr. Radcliffe to read less
+and to ride on horseback every day. The rhyming faculty
+was very early developed, and to use his own phrase he
+'lisped in numbers.' As a boy he felt the magic of Spenser,
+whose enchanting sweetness and boundless wealth of imagination
+have been now for three hundred years a joy to
+every lover of poetry. Something, too, he learned from
+Waller and from Sandys, both of whom, but especially the
+former, had been of service in giving smoothness to the
+iambic distich, in which all of Pope's best poems are
+written. Dryden, however, whom when a little boy he saw
+at Will's coffee-house&mdash;'<i>Virgilium tantum vidi</i>' records the
+memorable day&mdash;was the poet whose influence he felt most
+powerfully. Like Gray several years later, he declared
+that he learnt versification wholly from his works. From
+'knowing Walsh,' the best critic in the nation in Dryden's
+opinion, the youthful Pope received much friendly counsel;
+and he had another wise friend in Sir William Trumbull,
+formerly Secretary of State, who recognized his genius, and
+gave him as warm a friendship as an old man can offer
+to a young one. The dissolute Restoration dramatist,
+Wycherley, was also his temporary companion. The old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+man, if Pope's story be true, asked him to correct his
+poems, which are indeed beyond correction, as the youthful
+critic appears to have hinted, and the two parted
+company.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Pastorals</i>, written, according to Pope's assertion, at
+the age of sixteen, were published in 1709, and won an
+amount of praise incomprehensible in the present day. Mr.
+Leslie Stephen has happily appraised their value in calling
+them 'mere school-boy exercises.' Not thus, however,
+were they regarded by the poet, or by the critics of his age,
+yet neither he nor they could have divined the rapid progress
+of his fame, and that in about six years' time he
+would be regarded as the greatest of living poets. The
+<i>Essay on Criticism</i>, written, it appears, in 1709, was published
+two years later, and received the highest honour
+a poem could then have. It was praised by Addison in
+the <i>Spectator</i> as 'a very fine poem,' and 'a masterpiece
+in its kind.' The 'kind,' suggested by the <i>Ars Poetica</i> of
+Horace, and the <i>Art Poétique</i> of Boileau&mdash;translated with
+Dryden's help by Sir William Soame&mdash;suited the current
+taste for criticism and argument in rhyme, which had led
+Roscommon to write an <i>Essay on Translated Verse</i>, and
+Sheffield an <i>Essay on Poetry</i>. The <i>Essay on Criticism</i> is a
+marvellous production for a young man who had scarcely
+passed his maturity when it was published. To have
+written lines and couplets that live still in the language
+and are on everyone's lips is an achievement of which any
+poet might be proud, and there are at least twenty such
+lines or couplets in the poem.</p>
+
+<p>In 1713 <i>Windsor Forest</i> appeared. Through the most
+susceptible years of life the poet had lived in the country,
+but Nature and Pope were not destined to become friends;
+he looked at her 'through the spectacles of books' and his
+description of natural objects is invariably of the conven<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>tional
+type. Although never a resident in London he was
+unable in the exercise of his art to breathe any atmosphere
+save that of the town, and might have said, in the
+words of Lessing to his friend Kleist, 'When you go to
+the country I go to the coffee-house.'<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>
+
+<p>The use, or as it would be more correct to say the abuse,
+of classical mythology in the description of rural scenes
+had the sanction of great names, and Pope was not likely
+to reject what Spenser and Milton had sanctioned. Gods
+and goddesses therefore play a conspicuous part in his description
+of the Forest. The following lines afford a fair
+illustration of the style throughout, and the sole merit of
+the poem is the smoothness of versification in which Pope
+excelled.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Not proud Olympus yields a nobler sight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though gods assembled grace his towering height,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than what more humble mountains offer here,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When in their blessings all those gods appear.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See Pan with flocks, with fruits Pomona crowned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Here blushing Flora paints th' enamelled ground,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Here Ceres' gifts in waving prospect stand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And nodding tempt the joyful reaper's hand;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rich Industry sits smiling on the plains,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And peace and plenty tell a Stuart reigns.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Pope, who was never known to laugh, was a great wit,
+but his sense of humour was small, and the descent
+from these deities to Queen Anne savours not a little of
+bathos.</p>
+
+<p>In 1712 Pope had published <i>The Rape of the Lock</i>, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
+Addison justly praised as 'a delicious little thing.' At the
+same time he advised the poet not to attempt improving it,
+which he proposed to do, and Pope most unreasonably
+attributed this advice to jealousy. In 1714 the delightful
+poem appeared in its present form with the machinery of
+sylphs and gnomes adopted from the mysteries of the Rosicrucians.
+Pope styles it an heroi-comical poem, and judged
+in the light of a burlesque it is conceived and executed with
+an art that is beyond praise. Lord Petre, a Roman Catholic
+peer, had cut off a lock of Miss Arabella Fermor's hair,
+much to the indignation of her family and possibly of the
+young lady also. Pope wrote the poem to remove the discord
+caused by the fatal shears, but its publication, and
+two or three offensive allusions it contained, only served to
+add to Miss Fermor's annoyance. 'The celebrated lady
+herself,' the poet wrote, 'is offended, and which is stranger,
+not at herself but me. Is not this enough to make a writer
+never be tender of another's character or fame?' But
+Pope, whose praise of women is too often a libel upon
+them, was not as tender as he ought to have been of the
+lady's reputation.</p>
+
+<p>The offence felt by the heroine of the poem is now unheeded;
+the dainty art exhibited is a permanent delight,
+and our language can boast no more perfect specimen of
+the poetical burlesque than the <i>Rape of the Lock</i>. The
+machinery of the sylphs is managed with perfect skill, and
+nothing can be more admirable than the charge delivered
+by Ariel to the sylphs to guard Belinda from an apprehended
+but unknown danger. The concluding lines shall
+be quoted:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Whatever spirit, careless of his charge,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His post neglects, or leaves the fair at large,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall feel sharp vengeance soon o'ertake his sins,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be stopped in vials, or transfixed with pins;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or plunged in lakes of bitter washes lie,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or wedged, whole ages, in a bodkin's eye;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While clogged he beats his silken wings in vain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or alum styptics, with contracting power,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shrink his thin essence like a rivelled flower;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or, as Ixion fixed, the wretch shall feel<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The giddy motion of the whirling mill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In fumes of burning chocolate shall glow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And tremble at the sea that froths below!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Another striking portion of the poem is the description
+of the Spanish game of Ombre, imitated from Vida's
+<i>Scacchia Ludus</i>. 'Vida's poem,' says Mr. Elwin, 'is a
+triumph of ingenuity, when the intricacy of chess is considered,
+and the difficulty of expressing the moves in a dead
+language. Yet the original is eclipsed by Pope's more
+consummate copy.'<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p>
+
+<p>Many famous passages illustrative of Pope's art might
+be extracted from this poem, but it will suffice to give the
+portrait of Belinda:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which Jews might kiss and infidels adore;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Quick as her eyes and as unfixed as those;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Favours to none, to all she smiles extends,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oft she rejects, but never once offends.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bright as the sun her eyes the gazers strike,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, like the sun, they shine on all alike.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If to her share some female errors fall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Look on her face and you'll forget them all.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The <i>Temple of Fame</i>, a liberal paraphrase of Chaucer's
+<i>House of Fame</i>, followed in 1715, and despite the praise of
+Steele, who declared that it had a thousand beauties, and of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
+Dr. Johnson, who observes that every part is splendid, must
+be pronounced one of Pope's least attractive pieces. Two
+poems of the emotional and sentimental class, <i>Eloisa to
+Abelard</i> and the <i>Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate
+Lady</i> (1717), are more worthy of attention. Nowhere, probably,
+in the language are finer specimens to be met with of
+rhetorical pathos, but poets like Burns, Cowper, Wordsworth,
+and Tennyson can touch the heart more deeply by
+a phrase or couplet than Pope is able to do by his elaborate
+representations of passion. The reader is not likely to be
+affected by the following response of Eloisa to an invitation
+from the spirit world:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I come, I come! prepare your roseate bowers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Celestial palms and ever-blooming flowers.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thither, where sinners may have rest, I go,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where flames refined in breasts seraphic glow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou, Abelard! the last sad office pay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And smooth my passage to the realms of day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See my lips tremble and my eye-balls roll,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Suck my last breath and catch my flying soul!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah no&mdash;in sacred vestments may'st thou stand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The hallowed taper trembling in thy hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Present the Cross before my lifted eye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Teach me at once and learn of me to die.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The music or the fervour of the poem delighted Porson,
+famous for his Greek and his potations, and whether drunk
+or sober he would recite, or rather sing it, from the beginning
+to the end. The felicity of the versification is incontestable,
+but at the same time artifice is more visible than nature
+throughout the Epistle, and this is true also of <i>The Elegy</i>,
+a composition in which Pope's method of treating mournful
+topics is excellently displayed. The opening lines are suggested
+by Ben Jonson's <i>Elegy on the Marchioness of Winchester</i>,
+a lady whose death was also lamented by Milton.
+These we shall not quote, but take in preference a passage<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
+which is perhaps as graceful an expression of poetical
+rhetoric as can be found in Pope's verse.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By strangers honoured, and by strangers mourned!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What though no friends in sable weeds appear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And bear about the mockery of woe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To midnight dances and the public show?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What though no weeping Loves thy ashes grace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor polished marble emulate thy face?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What though no sacred earth allow thee room,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor hallowed dirge be muttered o'er thy tomb?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet shall thy grave with rising flowers be drest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There the first roses of the year shall blow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While angels with their silver wings o'ershade<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The ground, now sacred by thy reliques made.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>For some years Pope had been brooding over and slowly
+labouring at a task which was destined to add greatly to
+his fame and also to his fortune.</p>
+
+<p>In 1708 his early friend, Sir William Trumbull, had
+advised him to translate the <i>Iliad</i>, and five years later the
+poet, following the custom of the age, invited subscriptions
+to the work, which was to appear in six volumes at the
+price of six guineas. About this time Swift, who by the aid
+of his powerful pen was assisting Harley and St. John to
+rule the country, made Pope's acquaintance, and ultimately
+became perhaps the most faithful of his friends. Swift,
+who was able to help everybody but himself, zealously
+promoted the poet's scheme, and was heard to say at the
+coffee-houses that 'the best poet in England Mr. Pope a
+Papist' had begun a translation of Homer which he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>
+should not print till he had a thousand guineas for
+him.</p>
+
+<p>He was not satisfied with this service, but introduced the
+poet to St. John, Atterbury, and Harley. The first volume
+of Pope's <i>Homer</i> appeared in 1715, and in the same year
+Addison's friend Tickell published his version of the first
+book of the <i>Iliad</i>. Pope affected to believe that this was
+done at Addison's instigation.</p>
+
+<p>Already, as we have said, there had been a misunderstanding
+between the two famous wits, and Pope, whose
+irritable temperament led him into many quarrels and
+created a host of enemies, ceased from this time to regard
+Addison as a friend. Probably neither of them can be
+exempted from blame, and we can well believe that Addison,
+whose supremacy had formerly been uncontested,
+could not without some jealousy 'bear a brother near the
+throne,' but the chief interest of the estrangement to the
+literary student is the famous satire written at a later date,
+in which Addison appears under the character of Atticus.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a>
+It is necessary to add here that the whole story of the
+quarrel comes to us from Pope, who is never to be trusted,
+either in prose or verse, when he wishes to excuse himself
+at the expense of a rival.</p>
+
+<p>Pope had no cause for discontent at his position; not
+even the strife of parties stood in the way of his <i>Homer</i>,
+which was praised alike by Whig and Tory, and brought
+the translator a fortune. It has been calculated that the
+entire version of the <i>Iliad</i> and <i>Odyssey</i>, the payments for
+which covered eleven years, yielded Pope a clear profit of
+about £9,000, and it is said to have made at the same time
+the fortune of his publisher. Pope, I believe, was the first
+poet who, without the aid of patronage or of the stage, was
+able to live in comfort from the sale of his works.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p>
+<p>He knew how to value money, but fame was dearer to
+him than wealth, and of both he had now enough to satisfy
+his ambition. Posterity has not endorsed the general
+verdict of his contemporaries on his famous translation.
+He had to encounter indeed some severe comments, and
+Richard Bentley, the greatest classical scholar then living,
+must have vexed the sensitive poet when he told him
+that his version was a pretty poem but he must not call
+it Homer. By this criticism, however, as Matthew
+Arnold has observed, the work is judged in spite of all its
+power and attractiveness. Pope wants Homer's simplicity
+and directness, and his artifices of style are utterly alien
+to the Homeric spirit. Dr. Johnson quotes the judgment
+of critics who say that Pope's <i>Homer</i> 'exhibits no resemblance
+of the original and characteristic manner of the
+Father of Poetry, as it wants his awful simplicity, his artless
+grandeur, his unaffected majesty,' and observes that
+this cannot be totally denied. He argues, however, that
+even in Virgil's time the demand for elegance had been so
+much increased that mere nature could be endured no
+longer, that every age improves in elegance, that if some
+Ovidian graces are, alas! not to be found in the English
+<i>Iliad</i> 'to have added can be no great crime if nothing be
+taken away.' Johnson was not aware that to add 'poetical
+elegances' to the words and thoughts of a great poet is to
+destroy much of the beauty of his verse and many of its
+most striking characteristics. As well might he say that
+the beauty of a lovely woman can be enhanced by a profusion
+of trinkets, or that a Greek statue would be more
+worthy of admiration if it were elegantly dressed. Dr.
+Johnson says, with perfect truth, that Pope wrote for his
+own age, and it may be added that he exhibits extraordinary
+art in ministering to the taste of the age; yet it is hardly
+too much to affirm that in the exercise of his craft as a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
+translator he is continually false to nature and therefore
+false to Homer.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand his <i>Iliad</i> if read as a story runs so
+smoothly, that the reader, and especially the young reader,
+is carried through the narrative without any sense of
+fatigue. It is not a little praise to say that it is a poem
+which every school-boy will read with pleasure, and in which
+every critical reader who is content to surrender his judgment
+for awhile, will find pleasure also. Mr. Courthope in
+his elaborate and masterly <i>Life of Pope</i>, which gives the
+coping stone to an exhaustive edition of the poet's works,
+praises a fine passage from the <i>Iliad</i>, which in his judgment
+attains perhaps the highest level of which the heroic
+couplet is capable, and 'I do not believe,' he adds, 'that
+any Englishman of taste and imagination can read the
+lines without feeling that if Pope had produced nothing
+but his translation of Homer, he would be entitled to the
+praise of a great original poet.'</p>
+
+<p>Pope's editor could not perhaps have selected a better
+illustration of his best manner than this speech of Sarpedon
+to Glaucus, which is parodied in the <i>Rape of the Lock</i>.
+The concluding lines shall be quoted.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Could all our care elude the gloomy grave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which claims no less the fearful than the brave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For lust of fame I should not vainly dare<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In fighting fields, nor urge the soul to war,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But since, alas! ignoble age must come,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Disease, and death's inexorable doom;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The life which others pay let us bestow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And give to fame what we to nature owe;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Brave though we fall, and honoured if we live,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or let us glory gain, or glory give.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We may add that neither its false glitter nor Pope's
+inability&mdash;shared in great measure with every translator&mdash;to
+catch the spirit of the original, can conceal the sustained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
+power of this brilliant work. Its merit is the more wonderful
+since the poet's knowledge of Greek was extremely
+meagre, and he is said to have been constantly indebted to
+earlier translations. Gibbon said that his <i>Homer</i> had
+every merit except that of faithfulness to the original; and
+Pope, could he have heard it, might well have been satisfied
+with the verdict of Gray, a great scholar as well as a
+great poet, that no other version would ever equal his.</p>
+
+<p>All that has been hitherto said with regard to Pope and
+Homer relates to his version of the <i>Iliad</i>. On that he
+expended his best powers, and on that it is evident he
+bestowed infinite pains. The <i>Odyssey</i>, one of the most
+beautiful stories in the world, appears to have been taken
+up with a weary pen, and in putting it into English he
+sought the assistance of Broome and Fenton, two minor
+poets and Cambridge scholars. They translated twelve
+books out of the twenty-four, and so skilfully did they
+catch Pope's style that it is almost impossible to discern
+any difference between his work and theirs. The literary
+partnership led to one of Pope's discreditable man&oelig;uvres,
+in which, strange to say, he was assisted by Broome, whom
+he induced to set his name to a falsehood. Pope as we
+have said, translated twelve books, while eight were allotted
+to Broome and four to Fenton. Yet he led Broome,
+unknown to his colleague, to ascribe only three books to
+himself and two to Fenton, and at the same time the poet,
+who confessed that he could 'equivocate pretty genteely,'
+stated the amount he had paid for Broome's eight books
+as if it had been paid for three. The story is disgraceful
+both to Pope and Broome, and why the latter should have
+practised such a deception is unaccountable. He was a
+beneficed clergyman and a man of wealth, so that he could
+not have lied for money even if Pope had been willing to
+bribe him. Fenton was indignant, as he well might be,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>
+but he was too lazy or too good-natured to expose the
+fraud. Broome had his deserts later on, but Pope, who
+ridiculed him in the <i>Dunciad</i>, and in his <i>Treatise on the
+Bathos</i>, was the last man in the world entitled to render
+them.</p>
+
+<p>The partnership in poetry which produced the <i>Odyssey</i>
+was not a great literary success, and most readers will
+prefer the version of Cowper, whose blank verse, though
+out of harmony with the rapid movement of the <i>Iliad</i> is
+not unfitted for the quieter beauties of the <i>Odyssey</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In 1721, prior to the publication of his version, the
+poet had agreed to edit an edition of Shakespeare, a task
+as difficult as any which a man of letters can undertake.
+Pope was not qualified to achieve it. He was comparatively
+ignorant of Elizabethan literature, the dry labours
+of an editor were not to his taste, and he lacked true
+sympathy with the genius of the poet. Failure was
+therefore inevitable, and Theobald, who has some solid
+merits as a commentator, found it easy to discern and
+to expose the errors of Pope. For doing so he was afterwards
+'hitched' into the <i>Dunciad</i>, and made in the first
+instance its hero. The "Shakespeare" was published
+in 1725 in six volumes quarto. 'Its chief claim,' Mr.
+Courthope writes, 'to interest at the present day, is that
+it forms the immediate starting-point for the long succession
+of Pope's satires.... The vexation caused to the
+poet by the undoubted justice of many of Theobald's strictures
+procured for the latter the unwelcome honour of
+being recognized as the King of the Dunces, and coupled
+with Bentley's disparaging mention of the Translation of
+the <i>Iliad</i> provoked the many contemptuous allusions to
+verbal criticism in Pope's later satires.'<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p>
+<p>A striking peculiarity of Pope's art may be mentioned
+here. He was able only to play on one instrument, the
+heroic couplet. When he attempted any other form of
+verse the result, if not total failure, was mediocrity. It
+was a daring act of Pope to suggest by his <i>Ode on St.
+Cecilia's Day</i>, a comparison with the <i>Alexander's Feast</i> of
+Dryden. The performance is perfunctory rather than
+spontaneous, and the few lyrical efforts he attempted in
+addition, show no ear for music. The voice of song with
+which even the minor poets of the Elizabethan age were
+gifted was silent in England, though not in Scotland, during
+the first half of the eighteenth century, or if a faint note is
+occasionally heard, as in the lyrics of Gay, it is without the
+grace and joyous freedom of the earlier singers. Not that
+the lyrical form was wanting; many minor versifiers, like
+Hughes, Sheffield, Granville, and Somerville, wrote what they
+called songs, but unfortunately without an ear for singing.</p>
+
+<p>In this short summary and criticism of a poet's literary
+life it would be out of place to insert many biographical
+details, were it not that, in the case of Pope, the student
+who knows little or nothing of the man will fail to understand
+his poetry. A distinguished critic has said that the
+more we know of Pope's age the better shall we understand
+Pope. With equal truth it may be said that a familiarity
+with the poet's personal character is essential to an adequate
+appreciation of his genius. His friendships, his
+enmities, his mode of life at Twickenham, the entangled
+tale of his correspondence, his intrigues in the pursuit of
+fame, his constitutional infirmities, the personal character
+of his satires, these are a few of the prominent topics with
+which a student of the poet must make himself conversant.
+It may be well, therefore, to give the history in brief outline,
+and we have now reached the crisis in his fortunes which
+will conveniently enable us to do so.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In 1716 Pope's family had removed from Binfield to
+Chiswick. A year later he lost his father, to whose memory
+he has left a filial tribute, and shortly afterwards he bought
+the small estate of five acres at Twickenham with which
+his name is so intimately associated. Before reaching the
+age of thirty Pope was regarded as the first of living poets.
+His income more than sufficed for all his wants. At
+Twickenham the great in intellect, and the great by birth,
+met around his table; he was welcomed by the highest
+society in the land, and although proud of his intimacy
+with the nobility, 'unplaced, unpensioned,' he was 'no
+man's heir or slave,' and jealously preserved his independence.
+'Pope,' says Johnson, 'never set genius to sale,
+he never flattered those whom he did not love, or praised
+those whom he did not esteem,' and he was, we may add,
+in this respect a striking contrast to Dryden, who lavished
+his flatteries wholesale.</p>
+
+<p>With a mother to whom he was tenderly attached, with
+troops of friends, with an undisputed supremacy in the
+world of letters, and with a vocation that was the joy of
+his heart,&mdash;if possessions like these can confer happiness,
+Pope should have been a happy man.</p>
+
+<p>But his 'crazy carcass,' as the painter Jervas called
+it, was united to the most suspicious and irritable of
+temperaments, and the fine wine of his poetry was
+rarely free from bitterness in the cup. Pope could be a
+warm friend, but was not always a faithful one, and even
+women whose friendship he had enjoyed suffered from
+the venom of his satire. He was not a man to rise above
+his age, and it would be charitable to ascribe a portion of
+his grossness to it. Voltaire is said by his loose talk to
+have driven Pope's good old mother from the table at
+Twickenham; Walpole's language not only in his home at
+Houghton, but at Court, was insufferably coarse; and Pope<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>
+wrote to ladies in language that must have disgusted
+modest women even in his free-speaking day. His foul
+lines on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, to whom he had
+formerly written in a most ridiculous strain of gallantry,
+and to whom he is said to have made love,<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> cannot easily
+be characterized in moderate language. Lady Mary had
+little delicacy herself, but the poet, who thought himself
+a gentleman, had no excuse for abusing her. Excuses
+indeed are not easily to be offered for Pope's moral defalcations.
+His life was a series of petty intrigues, trickeries,
+and deceptions. He could not, it has been said,&mdash;the
+conceit is borrowed from Young's <i>Satires</i>&mdash;'take his
+tea without a stratagem,' and knew how to utter the
+loftiest sentiments while acting the most contemptible of
+parts.</p>
+
+<p>The long and intricate deceptions which he practised to
+secure the publication of his letters, while so manipulating
+them as to enhance his credit, were suspected to some
+extent in his own age, and have been painfully laid bare in
+ours. It is an amazing story, which may be read at large
+in Mr. Dilke's <i>Papers of a Critic</i>, or in the elaborate narrative
+of Mr. Elwin in the first volume of his edition of <i>Pope</i>.
+It will be there seen how the poet compiled fictitious letters,
+suppressed passages, altered dates, manufactured letters
+out of other letters, and secretly enabled the infamous
+bookseller Curll to publish his correspondence surreptitiously
+in order that he might have the excuse for printing
+it himself in a more carefully prepared form. The worst
+feature of the miserable story is the poet's conduct with
+regard to Swift, his oldest and most faithful friend. On<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>
+this subject the writer may be allowed to quote what he
+has said elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>'Years before, Swift, who cared little for literary reputation,
+and never resorted to any artifice to promote it, had
+suspected Pope of a desire to make literary capital out of
+their correspondence, and the poet had excused himself
+according to his wonted fashion. After the publication by
+Curll, he begged Swift to return him his letters lest they
+should fall into the bookseller's hands. The Dean replied, no
+doubt to Pope's infinite chagrin, that they were safe in his
+keeping, as he had given strict orders in his will that his
+executors should burn every letter he might leave behind
+him. Afterwards he promised that Pope should eventually
+have them but declined giving them up during his lifetime.
+Hereupon Pope changed his tactics and begged that he
+might have the letters to print. The publication by Curll
+of two letters (probably another <i>ruse</i> of Pope's) formed an
+additional ground for urging his request. All his efforts
+were unavailing until he obtained the assistance of Lord
+Orrery, to whom Swift was at length induced to deliver up
+the letters. There was a hiatus in the correspondence and
+Pope took advantage of this and of a blunder made by
+Swift, whose memory at the time was not to be trusted, to
+hint, what he dared not directly assert, that the bulk of the
+collection remained with the Dean, and that Swift's own
+letters had been returned to him. We have now irresistible
+proof that the Dublin edition of the letters was taken from
+an impression sent from England and sent by Pope. Nor
+was this all. The poet acted with still greater meanness,
+for he had the audacity to deplore the sad vanity of Swift
+in permitting the publication of his correspondence, and to
+declare that "no decay of body is half so miserable."'<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p>
+<p>That he had many fine qualities in spite of the littlenesses
+which mar his character one would be loath to doubt. Among
+his nobler traits was an ardent passion for literature, a
+courage which enabled him to face innumerable obstacles&mdash;'Pope,'
+says Mr. Swinburne, 'was as bold as a lion'&mdash;and
+a constant devotion to his parents, especially to his
+mother, who lived to a great age. There are no sincerer
+words in his letters than those which relate to Mrs. Pope.
+'It is my mother only,' he once wrote, regretting his inability
+to leave home, 'that robs me of half the pleasure of
+my life, and that gives me the greatest at the same time,'
+and the lines expressing his affection for her are familiar to
+most readers. Truly does Johnson say that 'life has among
+its soothing and quiet comforts few things better to give
+than such a son.'</p>
+
+<p>Among his lady friends the dearest was Martha Blount,
+the younger of two beautiful sisters, of whom Gay sang as
+'the fair-haired Martha and Teresa brown.' They came
+of an old Roman Catholic family residing at Mapledurham,
+and were little more than girls when Pope first knew them.
+With the elder sister he quarrelled, but Martha was faithful
+to him for life, and when he was dying it is said that her
+coming in 'gave a new turn of spirits or a temporary strength
+to him.' Swift, as we have said, was one of the warmest
+of Pope's friends, and his letters to the poet are by far the
+most attractive portion of the published correspondence.
+He visited him at Twickenham more than once, and on
+one occasion spent some months under his roof. Bolingbroke,
+his 'guide, philosopher, and friend,' who for a time
+lived near to him at Dawley, was a frequent guest, so also,
+in the days of their intimacy, was Lady Mary, who had a
+house at Twickenham. Thomson the poet, too, lived not
+far off, and was visited by his brother bard, whom Thomson's
+barber describes as 'a strange, ill-formed, little figure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
+of a man,' but he adds, 'I have heard him and Quin and
+Patterson<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> talk so together that I could have listened to
+them for ever.' Arbuthnot, one of the finest wits and best
+men of his time, who, as Swift said, could do everything
+but walk, was also a faithful friend of Pope; so was
+Gay, and so was Bishop Atterbury, who, as the poet
+said, first taught him to think "as becomes a reasonable
+creature."</p>
+
+<p>James Craggs, who had been formerly Secretary of State,
+and was on the warmest terms of intimacy with the poet,
+resided for some time near his friend in order to enjoy the
+pleasure of his society. When in office he proposed to pay
+him a pension of £300 a year out of the secret service
+money, but Pope declined the offer. Statesmen and men
+of active pursuits cultivated the society of the poetical
+recluse, and Pope, whose compliments are monuments
+more enduring than marble, has recorded their visits to
+Twickenham:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'There, my retreat the best companions grace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Chiefs out of war, and statesmen out of place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There St. John mingles with my friendly bowl,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The feast of reason and the flow of soul,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he whose lightning pierced the Iberian lines<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now forms my quincunx and now ranks my vines.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Among Pope's associates was the 'blameless Bethel,'</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">'&mdash;&mdash; who always speaks his thought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And always thinks the very thing he ought,'<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>and Berkeley who had 'every virtue under heaven,' and
+Lord Bathurst who was unspoiled by wealth and joined</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'With splendour, charity; with plenty, health;'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and 'humble Allen' who</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Did good by stealth and blushed to find it fame;'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and many another friend who lives in his verse and is
+secure of the immortality a poet can confer.</p>
+
+<p>The five volumes which contain the letters between Pope
+and his friends exhibit an interesting picture of the times
+and of the writers. The poet's own letters, as may be supposed
+from the thought he bestowed on them, are full of artifice,
+and composed with the most elaborate care. Every sentence
+is elaborately turned, and the ease and naturalness which
+give a charm to the letters of Cowper and of Southey are
+not to be found in Pope. His epistles are weighted with
+compliments and with professions of the most exalted
+morality. 'He laboured them,' says Horace Walpole, 'as
+much as the <i>Essay on Man</i>, and as they were written to
+everybody they do not look as if they had been written to
+anybody.' Pope said once, what he did not mean, that he
+could not write agreeable letters. This was true; his letters
+are, as Charles Fox said, 'very bad,' but some of Pope's
+friends write admirably, and if there is much that can be
+skipped without loss in the correspondence, there is much
+which no student of the period can afford to neglect.
+'There has accumulated,' says Mark Pattison, 'round Pope's
+poems a mass of biographical anecdote such as surrounds
+the writings of no other English author,' and not a little
+knowledge of this kind is to be gleaned from his correspondence.</p>
+
+<p>In the years spent at Twickenham Pope produced his
+most characteristic work. It is as a satirist that he,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+with one exception, excels all English poets, and Pope's
+careful workmanship often makes his satirical touches
+more attractive than Dryden's.</p>
+
+<p>'To attack vices in the abstract,' he said to Arbuthnot,
+'without touching persons, may be safe fighting indeed,
+but it is fighting with shadows;' and Pope, under the
+plea of a detestation of vice, generally betrayed his contempt
+or hatred of the men whom he assailed. No doubt
+the critics and Grub Street hacks of the day gave him
+provocation. Pope, however, was frequently the first to
+take the field, and so eager was he to meet his foes that
+it would seem as if he enjoyed the conflict. Yet there
+were times when he felt acutely the assaults made upon
+him. 'These things are my diversion,' he once said, with
+a ghastly smile, and it was observed that he writhed in
+agony like a man undergoing an operation. The attacks
+made with these paper bullets, not only on the side of
+Grub Street but on his own, show very vividly the coarseness
+of London society. Courtesy was disregarded by
+men who claimed to be wits and scholars. Pope held,
+perhaps, a higher place in literature in his own day than
+Lord Tennyson has held in ours, for the best beloved
+of Laureates had noble rivals and friends who came
+near to him in fame, while Pope, until the publication
+of Thomson's <i>Seasons</i>, in 1730, stood alone in poetical
+reputation. Yet he was reviled in the language of Billingsgate,
+and had no scruple in using that language himself.
+Late in life Pope collected the libels made upon him and
+bound them in four volumes, but he omitted to mention
+the provocation which gave rise to many of them. Eusden,
+Colley Cibber, Dennis, Theobald, Blackmore, Smyth, and
+Lord Hervey are among the prominent criminals placed in
+Pope's pillory, and the student of the age may find an idle
+entertainment in tracking the poet's thorny course, while<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>
+he gives an unenviable notoriety to names of which the
+larger number were 'born to be forgot.'</p>
+
+<p>In 1725 Swift had written to Pope advising him not to
+immortalize the names of bad poets by putting them in his
+verse, and Pope replied to this advice by saying, 'I am
+much the happier for finding (a better thing than our
+wits) our judgments jump in the notion that all scribblers
+should be passed by in silence.' How entirely his inclination
+got the better of his judgment was seen three years
+later in the <i>Dunciad</i>. The first three books of this famous
+satire were published in 1728. It is generally regarded as
+Pope's masterpiece, but the accuracy of such an estimate is
+doubtful. So heavily weighted is the poem with notes,
+prefaces, and introductions that the text appears to be
+smothered by them. It was Pope's aim to mystify his
+readers, and in this he has succeeded, for the mystifications
+of the poem even confound the commentators. The personalities
+of the satire excited a keen interest, and much
+amusement to readers who were not included in Pope's
+black list of dunces. At the same time it roused a number
+of authors to fury, as it well might. His satire is often unjust,
+and he includes among the dunces men wholly undeserving
+of the name, who had had the misfortune to offend
+him. To place a great scholar like Bentley, an eloquent and
+earnest preacher like Whitefield, and a man of genius like
+Defoe among the dunces was to stultify himself, and if
+Pope in his spite against Theobald found some justification
+for giving the commentator pre-eminence for dulness in
+three books of the <i>Dunciad</i>, his anger got the better of his
+wit when in Book IV. he dethroned Theobald to exalt
+Colley Cibber. For Cibber, with a thousand faults, so far
+from being dull had a buoyancy of heart and a sprightliness
+of intellect wholly out of harmony with the character
+he is made to assume.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>That he might have some excuse for his dashing assaults
+in the <i>Dunciad</i>, Pope had published in the third volume of
+the <i>Miscellanies</i>, of which he and Swift, Arbuthnot and Gay
+were the joint authors, an <i>Essay on Bathos</i> in which several
+writers of the day were sneered at. The assault provoked the
+counter-attack for which Pope was looking, and he then produced
+the satire which was already prepared for the press.
+In its publication the poet, as usual, made use of trickery
+and deception. At first he issued an imperfect edition with
+initial letters instead of names, but on seeing his way to
+act more openly, the poem appeared in a large edition with
+names and notes.</p>
+
+<p>'In order to lessen the danger of prosecution for libel,'
+Mr. Courthope writes, 'he prevailed on three peers, with
+whom he was on the most intimate terms, the good-natured
+Lord Bathurst, the easy-going Earl of Oxford, and the
+magnificent Earl of Burlington, to act as his nominal publishers;
+and it was through them that copies of the
+enlarged edition were at first distributed, the booksellers
+not being allowed to sell any in their shops. The King and
+Queen were each presented with a copy by the hands of
+Sir R. Walpole. In this manner, as the report quickly
+spread that the poem was the property of rich and powerful
+noblemen, there was a natural disinclination on the part
+of the dunces to take legal proceedings, and the prestige
+of the <i>Dunciad</i> being thus fairly established, the booksellers
+were allowed to proceed with the sale in regular
+course.'<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></p>
+
+<p>The <i>Dunciad</i> owes its merit to the literary felicities
+with which its pages abound. The theme is a mean one.
+Pope, from his social eminence at Twickenham, looks with
+scorn on the authors who write for bread, and with malig<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>nity
+on the authors whom he regarded as his enemies.
+There is, for the most part, little elevation in his method
+of treatment, and we can almost fancy that we see a cruel
+joy in the poet's face as he impales the victims of his
+wrath. Some portions of the <i>Dunciad</i> are tainted with the
+imagery which, to quote the strong phrase of Mr. Churton
+Collins, often makes Swift as offensive as a polecat,<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> and
+there is no part of it which can be read with unmixed
+pleasure, if we except the noble lines which conclude the
+satire. Those lines may be almost said to redeem the
+faults of the poem, and they prove incontestably, if such
+proof be needed, Pope's claim to a place among the poets.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'In vain, in vain,&mdash;the all-composing Hour<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Resistless falls; the Muse obeys the Power.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She comes! she comes! the sable Throne behold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Night primæval and of Chaos old!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before her Fancy's gilded clouds decay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all its varying rainbows die away.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The meteor drops, and in a flash expires,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As one by one at dread Medea's strain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sickening stars fade off the etherial plain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand opprest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Closed one by one to everlasting rest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus at her felt approach and secret might,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Art after Art goes out, and all is Night.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mountains of Casuistry heaped o'er her head!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Philosophy that leaned on Heaven before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Physic of Metaphysic begs defence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See Mystery to Mathematics fly!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And unawares Morality expires.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor public Flame, nor private, dares to shine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos! is restored;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Light dies before thy uncreating word;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And universal Darkness buries All.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The publication of the <i>Dunciad</i> showed Pope where his
+main strength as a poet lay. That the writers he had
+attacked, in many instances without provocation, should
+resent the ungrateful notoriety conferred upon them was
+inevitable. In self-defence, and to add to the provocation
+already given, he started a paper called the <i>Grub Street
+Journal</i>, which existed for eight years&mdash;Pope, who had no
+scruple in 'hazarding a lie,' denying all the time that he
+had any connection with it.</p>
+
+<p>His next work of significance, <i>The Essay on Man</i>, a professedly
+philosophical poem by an author who knew little
+of philosophy, was published in four epistles, in 1733-4.
+Bolingbroke's brilliant, versatile, and shallow intellect had
+strongly impressed Swift, and had also fascinated Pope.
+It has been commonly supposed that the <i>Essay</i> owes its
+existence to his suggestion and guidance. The poet believed
+in his philosophy, and had the loftiest estimate of
+his genius. In the last and perhaps finest passage of the
+poem he calls Bolingbroke the 'master of the poet and the
+song,' and draws a picture of the ambitious statesman as
+beautiful as it is false. In Mark Pattison's Introduction
+to <i>The Essay on Man</i>,<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> which every student of Pope
+will read, he objects to the notion that the poet took the
+scheme of his work from Bolingbroke, observing that both
+derived their views from a common source.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p>
+<p>'Everywhere, in the pulpit, in the coffee-houses, in every
+pamphlet, argument on the origin of evil, on the goodness
+of God, and the constitution of the world was rife. Into
+the prevailing topic of polite conversation Bolingbroke,
+who returned from exile in 1723, was drawn by the bent
+of his native genius. Pope followed the example and
+impulse of his friend's more powerful mind. Thus much
+there was of special suggestion. But the arguments or
+topics of the poem are to be traced to books in much
+vogue at the time; to Shaftesbury's <i>Characteristics</i> (1711),
+King on the <i>Origin of Evil</i> (1702), and particularly to
+Leibnitz, <i>Essais de Théodicée</i> (1710).'</p>
+
+<p>In admitting that Pope followed the impulse of a more
+powerful mind, Mr. Pattison asserts as much perhaps as
+can be known with certainty as to Bolingbroke's influence,
+but it is reasonable to believe that the close intercourse of
+the two men did immensely sway the more impressionable,
+and, so far as philosophy is concerned, the more ignorant of
+the two. Mr. Pattison also overlooks the fact that Pope
+confessed to Warburton that he had never read a line of
+Leibnitz in his life. That the poet acknowledges his large
+debt to Bolingbroke, and that Bolingbroke confesses it was
+due, is all that can be declared with certainty. That which
+makes the <i>Essay</i> worthy the reading is the fruit, not of the
+argument but of the poetry, and for that Pope trusted to
+his own genius.</p>
+
+<p>His attempt to 'vindicate the ways of God to man'
+is confused and contradictory, and no modern reader,
+perplexed with the mystery of existence, is likely to gain
+aid from Pope. Nominally a Roman Catholic, and in
+reality a deist, apart from poetry he does not seem to have
+had strong convictions on any subject, and was content to
+be swayed by the opinions current in society. In undertaking
+to write an ethical work like the <i>Essay</i> his ambition<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>
+was greater than his strength, yet if Pope's philosophy
+does not 'find' us, to use Coleridge's phrase, it did
+appeal to a large number of minds in his own day, and
+had not lost its popularity at a later period. The poem
+has been frequently translated into French, into Italian,
+and into German; it was pronounced by Voltaire to be the
+most useful and sublime didactic poem ever written in any
+language; it was admired by Kant and quoted in his
+lectures; and it received high praise from the Scotch
+philosopher, Dugald Stewart. The charm of poetical expression
+is lost or nearly lost in translations, and while the
+sense may be retained the aroma of the verse is gone. The
+popularity of the <i>Essay</i> abroad is therefore not easily to
+be accounted for, unless we accept the theory that the
+shallow creed on which it is based suited an age less
+earnest than our own.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></p>
+
+<p>Pope has no strong convictions in this poem, but he has
+many moods. On one page he is a pantheist, on another
+he says what he probably did not mean, that God inspires
+men to do evil, and on a third that 'all our knowledge
+is ourselves to know.' Nowhere in the argument does
+Pope seem to have a firm standing, and De Quincey is
+not far wrong in saying that it is 'the realization of
+anarchy.'</p>
+
+<p>Read the poem for its poetical merits and you will forget
+its defects. Pope was a superficial teacher, but direct teaching
+is not the end of poetry. <i>The Essay on Man</i> is not a poem
+which can be read and re-read with ever-growing delight,
+but there are passages in it of as fine an order as any that
+he has composed on more familiar subjects. Pope was, as
+Sir William Hamilton said, a curious reader, and the ideas
+versified in the poem may be traced to a variety of sources.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+Students who wish to follow this track will find all the help
+they need in Mr. Pattison's instructive notes, and in the
+comments attached to the poem in Elwin and Courthope's
+edition. In his Introduction Mr. Pattison observes that
+'the subject of the <i>Essay on Man</i> is not, considered in itself,
+one unfit for poetry. Had Pope had a genius for philosophy
+there was no reason why he should not have selected
+a philosophical subject. Didactic poetry is a mistake if not
+a contradiction in terms. But poetry is not necessarily
+didactic because its subject is philosophical.'</p>
+
+<p>It is always difficult to define the themes suitable for
+poetry. Many theories have been formed as to the scope
+of the art, and poets have been amply instructed by critics as
+to what they ought to do, and what they should avoid doing.
+The theories may appear sound, the arguments convincing,
+until a great poet arises and knocks them on the head. In a
+sense every poet of the highest order is also a philosopher
+and a prophet who sees into 'the life of things.' Whether
+a philosophical subject can be fitly represented in the imaginative
+light of poetry is a matter for discussion rather than
+for decision. In the case of Pope, however, it will be
+evident to all studious readers that he was incapable of the
+continuous thought needed for the argument of the <i>Essay</i>.</p>
+
+<p>'Anything like sustained reasoning,' says Mr. Leslie
+Stephen,' was beyond his reach. Pope felt and thought
+by shocks and electric flashes.... The defect was aggravated
+or caused by the physical infirmities which put
+sustained intellectual labour out of the question.'<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p>
+
+<p>Crousaz, a Swiss pastor and professor, who appears to
+have competed with Berkeley for a prize and won it,
+attacked Pope's <i>Essay</i> for its want of orthodoxy, and his
+work was translated into English. The poet became<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+alarmed, but had the good fortune to find a champion in
+Warburton, who for the rest of his life did Pope much
+service, not always of a reputable kind. We shall have
+more to say of him later on, and it will suffice to observe
+here that Warburton, who through Pope's friendship
+obtained a good wife, a fortune, and a bishopric, was not a
+man of high character. His sole object was to advance in
+life, and he succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Moral Essays</i> as they are called, and the <i>Imitations
+from Horace</i> are the final and crowning efforts of the
+poet's genius. They contain his finest workmanship as a
+satirist, and will be read, I think, with more pleasure than
+the <i>Dunciad</i>, despite Mr. Ruskin's judgment of that poem
+as 'the most absolutely chiselled and monumental work
+"exacted" in our country.'<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> It is impossible to concur in
+this estimate. The imagery of the poem serves only to
+disgust, and the spiteful attacks made in it on forgotten
+men want the largeness of purpose that lifts satire above
+what is of temporary interest, making it a lesson for all
+time.</p>
+
+<p>Pope's venom, and the personal animosities which give
+the sharpest sting, and in some instances a zest, to his
+verse, are also amply displayed in the <i>Moral Essays</i> and in
+the <i>Imitations</i>, but the scope is wider in these poems, and
+the subjects allow of more versatile treatment. They should
+be read with the help of notes, a help generally needed for
+satirical poetry, but it should be remembered always that
+editorial judgments are to be received with discretion and
+not servilely followed. There is perhaps no danger more
+carefully to be shunned by the student of literature than
+the habit of resting satisfied with opinions at second-hand.
+Better a wrong estimate formed after due reading and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
+thought, than a right estimate gleaned from critics, without
+any thought at all.</p>
+
+<p>According to Warburton, who is as tricky as Pope himself
+when it suits his purpose to be so, the <i>Essay on Man</i>
+was intended to form four books, in which, as part of the
+general design, the <i>Moral Essays</i> would have been included,
+as well as Book IV. of the <i>Dunciad</i>, but to have welded
+these <i>Essays</i>, which were published separately, into one
+continuous poem would neither have suited Pope's genius
+nor the character of the poems; and how the last book of
+the <i>Dunciad</i> could have been included in such an <i>olla
+podrida</i> it is difficult to conceive. The poet was fond of projects,
+and this, happily for his readers, remained one. The
+dates of the four <i>Essays</i>, which are really Epistles, and
+appeared in folio pamphlets, run over several years, but
+were afterwards re-arranged by Pope. That to Lord Burlington,
+<i>Of the Use of Riches</i> (Epistle IV.), was published
+in 1731, under the title, <i>Of False Taste</i>; that to Lord
+Bathurst, <i>Of the Use of Riches</i> (Epistle III), in 1732; the
+epistle to Lord Cobham (Epistle I.), <i>Of the Knowledge and
+Characters of Men</i>, bears the date of 1733; and that To a
+Lady (Epistle II.), <i>Of the Characters of Women</i>, in 1735.
+Pope wrote other Epistles, some at a much earlier period
+of his career, which follow the <i>Moral Essays</i> but are not
+connected with them. Of these one is addressed to Addison,
+two are to Martha Blount, for whom the second of the <i>Moral
+Essays</i> was written; one to the painter Jervas, originally
+printed in 1717; while another, a few lines only in
+length, was addressed to Craggs when Secretary of State.
+Space will not allow of examining each of the <i>Essays</i>
+minutely, but there are portions of them which call for
+comment.</p>
+
+<p>The first <i>Moral Essay</i>, <i>Of the Knowledge and Characters
+of Men</i>, in which Pope enlarges on his theory of a ruling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
+passion, affords a significant example of his incapacity for
+sustaining an argument, since Warburton, to use his own
+words, entirely changed and reversed the order and disposition
+of the several parts to make the composition more
+coherent. That he has succeeded is doubtful, that he
+should have ventured upon such a task shows where Pope's
+weakness lay as a philosophical poet. It is the least interesting
+of the <i>Essays</i>, but is not without lines that none
+but Pope could have written. <i>The Characters of Women</i>,
+the subject of the second <i>Essay</i>, was not one which the
+satirist could treat with justice. He saw little in the sex
+save their foibles, and the lines with which it opens show
+the spirit that animates the poem:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Nothing so true as what you once let fall;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Most women have no character at all,"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And best distinguished by black, brown, or fair.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The satire contains one of Pope's offensive allusions to
+Lady Mary, and the celebrated portrait drawn from two
+notable women, the Duchess of Buckingham and Sarah,
+Duchess of Marlborough, from the latter of whom the
+poet, at one time, despite his unquestionable love of
+independence, received £1,000. The story, like many
+another in the career of Pope, is wrapt in mystery.</p>
+
+<p>Pope took great pains with the Epistle <i>Of the Use of
+Riches</i>. It was altered from the original conception by the
+advice of Warburton, who cared more for the argument of
+a poem than for its poetry. The thought and purpose of
+the <i>Essay</i> are defective, notwithstanding Warburton's effort
+to clear them, but these defects are of slight moment when
+compared with the brilliant passages with which the poem
+is studded. Among them is the famous description of the
+Duke of Buckingham's death-bed which should be com<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>pared
+with Dryden's equally famous lines on the same
+nobleman's character.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The floors of plaster, and the walls of dung,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On once a flock-heel, but repaired with straw,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With tape-tied curtains never meant to draw,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The George and Garter dangling from that bed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Great Villiers lies&mdash;alas! how changed from him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gallant and gay, in Cliveden's proud alcove,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or just as gay at council, in a ring<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of mimic statesmen and their merry King.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No wit to flatter left of all his store!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No fool to laugh at, which he valued more.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There is also a covert attack in this Epistle upon the
+moneyed interest represented by Walpole, and on the
+political corruption which he sanctioned and promoted.
+Yet Pope knew how to praise the great Whig statesman
+for his social qualities:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Seen him I have, but in his happier hour<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seen him uncumbered with the venal tribe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Smile without art and win without a bribe.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Epistle IV. pursues the same subject as the third, and
+deals mainly with false taste in the expenditure of wealth,
+and with the necessity of following 'sense, of every art the
+soul.' In this poem there is the far-famed description of
+Timon's Villa, and by Timon Pope was accused of representing
+the Duke of Chandos, whose estate at Canons he is
+supposed to have held in scorn after having been, as he
+acknowledges, 'distinguished' by its master. That would
+not have deterred Pope from producing a brilliant picture,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
+and his equivocations did but serve to increase suspicion.
+Probably he found it convenient to use some features of
+what he may have seen at Canons while composing a
+general sketch with no special application. The <i>Moral
+Essays</i>, it may be added, are not especially moral, but they
+are full of fine things, and form a portion of Pope's verse
+second only to the <i>Imitations from Horace</i>.</p>
+
+<p>These <i>Imitations</i> are introduced by the Prologue addressed
+to Dr. Arbuthnot, a poem of more than common
+brilliancy, and also more than commonly venomous. Nowhere,
+perhaps, is there in Pope's works so powerful and
+bitter an attack as the twenty-five lines in the Prologue
+devoted to the vivisection of Lord Hervey, which we are
+forced to admire while feeling their malevolence; nowhere
+is there a more consummate piece of satire than the twenty-two
+lines that contain the poet's masterpiece, the character
+of Atticus; and nowhere, I may add, are there lines more
+personally interesting. Portions of the poem were written
+long before the date of publication, and this is Pope's
+excuse, a rather lame one perhaps, for printing the character
+of Atticus and the lines on his mother after the death of
+Addison and of Mrs. Pope.</p>
+
+<p>'When I had a fever one winter in town,' Pope said to
+his friend Spence, 'that confined me to my room for
+some days, Lord Bolingbroke came to see me, happened
+to take up a Horace that lay on the table, and in turning
+it over dipt on the first satire of the second book. He
+observed how well that would hit my case if I were
+to imitate it in English. After he was gone I read it
+over, translated it in a morning or two, and sent it to
+press in a week or fortnight after. And this was the
+occasion of my imitating some other of the satires and
+epistles afterwards.'</p>
+
+<p>Bolingbroke did his friend a better service in giving<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>
+this advice than he had done with regard to the <i>Essay on
+Man</i>; and the six <i>Imitations</i>, with the Prologue and
+Epilogue, which are among the latest fruits of Pope's genius
+as a satirist, are also the ripest.</p>
+
+<p>Warburton, writing of the <i>Imitations of Horace</i>, says:
+'Whoever expects a paraphrase of Horace or a faithful copy
+of his genius or his manner of writing in these <i>Imitations</i>
+will be much disappointed. Our author uses the Roman poet
+for little more than his canvas; and if the old design or
+colouring chance to suit his purpose, it is well; if not, he
+employs his own without scruple or ceremony.'</p>
+
+<p>This is true. Pope makes use of Horace when it suits
+his convenience, but never follows him servilely, and quits
+him altogether when his design carries him another way.</p>
+
+<p>It was inevitable that he should exercise this freedom,
+since, as Johnson has pointed out, there will always be an
+irreconcilable dissimilitude between Roman images and
+English manners. Moreover, the aim of the two poets was
+different, Pope's main object being to express personal
+enmities and to give an exalted notion of his own virtue.</p>
+
+<p>In the opening lines of his First Satire Pope follows
+Horace pretty closely. Both poets complain that some
+persons think them too severe, and others too complaisant;
+both take the advice of a lawyer, Horace of C. Trebatius
+Testa, who gives him the pithiest replies; and Pope of
+Fortescue. Both complain that they cannot sleep, the
+prescription of a wife and cowslip wine being given by the
+English adviser, while Testa advises Horace to swim thrice
+across the Tiber and moisten his lips with wine. Throughout
+the rest of the satire Pope takes only casual glances at
+the Roman original, and if in the Second Satire the English
+poet follows Horace in the first few verses in recommending
+frugality, and in the advice to keep the middle state, and
+neither to lean on this side or on that, the resemblance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
+between the poets is seldom striking, and the spirit which
+animates them is different,&mdash;Horace being classical, and
+therefore open to the apprehension of all educated readers,
+while Pope is in a sense provincial, and, as I have already
+said with reference to the <i>Dunciad</i>, cannot be fully enjoyed
+or even understood without some knowledge of the time
+and of the men whom he lashes in his satire. The Sixth
+Epistle of the First Book of Horace, which Pope attempts
+to imitate, is, as Mr. Courthope observes, 'incapable of
+imitation. Its humour, no less than its philosophy, belongs
+entirely to the Pagan World.' In a general sense it is
+also true that Horace's style, whether of language or of
+thought, will not bear transplanting. Indeed, whatever is
+most characteristic and most exquisite in a poet's work is
+precisely the portion which cannot be clothed in a foreign
+dress.</p>
+
+<p>'Life,' said Pope, 'when the first heats are over is all
+down hill,' and with him the downward progress began at
+a time when most men are still standing on the summit.
+Never was there a more fiery spirit in so weak a body. He
+suffered frequently from headaches, which he relieved by
+inhaling the steam of coffee. Unfortunately he pampered
+his appetite and paid a heavy penalty for doing so.
+Every change of weather affected him; and at the time
+when most people indulge in company, he tells Swift that
+he hid himself in bed. Although he sneers at Lord Hervey
+for taking asses' milk he tried that remedy himself, and he
+frequently needed medical aid. In his early days he was
+strong enough to ride on horseback, but in later life his
+weakness was so great that he was in constant need of help.
+M. Taine, whose criticism of Pope needs to be read with
+caution, indulges in an exaggerated description of his
+bodily condition, observing that when arrived at maturity
+he appeared no longer capable of existing, and styling him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>
+'a nervous abortion.' The poet's condition was sad enough
+as told by Dr. Johnson, without amplifying it as M. Taine
+has done. 'One side was contracted. His legs were so slender
+that he enlarged their bulk with three pairs of stockings,
+which were drawn on and off by the maid; for he was not
+able to dress or undress himself, and neither went to bed nor
+rose without help. His weakness made it very difficult for
+him to be clean.' After this forlorn description of the poet's
+state it is a little grotesque to read that his dress of ceremony
+was black, with a tie-wig and a little sword. A distorted
+body often holds a generous and untainted soul.
+This was not the case with Pope, and the sympathy he stood
+in so large a need of himself, was seldom given to others.</p>
+
+<p>In the spring of 1744 it became evident that the end was
+approaching. Three weeks before his death he distributed
+the <i>Moral Epistles</i> among his friends, saying: 'Here I am,
+like Socrates, dispensing my morality amongst my friends
+just as I am dying.' He died peacefully on May 30th,
+1744, and was buried in Twickenham Church near the
+monument erected to his parents.</p>
+
+<p>Pope's standing among his country's poets has been the
+source of much controversy. There have been critics who
+deny to him the name of a poet, while others place him in the
+first rank. In his own century there was comparatively little
+difference of opinion with regard to his merits. Chesterfield
+gave him the warmest praise; Swift, Addison, and Warburton
+ranked him with the peers of song; Johnson, whose
+discriminative criticism reaches perhaps its highest level in
+his <i>Life of Pope</i>, in reply to the question which had been
+asked, even in his day, whether Pope was a poet? asks in
+return, 'If Pope be not a poet, where is poetry to be
+found?' and adds that 'to circumscribe poetry by a definition
+will only show the narrowness of the definer, though
+a definition which shall exclude Pope will not readily be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
+made.' Joseph Warton, too, Johnson's contemporary and
+friend, while preferring the Romantic School to the Classical,
+allows that in that species of poetry wherein Pope
+excelled he is superior to all mankind.</p>
+
+<p>In our century Bowles, whose edition of his works provoked
+prolonged discussion, in which Campbell, Byron, and
+the <i>Quarterly Review</i> took part, places Pope above Dryden.
+Byron, with more enthusiasm than judgment, regarded
+him as the greatest name in our poetry; Scott, with generous
+appreciation of a genius so alien to his own, called
+him a 'true Deacon of the craft,' and at one time proposed
+editing his works, a task projected also by Mr. Ruskin,
+who, putting Shakespeare aside as rather the world's than
+ours, holds Pope 'to be the most perfect representative we
+have since Chaucer of the true English mind.' 'Matched
+on his own ground,' says Mr. Swinburne, 'he never has
+been nor can be.' And Mr. Lowell in the same strain
+observes that 'in his own province he still stands unapproachably
+alone.'</p>
+
+<p>What then is Pope's ground? What is this province of
+which he is the sole ruler? To a considerable extent the
+question has been answered in these pages, but it may be
+well to sum up with more definiteness what has been
+already stated.</p>
+
+<p>In poetry Pope takes a first place in the second order of
+poets. The deficiencies which forbid his entrance into the
+first rank are obvious. He cannot sing, he has no ear for
+the subtlest melodies of verse, he is not a creative poet,
+and has few of the spirit-stirring thoughts which the noblest
+poets scatter through their pages with apparent unconsciousness.
+There are no depths in Pope and there are no
+heights; he has neither eye for the beauties of Nature, nor
+ear for her harmonies, and a primrose was no more to him
+than it was to Peter Bell.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>These are defects indeed, but nothing is more unfair says
+a great French critic than to judge notable minds solely by
+their defects, and in spite of them Pope's position is so
+unassailable that the critic must take a contracted view of
+the poet's art who questions his right to the title.</p>
+
+<p>His merits are of a kind not likely to be affected by
+time; a lively fancy, a power of satire almost unrivalled, and
+a skill in using words so consummate that there is no poet,
+excepting Shakespeare, who has left his mark upon the
+language so strongly. The loss to us if Pope's verse were
+to become extinct cannot readily be measured. He has
+said in the best words what we all know and feel, but
+cannot express, and has made that classical which in
+weaker hands would be commonplace. His sensibility to
+the claims of his art is exquisite, the adaptation of his
+style to his subject shows the hand of a master, and if
+these are not the highest gifts of a poet, they are gifts to
+which none but a poet can lay claim.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Some qualification may be made to these statements. Pope
+took pleasure in landscape gardening on the English plan, as
+opposed to the formality of the French and Dutch systems, and
+the design of the Prince of Wales's garden is said to have been
+copied from the poet's at Twickenham.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Elwin and Courthope's <i>Pope</i>, vol. ii. p. 160.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> See the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Elwin and Courthope's <i>Pope</i>, vol. v., p. 195.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> 'Lady Mary,' says Byron, 'was greatly to blame in that
+quarrel for having encouraged Pope.... She should have remembered
+her own line,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'"He comes too near who comes to be denied."'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> <i>Studies in English Literature</i>, p. 47.&mdash;<i>Stanford.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> Quin (1693-1766) was the famous actor, and Patterson was
+Thomson's deputy in the surveyor-generalship of the Leeward
+Isles, and ultimately his successor.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> The Earl of Peterborough, the meteor-like brilliancy of whose
+actions forms one of the most striking chapters in the history of his
+time.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> <i>Life of Pope</i>, p. 216.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> 'Pope and Swift,' says Dr. Johnson, 'had an unnatural delight
+in ideas physically impure, such as every other tongue utters
+with unwillingness, and of which every ear shrinks from the
+mention.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> Clarendon Press, Oxford.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> No doubt many distinguished foreigners who appreciated the
+beauty of the poem had read it in the original.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> Stephen's <i>Pope</i>, p. 163.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> <i>Lectures on Art</i>, p. 70, Oxford.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<h3>PRIOR, GAY, YOUNG, BLAIR, THOMSON.</h3>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">Matthew Prior
+(1664-1721).</div>
+
+<p>The ease with which the Queen Anne wits obtained office
+and rose to posts of high trust through the
+pleasant art of verse-making, is conspicuous
+in the career of Prior. His parents are unknown,
+the place of his birth is somewhat doubtful, although
+he is claimed by Wimborne-Minster, in Dorsetshire, and
+the first trustworthy facts recorded of his early career are
+that he was a Westminster scholar when the famous Dr.
+Busby, whose discipline was physical as well as mental,
+presided over the school. His father died, and his mother
+being no longer able to pay the school fees, Prior was
+placed with an uncle who kept the Rhenish Wine Tavern
+in Westminster. His seat was in the bar, and there the
+Earl of Dorset (1637-1705-6), a small poet, but a generous
+patron of poets, found the youth reading Horace, and,
+pleased with his 'parts,' sent him back to Westminster,
+whence he went up to Cambridge as a scholar at St. John's,
+the college destined a century later to receive one of the
+greatest of English poets.</p>
+
+<p>Charles Montague, afterwards Earl of Halifax (1661-1715),
+the son of a younger son of a nobleman, was also
+a Westminster scholar. He entered Trinity College in
+1679, and like Prior appears to have owed his good
+fortune to the rhymer's craft. 'At thirty,' writes Lord<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+Macaulay, 'he would gladly have given all his chances in
+life for a comfortable vicarage and a chaplain's scarf. At
+thirty-seven he was First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor
+of the Exchequer, and a Regent of the Kingdom.' The
+literary history of the Queen Anne age has many associations
+with his name. He proved a liberal patron of the wits, and
+of Pope among them, by subscribing largely to his <i>Homer</i>;
+but the poet's memory was stronger for imaginary injuries
+than for real benefits, and because Halifax had patronized
+Tickell, he figures in the Prologue to the Satires as 'full-blown
+Bufo, puffed by every quill.'</p>
+
+<p>Prior and Montague began their rhyming career early,
+and a partnership production, entitled the <i>Hind and Panther,
+transversed to the story of the Country Mouse and the City
+Mouse</i> (1687), a parody of Dryden's famous poem published
+in the same year, brought both authors into notice. At the
+age of twenty-six Prior, who had previously obtained a fellowship,
+was appointed Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague.
+After that he rose steadily to eminence, became Secretary of
+State in Ireland, and was finally appointed Ambassador at
+the French Court. High office brings its troubles, and in
+those days was not without its perils. In 1711 Prior was
+sent secretly to Paris to negotiate a peace, for which, when
+the Whigs came again into power, he was imprisoned and
+expected to lose his head. While in prison, where he remained
+for two years (1715-1717), the poet wrote <i>Alma</i>, a
+humorous and speculative poem on the relations of the soul
+and body, and when released published his <i>Poems</i> by subscription
+in a noble folio, said to be the largest-sized volume
+in the whole range of English poetry. He gained 4,000
+guineas by the publication, and with that sum and an
+estate purchased for him by Lord Harley, Prior was able
+to live in comfort. He died in September, 1721, in his
+fifty-eighth year, and was buried in Westminster Abbey,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
+under a monument for which he had had the vanity to pay
+five hundred pounds.</p>
+
+<p>The peculiar merit of Prior is better understood in our
+day than it was in his own. We read his poems solely for
+the sake of the 'lighter pieces,' which Johnson despised.
+The poet thought <i>Solomon</i> his best work, but no one who
+toils through the three books which form that poem is likely
+to agree with this estimate. Dulness pervades the work
+like an atmosphere, but it had its admirers in the last century,
+and among them was John Wesley, who, in reply to
+Johnson's complaint of its tediousness, said he should as
+soon think of calling the Second or Sixth Æneid tedious.
+In the preface to the poem Prior declares that he "had
+rather be thought a good Englishman than the best poet
+or greatest scholar that ever wrote," a passage which does
+more honour to the poet than any in the text. A far
+more popular piece was <i>Henry and Emma</i>, which even
+so fine a judge of poetry as Cowper called 'inimitable.'
+Tastes change, let us hope for the better, and possibly none
+but the greatest poets remain unaffected by time. Assuredly
+Prior does not, and <i>Henry and Emma</i> affords a
+striking illustration of the contrast between the poetical
+spirit of Prior's age and that which influences ours. The
+poem is founded on the fine ballad of the <i>Nut-Browne
+Maide</i>. The story, as originally told, is homely and
+quaint, written without apparent effort and told in 360
+lines. Prior requires considerably more than twice that
+number, and his maid and her lover, instead of using the
+simple language befitting the theme, employ the conventional
+machinery of the age, and bring Jove and Mars,
+Cupid and Venus upon the scene, with allusions to Marlborough's
+victories and to 'Anna's wondrous reign.'</p>
+
+<p><i>Alma</i>, a poem written in Hudibrastic verse, which shows
+that Prior had in a measure caught the vein of Butler, has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+some couplets familiar in quotations. He won, too, not a
+little contemporary reputation for his tales in verse, which
+are singularly coarse; but an age that tolerated Mrs. Manley
+and read the plays and novels of Aphra Behn was not likely
+to object to the grossness of Prior. Dr. Johnson would not
+admit that his poems were unfit for a lady's table, and
+Wesley, who appears to have been strangely oblivious to
+Prior's moral delinquencies, observes that his tales are the
+best told of any in the English tongue. Cowper praised
+him for his 'charming ease,' and this gift enabled him to
+write some of the most delightful occasional verses produced
+in the century. There is nothing more exquisite of
+its kind than his address, <i>To a Child of Quality</i>, written
+when the child was five years old and the poet forty, and
+one is not surprised to learn that Prior was admired by
+Thomas Moore, who more than once caught his note. A
+reader familiar with Moore and ignorant of Prior would
+without hesitation attribute the following stanzas, from
+the <i>Answer to Chloe Jealous</i>, to the Irish poet:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The god of us versemen (you know, Child), the sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">How after his journeys he sets up his rest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If at morning o'er earth 'tis his fancy to run,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">At night he declines on his Thetis's breast.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'So when I am wearied with wandering all day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To thee, my delight, in the evening I come;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No matter what beauties I saw in my way;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">They were but my visits, but thou art my home.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Then finish, dear Cloe, this pastoral war,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And let us, like Horace and Lydia, agree;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For thou art a girl as much brighter than her<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As he was a poet sublimer than me.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"The grammatical lapse in these last two lines," says Mr.
+Austin Dobson, "perhaps calls for correction, but many
+readers will probably agree with Moore (<i>Diary</i>, November,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>
+1818), 'that it is far prettier as it is.' 'Nothing,' he says
+truly, 'can be more gracefully light and gallant than this
+little poem.'"</p>
+
+<p>It was fancy and not imagination which conceived the
+following lines, but how charming is the fancy! The
+poem, which is given in a slightly abridged form, is
+addressed</p>
+
+<p class="center">'<span class="smcap">To a Lady: she refusing to continue a dispute with me,
+and leaving me in the argument.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'In the dispute whate'er I said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My heart was by my tongue belied;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in my looks you might have read<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">How much I argued on your side.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'You, far from danger as from fear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Might have sustained an open fight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For seldom your opinions err;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your eyes are always in the right.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Alas! not hoping to subdue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I only to the fight aspired;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To keep the beauteous foe in view<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Was all the glory I desired.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'But she, howe'er of victory sure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Contemns the wreath too long delayed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, armed with more immediate power,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Calls cruel silence to her aid.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Deeper to wound, she shuns the fight:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">She drops her arms, to gain the field;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Secures her conquest by her flight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And triumphs, when she seems to yield.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'So when the Parthian turned his steed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And from the hostile camp withdrew;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With cruel skill the backward reed<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He sent; and as he fled, he slew.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Wit and a ready command of verse are the characteristics
+of Prior's poetry. Both of these gifts are to be seen in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>
+lively <i>English ballad on the Taking of Namur by the King
+of Great Britain</i>, in which he travesties Boileau's <i>Ode sur
+la prise de Namur</i>. As an epigrammatist he reaped his
+advantage from a study of Martial, and in this department
+of verse Prior is often successful. If brevity be a prominent
+merit in an epigram, he sometimes excels his
+master, as, for example, in this stanza:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'To John I owed great obligation;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But John unhappily thought fit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To publish it to all the nation;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sure John and I are more than quit.'<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This is half the length of the original Latin, and what it
+loses in elegance it gains in point.</p>
+
+<p>It may be hoped that the next quotation is a libel on
+Bishop Atterbury; if so, the lines have every merit but
+truth. The epigram is on the funeral of the Duke of
+Buckingham, who died in 1721.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I have no hopes,' the duke he says, and dies;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'In sure and certain hopes,' the prelate cries:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of these two learned peers, I prithee say, man,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who is the lying knave, the priest or layman?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The duke he stands an infidel confest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'He's our dear brother,' quoth the lordly priest.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The duke, though knave, still 'brother dear,' he cries;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And who can say the reverend prelate lies?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Prior, it may be observed here, could say pointed things
+in prose as well as in verse, and nothing can be happier
+than his reply to the Frenchman's inquiry whether the
+King of England had anything to show in his palace equal
+to the paintings at Versailles illustrating the victories of
+Louis XIV: 'The monuments of my master's actions,' said
+the poet, 'are to be seen everywhere except in his own house.'</p>
+
+<p>It is always interesting to link poet with poet, and in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+relation to Prior many readers will recall the pathetic
+incident related of Sir Walter Scott when the wonderful
+intellect which had entranced the world was giving indications
+of decay. Lockhart relates how, as they were travelling
+together, a quotation from Prior led Scott to make
+another, slightly altered for the occasion, and he adds:</p>
+
+<p>'This seemed to put him into the train of Prior, and he
+repeated several striking passages both of the <i>Alma</i> and
+the <i>Solomon</i>. He was still at this when we reached a
+longish hill, and he got out to walk a little. As we climbed
+the ascent, he leaning heavily on my shoulder, we were met
+by a couple of beggars, who were, or professed to be, old
+soldiers both of Egypt and the Peninsula. One of them
+wanted a leg, which circumstance alone would have opened
+Scott's purse-strings, though, <i>ex facie</i>, a sad old blackguard;
+but the fellow had recognized his person as it happened,
+and in asking an alms bade God bless him fervently by his
+name. The mendicants went on their way, and we stood
+breathing on the knoll. Sir Walter followed them with his
+eye, and planting his stick firmly on the sod, repeated, without
+break or hesitation Prior's verses to the historian
+Mezeray. That he applied them to himself was touchingly
+obvious, and therefore I must quote them.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'"Whate'er thy countrymen have done,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By law and wit, by sword and gun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In thee is faithfully recited;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all the living world that view<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy work, give thee the praises due,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">At once instructed and delighted.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'"Yet for the fame of all these deeds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What beggar in the <i>Invalides</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With lameness broke, with blindness smitten,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wished ever decently to die,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To have been either Mezeray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or any monarch he has written?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'"It strange, dear author, yet it true is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That down from Pharamond to Louis<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All covet life, yet call it pain:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All feel the ill, yet shun the cure;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Can sense this paradox endure?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Resolve me Cambray<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> or Fontaine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'"The man in graver tragic known<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Though his best part long since was done),<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Still on the stage desires to tarry;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he who played the Harlequin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">After the jest still loads the scene,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Unwilling to retire, though weary."'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">John Gay
+(1685-1732).</div>
+
+<p>Gay, who enjoyed an unbroken friendship with the
+brotherhood of wits, and was treated by
+them like a spoilt child, was born at Barnstaple
+in 1685, and left an orphan at the age
+of ten. He was educated at the free grammar school in
+the town, and was afterwards, to his discontent, apprenticed
+to a mercer in London. He escaped from this uncongenial
+employment to be dependent on an uncle, and thus
+early exhibited his life-long disposition to rely upon others
+for support. 'Providence,' Swift writes, 'never designed
+Gay to be above two-and-twenty by his thoughtlessness and
+gullibility. He has as little foresight of age, sickness,
+poverty, or loss of admirers as a girl of fifteen.' His weakness,
+it has been said, appealed to Swift's strength, and
+Swift, Pope, and Arbuthnot were Gay's most faithful
+friends. They found something in him to laugh at and to
+love. Ladies, too, treated him with the kind of friendliness
+which has a touch of commiseration. In 1714 Gay
+was appointed secretary to Lord Clarendon, a post which
+he owed to Swift, but the death of Queen Anne in that
+year brought the Whigs into office, and destroyed the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
+poet's prospects. Prior to this he had been secretary to
+the imperious Duchess of Monmouth. He was now left
+without money or employment, and owed much to the
+generosity of Pope. It was Gay's lot 'in suing long to
+bide,' to be always hoping, and nearly always disappointed.
+'He seems,' says his latest biographer, 'to have begun his
+career under the impression that it was somebody's duty to
+provide for him in the world, and this impression clung to
+him through nearly the whole of a lifetime.'<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> Ten years
+before his death he was eagerly looking to others for support.
+Writing to Swift, he says: 'I lodge at present in
+Burlington House, and have received many civilities from
+many great men, but very few real benefits. They wonder
+at each other for not providing for me, and I wonder at
+them all.'</p>
+
+<p>Gay's first poem of any mark was <i>The Shepherd's Week</i>
+(1714), six burlesque pastorals, a subject proposed to him
+by Pope, who was then smarting from the praise Philips
+had received in <i>The Guardian</i>. But if Pope meant Gay to
+poke his fun at Philips in <i>The Shepherd's Week</i>, he must
+have been disappointed, for the poems were accepted as
+genuine bucolics, and although humorously absurd, are,
+to say the least, more true to rustic life than the pastorals
+either of Philips or of Pope. <i>The Shepherd's Week</i> was
+followed by <i>Trivia</i> (1715), a piece suggested by Swift's
+<i>City Shower</i>. It is one of Gay's most notable productions,
+not as a poem, but as a vivid description of the streets
+of London nearly two hundred years ago. The great reputation
+he obtained as the author of <i>The Fables</i> (1727),
+and still more of <i>The Beggar's Opera</i> (1728), the idea of
+which was suggested to Gay by Swift, survived him for
+some years. <i>The Fables</i> were written for and dedicated to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+the youthful Duke of Cumberland, who is asked to "accept
+the moral lay, and in these tales mankind survey." There
+is skill and ingenuity in the poems, but higher merit they
+cannot boast, and young readers are likely to prefer the
+illustrations which generally accompany <i>The Fables</i> to the
+letterpress. Many of Gay's allusions are beyond the apprehension
+of the young, and have a political flavour. <i>The
+Beggar's Opera</i> was intended as a burlesque of the Italian
+opera, which had been long the laughing-stock of men of
+letters, and as the play was thought to have political significance,
+and the character of Macheath to be a portrait of
+Walpole, it was received with enthusiasm, and acted in
+London for about sixty nights. So popular did the opera
+become, that ladies carried about the songs on their fans.</p>
+
+<p>Eight years before, Gay had published his poems by
+subscription, and in those happy days for versemen had
+gained £1,000 by the venture. He put the money into
+South Sea stock, and lost it all. For <i>The Beggar's
+Opera</i> he received about £800. It was followed by <i>Polly</i>,
+a play of the same coarse character, which, for political
+reasons, was not allowed to be acted. The result was
+that it had a large sale, and put money in Gay's purse.
+Ten thousand five hundred copies are said to have been
+printed in one year, and the £1,200 realized by the sale
+were very wisely retained for the poet's use by the Duke
+of Queensberry, under whose roof he had at length found
+a warm nest. To the student Gay is chiefly interesting as
+the only noteworthy poet of the period, south of the Tweed,
+gifted with a lyrical capacity. Two or three of his songs
+and ballads, and especially <i>Black-Eyed Susan</i>, have a charm
+beyond the reach of the mechanical versifier. But the art
+of song is at a low level even in the hands of Gay. The
+lyric which the Elizabethan and Jacobean poets loved so
+well, and of which the present century has produced speci<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>mens
+to be matched only by Shakespeare, may be said to
+have been lost to English poetry for the first half of the
+last century, since neither Prior's verse, delightful though
+it be, nor the songs of Gay, have enough of the poetical
+element to form exceptions to this statement.</p>
+
+<p>In his <i>Tales</i> he follows Prior in grossness, while inferior
+to him in art. Like the greater number of the Queen
+Anne poets, Gay flatters with a free hand. In an epistle
+addressed to Lintot, the bookseller, he declares that
+Anacreon lives once more in Sheffield, and Waller in Granville,
+that Buckingham's verse will last to distant time;
+while Ovid sings again in Addison, and 'Homer's <i>Iliad</i>
+shines in his <i>Campaign</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>One of the liveliest and most graceful of Gay's poems is
+addressed to Pope 'On his having finished his translation
+of Homer's <i>Iliad</i>.' It is called <i>A Welcome from Greece</i>, and
+describes the friends who assembled to greet the poet on
+his return to England.</p>
+
+<p>Three stanzas from the Epistle shall be quoted:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Oh, what a concourse swarms on yonder quay!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The sky re-echoes with new shouts of joy;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By all this show, I ween 'tis Lord Mayor's day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I hear the voice of trumpet and hautboy&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No, now I see them near.&mdash;Oh, these are they<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who come in crowds to welcome thee from Troy.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hail to the bard, whom long as lost we mourned<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From siege, from battle, and from storm returned!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'What lady's that to whom he gently bends?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who knows not her? Ah! those are Wortley's eyes:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How art thou honoured, numbered with her friends!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For she distinguishes the good and wise.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sweet-tongued Murray near her side attends;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Now to my heart the glance of Howard flies;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now Hervey, fair of face, I mark full well,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With thee Youth's youngest daughter, sweet Lepell.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I see two lovely sisters hand in hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The fair-haired Martha and Teresa brown;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Madge Bellenden, the tallest of the land;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And smiling Mary, soft and fair as down.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yonder I see the cheerful Duchess stand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For friendship, zeal, and blithesome humours known;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whence that loud shout in such a hearty strain?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why, all the Hamiltons are in her train!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Gay's love of good living was known to all his friends.
+'As the French philosopher,' Congreve wrote, 'used to
+prove his existence by <i>cogito ergo sum</i>, the greatest proof
+of Gay's existence is <i>edit ergo est</i>.' For a long time his
+health compelled him to give up wine, and he tells Swift
+that he had also left off verse-making, 'for I really
+think that man must be a bold writer who trusts to
+wit without it.' He was dispirited, he told Swift not
+long before his death, for want of a pursuit, and found
+'indolence and idleness the most tiresome things in the
+world.'</p>
+
+<p>Gay died in 1732 at the Duke of Queensberry's house,
+and Pope grieved that one of his nearest and longest ties
+was broken. He was interred, to quote Arbuthnot's words,
+'as a peer of the realm,' in Westminster Abbey. The
+superficial character of the poet may be seen in his couplet
+transcribed upon the monument:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Life is a jest, and all things show it;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I thought so once, and now I know it.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Edward Young
+(1684-1765).</div>
+
+<p>Gay's moderate gift of song was withheld from the
+famous author of the <i>Night Thoughts</i>. Yet
+Young was vain enough to think that he
+possessed it, and wrote a patriotic ode
+called <i>Ocean</i>, preceded by an elaborate essay on lyric
+poetry. He also produced <i>Imperium Pelagi</i> (1729), <i>A Naval
+Lyric written in Imitation of Pindar's spirit</i>. The lyric,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+which was travestied by Fielding in his <i>Tom Thumb</i>,<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> reads
+like a burlesque, and badly treated though Pindar was by
+the versemen of the last century, there is perhaps not
+one of them who mocks him more outrageously than
+Young. He says that this ode is an original, and no critic
+is likely to dispute the assertion.</p>
+
+<p>Young was born in 1684 at Upham, near Winchester, his
+father, who was afterwards Dean of Sarum, being at that
+time the rector of the village. Edward was placed upon
+the foundation at Winchester College, and remained there
+until he was eighteen. He was then sent up to New College,
+and afterwards removed to Corpus. At the age of
+twenty-seven he was nominated to a law fellowship at All
+Souls, and took his degree of B.C.L. and his doctor's degree
+some years later. Characteristically enough he began
+his poetical career by <i>An Epistle to Lord Lansdowne</i> (1712),
+who is praised for his heavenly numbers, and is said to
+have been born "to make the muse immortal." His next
+poem of any consequence, <i>The Last Day</i>, written in heroic
+couplets, and filling three books, is correct, or fairly so, in
+versification, and execrable in taste. Young, it may be
+supposed, wished to produce a sense of solemnity in
+the treatment of his theme, and he does so by lamenting
+that the very land 'where the Stuarts filled an awful
+throne' will in that day be forgotten. The want of
+taste which so often deforms Young's verse is also seen
+in the imagery he employs to illustrate the fear which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
+even good men may have on appearing before that 'dread
+tribunal.'</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Thus the chaste bridegroom, when the priest draws nigh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beholds his blessing with a trembling eye;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Feels doubtful passions throb in every vein,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in his cheeks are mingled joy and pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lest still some intervening chance should rise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Leap forth at once, and snatch the golden prize,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Inflame his woe, by bringing it so late,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And stab him in the crisis of his fate.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>His next poem, <i>The Force of Religion, or Vanquished
+Love</i>, was suggested by the execution of Lady Jane Grey
+and Lord Guildford, a subject chosen for a tragedy by John
+Banks (1694), by Rowe in 1715, and treated with considerable
+dramatic power in our own day by Ross Neil. In
+Young's hands this fine theme becomes a rhetorical exercise
+without poetry and without pathos. A few lines will
+suffice to show the style of the poem. Jane and Dudley, it
+must be premised, are imprisoned in a gloomy hall:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'What can they do? They fix their mournful eyes&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then Guildford, thus abruptly: "I despise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An empire lost; I fling away the crown;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Numbers have laid that bright delusion down;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But where's the Charles, or Dioclesian, where,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could quit the blooming, wedded, weeping fair?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh! to dwell ever on thy lip! to stand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In full possession of thy snowy hand!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thro' the unclouded crystal of thine eye<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The heavenly treasures of thy mind to spy!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till rapture reason happily destroys,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And my soul wanders through immortal joys!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Give me the world, and ask me, where's my bliss?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I clasp thee to my breast and answer, this."'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Verse of this quality, which might be amply quoted, is
+of interest to the student of literature, since in Young's
+day it passed current for poetry. But in accepting his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+claims as a poet the faith of the age must have been often
+strained.</p>
+
+<p>Walpole, who despised the whole tribe of poets, and
+cared nothing for literature, had by some strange chance
+awarded to Young a pension of £200 a-year, whereupon in
+a piece called <i>The Instalment</i>, addressed to Sir Robert,
+Britain is called upon to behold</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'His azure ribbon and his radiant star,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and the poet's breast 'glows with grateful fire' as he exclaims:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The streams of royal bounty turned by thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Refresh the dry domains of poesy.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My fortune shows, when arts are Walpole's care,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What slender worth forbids us to despair:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be this thy partial smile from censure free,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Twas meant for merit, though it fell on me.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Following in the steps of George Sandys, but with inferior
+power, and in a less racy diction, Young performed
+the vain task of paraphrasing part of the Book of Job, one
+of the noblest poems the world possesses, and translated in
+our authorized version in language not to be surpassed for
+dignity and simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>In 1719 his <i>Busiris</i> was performed. <i>The Revenge</i>, a
+better known tragedy, written on the French model,
+followed in 1721, and kept the stage for some time.
+Seven years later <i>The Brothers</i>, his third and last tragedy,
+was in rehearsal, but the poet, who had lately taken holy
+orders, withdrew it at the last moment. These tragedies,
+which are full of sound and fury, are destitute of tragic
+power. <i>The Revenge</i>, in which Zanga acts the part of an
+Iago, has some forcible scenes, and so, despite much rant
+and fustian, has <i>Busiris</i>. Plenty of blood is shed, of
+course, and the heroines of the plays die by their own
+hands. Tragedy is supposed to exercise an elevating in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>fluence,
+but to counteract this happy result, <i>Busiris</i> and
+<i>The Revenge</i> are followed by indecent epilogues, in which
+the speakers jest at the feelings which the plays may have
+excited. For <i>The Brothers</i> Young wrote his own epilogue.
+It is decent and dull. His genius was better fitted for
+satire than for the drama, and <i>The Universal Passion</i>, which
+consists of seven satires published in a collected form in 1728,
+brought him reputation and money. The poet Crabbe was
+never more surprised in his life than when John Murray
+(the famous 'My Murray' of Byron) gave him £3,000
+for the copyright of his poems; Young received the same
+sum for work immeasurably inferior in value, and in a
+less legitimate way. Two thousand pounds, it is stated,
+was a gift from the Duke of Grafton, who said it was the
+best bargain he ever made, as the satires were worth
+£4,000. Young, it will be seen, preceded Pope as a
+satirist. He is more generous and humane, and has
+none of the venomous attacks on living persons by which
+Pope added piquancy to his verse. But he is a careless
+writer, and for the most part lacks the exquisite precision,
+the subtle wit, the rhythmical felicity, which make the
+couplets of Pope so memorable. <i>The Dunciad</i>, the <i>Moral
+Essays</i>, and the <i>Imitations</i> are read by all lovers of literature,
+but <i>The Universal Passion</i> is forgotten. Of the six
+satires, the two on women are the most spirited, and may
+be compared with Pope's on the same subject. The different
+foibles, and faults worse than foibles of the women of
+that day are exhibited with a satirist's licence, and occasionally
+with a Pope-like terseness. Take the following,
+for example:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'There is no woman where there's no reserve,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And 'tis on plenty your poor lovers starve.'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Few to good breeding make a just pretence;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Good breeding is the blossom of good sense.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'A shameless woman is the worst of men.'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Naked in nothing should a woman be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But veil her very wit with modesty.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It was not until he was nearly fifty that Young, disappointed
+of the preferment he sought, took holy orders,
+and in 1730 accepted the college living of Welwyn, in
+Herts, which he held till his death.</p>
+
+<p>In the following year the poet married Lady Elizabeth
+Lee, a daughter of the Earl of Lichfield, a union that
+lasted ten years. One son was the offspring of this marriage.
+Lady Elizabeth had a daughter by a former marriage,
+who was married to Mr. Temple, a son of Lord Palmerston,
+and shortly before her own death she lost both daughter
+and son-in-law, who, there can be little doubt, are the
+Philander and Narcissa of the <i>Night Thoughts</i>, the earlier
+books of which were published in 1742. This once celebrated
+poem, written in his old age, is the one effort of
+Young's genius that has enjoyed a great popularity. It
+suited well an age which, while far from moral, delighted
+in moral treatises and in didactic verse. In the <i>Night
+Thoughts</i> Young remembers that he is a clergyman, and
+puts on his gown and bands. He puts on also his singing
+robes, and shows the reader what none of his earlier poems
+prove, that he is in the presence of a poet.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Night Thoughts</i> is remarkable in its finest passages
+for a strong, but sombre imagination, and for a command
+of his instrument that puts Young at times nearly on a
+level with the greatest masters of blank verse. On this
+height, however, he does not stay long. He is rich in great
+thoughts, but they do not fall unconsciously, as it were,
+while the poet pursues his argument. They are aphorisms
+uttered generally in single lines which are apt to break the
+continuity of the poem and to injure the harmony of its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
+versification. The theme of Life, Death, and Immortality
+is not a narrow one, and affords ample space for imaginative
+treatment. Young's treatment of it is too often declamatory;
+he drops the poet in the rhetorician and the
+wit. There is much of the false sublime in the poem,
+and much that reveals the hollow character of the writer.
+The first book is the finest, sparkling with felicitous expressions
+and rising frequently to true poetry. The
+poetical quality of that book, however, is lessened by the
+author's passion for antithesis. The merit of the following
+passage, for example, is not due to poetical inspiration:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How complicate, how wonderful is man!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How passing wonder He, who made him such!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who centered in our make such strange extremes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From different natures, marvellously mixed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Connexion exquisite of distant worlds!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Distinguished link in being's endless chain!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Midway from nothing to the Deity;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A beam etherial, sullied, and absorbt!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though sullied and dishonoured still divine!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dim miniature of greatness absolute!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An heir of glory! a frail child of dust!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Helpless immortal! insect infinite!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A worm! a god!&mdash;I tremble at myself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in myself am lost. At home a stranger,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wondering at her own: How reason reels!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O what a miracle to man is man!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Triumphantly distressed! what joy! what dread!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alternately transported and alarmed!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What can preserve my life? or what destroy?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Legions of angels can't confine me there.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The opening of the ninth and last book will give a more
+favourable illustration of Young's style:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'As when a traveller, a long day past<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In painful search of what he cannot find,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At night's approach, content with the next cot,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There ruminates awhile, his labour lost;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then cheers his heart with what his fate affords,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And chants his sonnet to deceive the time,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till the due season calls him to repose;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus I, long-travelled in the ways of men,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And dancing with the rest the giddy maze<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where Disappointment smiles at Hope's career;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Warned by the languor of life's evening ray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At length have housed me in an humble shed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where, future wandering banished from my thought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And waiting, patient, the sweet hour of rest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I chase the moments with a serious song.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Song soothes our pains, and age has pains to soothe.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>While moralizing on man's mortality Young is seldom a
+cheerful monitor, he dwells with too great persistence on
+the incidents of death and of bodily corruption, too little
+on life with which we have more to do than with death.
+Thus with a strange perversion he exclaims:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'This is the desart, this the solitude,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How populous, how vital, is the grave!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This is creation's melancholy vault,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The land of apparitions, empty shades!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All, all on earth is shadow, all beyond<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is substance; the reverse is folly's creed.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and harping on the same theme in the ninth book,
+says:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'What is the world itself? Thy world&mdash;a grave.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where is the dust that has not been alive?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The spade, the plough, disturb our ancestors;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From human mould we reap our daily bread;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The globe around earth's hollow surface shakes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And is the ceiling of her sleeping sons.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O'er devastation we blind revels keep;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whole buried towns support the dancer's heel.'<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Robert Blair
+(1699-1746).</div>
+
+<p>On laying down the <i>Night Thoughts</i> the student may be
+advised to read Blair's <i>Grave</i>, a poem in
+less than 800 lines of blank verse, composed
+in a fresher and more rigorous style than the
+far larger work of Young, and rather moulded, as Mr.
+Saintsbury has observed, 'upon dramatic than upon purely
+poetical models.' <i>The Grave</i>, which was written before the
+publication of the <i>Night Thoughts</i>,<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> abounds with poetical
+felicities, and is pregnant with suggestions that seize the
+imagination, and appeal alike to the intellect and the
+heart. The brevity of the piece is in its favour; there is
+not a line that flags.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Tell us, ye dead! will none of you, in pity<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To those you left behind, disclose the secret?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh! that some courteous ghost would blab it out,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What 'tis you are and we must shortly be.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I've heard that souls departed have sometimes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forewarned men of their death. 'Twas kindly done<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To knock and give the alarm. But what means<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This stinted charity? 'Tis but lame kindness<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That does its work by halves. Why might you not<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tell us what 'tis to die? Do the strict laws<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of your society forbid your speaking<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon a point so nice?&mdash;I'll ask no more:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sullen, like lamps in sepulchres, your shine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Enlightens but yourselves. Well, 'tis no matter;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A very little time will clear up all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And make us learn'd as you are, and as close.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p>
+<p>Blair, who was a Scotch clergyman, wrote also an <i>Elegy
+in Memory of William Law</i>, a Professor of Moral Philosophy
+in Edinburgh, whose daughter he married. He writes
+in a masculine and homely style. His imagery is often
+more powerful than pleasing, but some of his similes win
+attention by their beauty. For example:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Look how the fair one weeps! the conscious tears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stand thick as dewdrops on the bells of flowers."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Among the victims claimed by the grave is</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">'The long demurring maid,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose lonely unappropriated sweets<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Smiled, like yon knot of cowslips on the cliff,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not to be come at by the willing hand.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And the death of a good man is pictured in this musical
+couplet:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Night dews fall not more gently to the ground<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor weary worn out winds expire so soft.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Cowper, referring to the poets of his century, said that
+every warbler had Pope's tune by heart. But if they
+had the tune by heart, many of them did not make it a
+vehicle for their verse, and among these are poets of the
+weight and worth of Thomson and Young, of Gray and
+Collins. Poets of a minor order, too, such as Somerville,
+Armstrong, Glover, Shenstone, Akenside, and John Dyer,
+either did not use the heroic distich which Pope crowned
+with such honour, or used it in their least significant poems.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">James Thomson
+(1700-1748).</div>
+
+<p>Thomson's influence, though less visible than Pope's,
+was probably as great. It was felt by
+the poets who loved Nature, and had no
+turn for satire. To pass to him from
+Prior, Gay, and Young is to leave the town for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
+country. English poetry owes much to the author
+of <i>The Seasons</i>, who was the first among the poets of
+his century to bring men back to 'Nature, the Vicar of
+the Almighty Lord.' He could not, indeed, shake off
+altogether the fetters of the conventional diction current in
+his day, and his style is often turgid and verbose. But
+Thomson had, to use a phrase of his own, 'a fine flame of
+imagination,' and when brought face to face with Nature
+he has the inspiration of a poet who discerns the lessons
+which Nature is ready to teach.</p>
+
+<p>James Thomson was born at Ednam, on the banks of
+the Tweed, on September 11th, 1700, but his father removed
+to Jedburgh shortly afterwards, and there the future poet
+gained his first impression of rural scenes. He began to
+rhyme in boyhood, but, unlike most young poets, had the
+good sense to make an annual bonfire of his youthful
+effusions. At the early age of fifteen he was sent to the
+university at Edinburgh, his father, who was a Presbyterian
+minister, wishing that his son should follow the same vocation.
+But Thomson was not destined to 'wag his head in
+a pulpit.' He had a friend at this time in David Mallet,
+a minor poet of more prudence than principle, and when
+Mallet had the good fortune to gain a tutorship in London,
+his companion also started for the metropolis in search of
+money and fame. It was a desperate venture, and the
+young poet's difficulties were increased by the loss of his
+letters of introduction. Scotchmen however have always
+countrymen willing to help them, and Thomson whose
+pedigree on the mother's side connected him with the
+famous house of Home, found temporary employment as
+tutor to a child of Lord Binning who belonged by marriage
+to the same family. Afterwards he resided with Millan, a
+bookseller at Charing Cross, and then having finished
+<i>Winter</i> (1726), on which he had been at work for some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>
+time, he sold it to the publisher for three guineas. Before
+long it was read and warmly praised by Aaron Hill, then
+a man of mark in the world of letters. Sir Spencer
+Compton, the Speaker, to whom the poem was dedicated,
+gave the poet twenty guineas for the compliment; Rundle,
+the Bishop of Derry, and several ladies of rank cheered
+him with their praise, and Thomson's success was assured.
+It was the age of patrons, and he practised without shame
+and without discrimination the art of flattery. Each book
+of <i>The Seasons</i> had a dedication, and the honour was one
+for which some kind of payment was expected. <i>Summer</i>
+appeared in 1727 and <i>Spring</i> in the year following. In
+1729 the appearance of <i>Britannia</i> showed the popularity of
+the poet and of his theme, for three editions were sold. It
+is a distinctly party poem, and contains an attack upon
+Walpole&mdash;whom he had previously praised as the 'most
+illustrious of patriots'&mdash;for submitting to indignities from
+Spain. The British Lion roars loudly in it, but there is
+more of fustian in the piece than of true patriotism. 'How
+dares,' the poet exclaims, 'the proud Iberian rouse to wrath
+the masters of the main:'</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Who told him that the big incumbent war<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would not ere this have rolled his trembling ports<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In smoky ruin? and his guilty stores,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Won by the ravage of a butchered world,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet unatoned, sunk in the swallowing deep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or led the glittering prize into the Thames?'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In February, 1729-30, Thomson's tragedy of <i>Sophonisba</i>,
+a subject previously chosen by Marston (1606), and by Lee
+(1676), was acted at Drury Lane. The play was dedicated
+to the queen, and on the opening night the house was
+crowded, but the success of the piece was slight. Thomson's
+genius was not dramatic, and while his characters declaim,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>
+they do not act. His next play, <i>Agamemnon</i> (1738),
+was not lost for want of labour or of friends. Pope
+appeared in the theatre on the first night, and was greeted
+with applause. The Prince and Princess of Wales were
+present on another occasion, but the play did not live
+long. His third attempt, <i>Edward and Eleanora</i>, was prohibited
+by the Lord Chamberlain, since it was supposed to
+praise the Prince of Wales at the expense of the Court. In
+1740 the <i>Masque of Alfred</i>, by Thomson and Mallet, was
+performed. <i>Tancred and Sigismunda</i> followed in 1745, and
+this tragedy, in which Garrick played the leading part, had
+at the time a considerable measure of success. The plot is
+more interesting than that of <i>Sophonisba</i>, and the characters
+are more life-like. Despite its effusive sentiment,
+Garrick's splendid acting would, no doubt, make the
+tragedy effective on the stage, but it does not add to the
+literary reputation of the poet. <i>Coriolanus</i>, Thomson's
+last drama, was not performed upon the stage until the
+year after his death.</p>
+
+<p>Voltaire, who had met Thomson and liked him&mdash;the
+liking, indeed, seemed to be universal&mdash;praised his tragedies
+for being 'elegantly writ.' 'It may be,' he says,
+'that his heroes are neither moving nor busy enough, but
+taking him all in all, methinks he has the highest claim to
+the greatest esteem.' The value of Voltaire's criticism of
+an English dramatist is best appreciated by remembering
+his ignorant judgment of Shakespeare.</p>
+
+<p>Thomson's laurels were gained in another field of poetry.
+On the production of <i>Autumn</i> in 1730, <i>The Seasons</i> in
+its complete form was published by subscription in quarto.
+The four books, as we have already said, appeared at
+different times, <i>Winter</i> being the first in order and <i>Autumn</i>
+the latest. The Hymn with which the poem concludes
+may be compared, and will not greatly suffer in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>
+comparison, with Adam's morning hymn in the fifth book
+of <i>Paradise Lost</i>, and with Coleridge's <i>Hymn in the Valley
+of Chamouni</i>. Like them it is raised, to use the poet's own
+words, to an 'Almighty Father.' A brief extract shall
+be given:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'His praise, ye brooks, attune, ye trembling rills;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And let me catch it as I muse along.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye headlong torrents, rapid, and profound;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye softer floods, that lead the humid maze<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Along the vale; and thou, majestic main,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A secret world of wonders in thyself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sound His stupendous praise, whose greater voice<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or bids you roar, or bids your roarings fall.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soft roll your incense, herbs, and fruits, and flowers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In mingled clouds to Him, whose sun exalts,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil paints.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye forests bend, ye harvests wave, to Him;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Breathe your still song into the reaper's heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As home he goes beneath the joyous moon.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Great source of day! best image here below<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of thy Creator, ever pouring wide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From world to world, the vital ocean round,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On Nature write with every beam His praise.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The thunder rolls: be hushed the prostrate world;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While cloud to cloud returns the solemn hymn.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bleat out afresh, ye hills; ye mossy rocks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Retain the sound: the broad responsive low,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye valleys, raise; for the Great Shepherd reigns,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And His unsuffering kingdom yet will come.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Swift complains that the <i>Seasons</i>, being all descriptive,
+nothing is doing, a defect inseparable from the subject.
+But the work has a poet's best gift&mdash;imagination&mdash;and a
+poet's instinct for apprehending the charm of what is
+minute in Nature, as well as of what is grand.</p>
+
+<p>Thomson has been called the naturalist's poet, and
+Hartley Coleridge observes that he is 'a perfect reservoir<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
+of natural images.' In his account of what he had learnt
+only by report he depends sometimes on the ignorant
+traditions of the country people; but in describing what
+he observes with the bodily eye, and with the eye of the
+mind, he is faithful to what he sees, and to what he perceives.
+No Dutch painter can be more exact and accurate
+than Thomson in the delineation of familiar scenes,
+and of animal life. In illustration of this gift, which
+Cowper shares with him, a scene, not to be surpassed
+for truthfulness of description, shall be quoted from
+<i>Winter</i>:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Through the hushed air the whitening shower descends,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At first thin-wavering; till at last the flakes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fall broad and wide and fast, dimming the day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a continual flow. The cherished fields<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Put on their winter robe of purest white.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Along the mazy current. Low the woods<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bow their hoar head; and ere the languid sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Faint from the west, emits his evening ray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Earth's universal face, deep-hid and chill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is one wild dazzling waste, that buries wide<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The works of man. Drooping, the labourer-ox<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stands covered o'er with snow, and then demands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tamed by the cruel season, crowd around<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The winnowing store, and claim the little boon<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which Providence assigns them. One alone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The redbreast, sacred to the household gods,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wisely regardful of th' embroiling sky,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In joyless fields and thorny thickets, leaves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His annual visit. Half afraid, he first<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Against the window beats; then brisk, alights<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eyes all the smiling family askance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till more familiar grown, the table-crumbs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though timorous of heart and hard beset<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By death in various forms, dark snares, and dogs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And more unpitying men, the garden seeks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Urged on by fearless want. The bleating kind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With looks of dumb despair; then, sad-dispersed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dig for the withered herb through heaps of snow.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Thomson loves also to paint the landscape on a broad
+scale, and though his diction is sometimes too florid, he
+generally satisfies the imagination, as, for instance, in the
+splendid description in <i>Summer</i> of a sand-storm in the
+desert.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">'Breathed hot<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From all the boundless furnace of the sky,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the wide, glittering waste of burning sand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A suffocating wind the pilgrim smites<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With instant death. Patient of thirst and toil,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Son of the desert! even the camel feels,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shot through his withered heart, the fiery blast.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or from the black-red ether, bursting broad,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sallies the sudden whirlwind. Straight the sands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Commoved around, in gathering eddies play;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nearer and nearer still they darkening come;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till with the general all-involving storm<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swept up, the whole continuous wilds arise;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And by their noonday fount dejected thrown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or sunk at night in sad disastrous sleep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beneath descending hills, the caravan<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is buried deep. In Cairo's crowded streets<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The impatient merchant, wondering, waits in vain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Mecca saddens at the long delay.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The <i>Seasons</i> was at one time, and for many years the
+most popular volume of poetry in the country. It was
+to be found in every cottage, and passages from the poem
+were familiar to every school-boy. The appreciation of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>
+the work was more affectionate than critical, and Thomson's
+faults were sometimes mistaken for beauties; but
+the popularity of the <i>Seasons</i> was a healthy sign, and the
+poem, a forerunner of Cowper's <i>Task</i>, brought into
+vigorous life, feelings and sympathies that had been long
+dormant.</p>
+
+<p>Pope, who is twice mentioned in the poem, took a great
+interest in its progress through the press. Thomson consulted
+him frequently, and accepted many of his suggestions,
+while apparently retaining at all times an independent
+judgment. To the familiar episode of 'the lovely
+young Lavinia' the following graceful passage is said, but
+on very doubtful authority to have been added by Pope.<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a>
+The first line, given for the sake of the context, is from
+Thomson's pen:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Thoughtless of beauty, she was Beauty's self,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Recluse amid the close-embowering woods;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As in the hollow breast of Apennine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beneath the shelter of encircling hills,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A myrtle rises, far from human eye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And breathes its balmy fragrance o'er the wild;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So flourished, blooming and unseen by all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sweet Lavinia; till, at length, compelled<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By strong necessity's supreme command<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With smiling patience in her looks she went<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To glean Palemon's fields.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Thomson had now gained the highest mark of his fame,
+and, like Pope, had won it in a few years. Nearly two
+years of foreign travel followed, the poet having obtained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
+the post of governor to a son of the Solicitor-General. The
+fruit of this tour was a long poem in blank verse on <i>Liberty</i>,
+which probably gave him infinite labour, but his ascent
+upon this occasion of what he calls 'the barren, but delightful
+mountain of Parnassus,' was labour lost. It is
+enough to say of <i>Liberty</i>, that it contains more than three
+thousand lines of unreadable blank verse. Sinecures were
+the rewards of genius in Thomson's day, and he was made
+Secretary of Briefs in the Court of Chancery. He took a
+cottage at Richmond, within an easy walk of Pope, and the
+two poets met often and lived amicably.</p>
+
+<p>Thomson did not enjoy his official fortune long, for his
+patron died, and though he might have kept his post had
+he applied to the Lord Chancellor, in whose gift it was,
+he appears to have been too lazy to do so. His friend
+Lyttelton in this emergency introduced him to the Prince
+of Wales, who, on learning that his affairs 'were in a more
+poetical posture than formerly,' gave him a pension of
+£100 a year. There was no certainty in a gift of this
+nature, and in about ten years it was withdrawn.</p>
+
+<p><i>The Castle of Indolence</i> (1748) was the latest labour of
+Thomson's life, and in the judgment of many critics takes
+precedence of <i>The Seasons</i> in poetical merit. This verdict
+may be questioned, but the poem, written in the Spenserian
+stanza, has a soothing beauty and an enchanting
+felicity of expression which show the poet's genius in a
+new light. It is unlike any poetry of that age, and when
+compared with <i>The Seasons</i>, the verse, as Wordsworth
+justly says, 'is more harmonious and the diction more
+pure.' All the imagery of the poem is adopted to the
+vague and sleepy action of the characters represented in
+it. It is a veritable poet's dream, which carries the
+reader in its earliest stanzas into 'a pleasing land of
+drowsy-head:'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">'In lowly dale, fast by a river's side,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With woody hill o'er hill encompassed round,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A most enchanting wizard did abide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Than whom a fiend more fell is nowhere found.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">It was, I ween, a lovely spot of ground;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And there a season atween June and May<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Half prankt with Spring, with Summer half embrowned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A listless climate made, where, sooth to say,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No living wight could work, ne carèd even for play.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There are verbal inspirations in a great poet which satisfy
+the ear, capture the imagination, and live in the memory
+for ever. Milton's pages are studded with them like stars;
+Gray has a few, Wordsworth many, and Keats some not to
+be surpassed for witchery. Of such poetically suggestive
+lines Thomson has his share, and although it seems unfair
+to remove them from their context, the excision may be
+made in a few cases, since they show not only that a new
+poet had appeared in an age of prose, but a poet of a new
+order, whose inspiration was felt by his successors. How
+poetically imaginative is Thomson's imagery of the 'meek-eyed
+morn, mother of dews;' of</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Ships dim discovered dropping from the clouds;'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>of</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Autumn nodding o'er the yellow plain;'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>of the summer wind</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Sweeping with shadowy gust the fields of corn;'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and of the Hebrid-Isles</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Placed far amid the melancholy main,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>a line which may have suggested the lovelier verse of
+Wordsworth descriptive of the cuckoo:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Breaking the silence of the seas<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Among the farthest Hebrides.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Thomson did not live long after the publication of <i>The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>
+Castle of Indolence</i>. A cold caught upon the river led to a
+fever, which ended fatally on August 27th, 1748. He had for
+some years been in love with a Miss Young, the 'Amanda'
+of his very feeble love lyrics, and her marriage is said to
+have hastened his death. Men, however, do not die for love
+at the mature age of forty-nine, and as Thomson was 'more
+fat than bard beseems,' and was not always temperate in
+his habits, constitutional causes are more likely to have led
+to the poet's death than Amanda's cruelty.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Johnson says somewhere that the further authors
+keep apart from each other the better, and the literary
+squabbles of the last century afforded him good ground
+for the remark. It is to Thomson's credit that, like Goldsmith
+twenty-six years later, he died, leaving behind him
+many friends and not a single enemy. His fame rests
+upon two poems, <i>The Seasons</i> and <i>The Castle of Indolence</i>,
+and on a song which has gained a national reputation.
+Apart from <i>Rule Britannia</i>, which appeared originally
+in the <i>Masque of Alfred</i> and is spirited rather than poetical,
+his attempts to write lyrical poetry resulted in failure; but
+from his own niche in the Temple of Fame time is not
+likely to dislodge Thomson.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> See <i>Martialis Epigrammata</i>, book v. lii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> Fénelon was Archbishop of Cambray.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> <i>The Poetical Works of Gay</i>, edited, with Life and Notes, by
+John Underhill, 2 vols.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I'll swim through seas; I'll ride upon the clouds;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll dig the earth; I'll blow out every fire;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll rave; I'll rant; I'll rise; I'll rush; I'll war;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fierce as the man whom smiling dolphins bore<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the prosaic to poetic shore.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll tear the scoundrel into twenty pieces.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>'The reader,' Fielding adds in a note, 'may see all the beauties
+of this speech in a late ode called a <i>Naval Lyric</i>.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> Written but not published. The earlier books of the <i>Night
+Thoughts</i> appeared in 1742, the <i>Grave</i> in 1743, but in a letter dated
+Feb. 25th, 1741-2, Blair in transmitting the MS. of the poem to a
+friend states that the greater portion of it was composed several
+years before his ordination ten years previously. Southey states
+that Blair's <i>Grave</i> is the only poem he could call to mind composed
+in imitation of the <i>Night Thoughts</i>, but the style as well as
+the date contradicts this judgment.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> The tradition is founded on a volume in the British Museum
+containing MS. corrections supposed to be in Pope's handwriting.
+It is now, however, the opinion of experts that the writing is not
+Pope's. If he be the author, it is the only example of blank verse
+which we have from his pen.</p></div>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<h3>MINOR POETS.</h3>
+
+<p class="hangindent">Sir Samuel Garth&mdash;Ambrose Philips&mdash;John Philips&mdash;Nicholas
+Rowe&mdash;Aaron Hill&mdash;Thomas Parnell&mdash;Thomas Tickell&mdash;William
+Somerville&mdash;John Dyer&mdash;William Shenstone&mdash;Mark Akenside&mdash;David
+Mallet&mdash;Scottish Song-Writers.</p>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">Sir Samuel Garth
+(1660-1717-18).</div>
+
+<p>In Pope's day even the medical profession was influenced
+by party feeling, and Samuel Garth became
+known as the most famous Whig
+physician, but his friendships were not
+confined to one side, and he appears to have been universally
+beloved.</p>
+
+<p>Garth came of a Yorkshire family, and was born in 1660.
+He was admitted a Fellow of the College of Physicians in
+1693, gained a large practice, and is said to have been very
+benevolent to the poor. The <i>Dispensary</i> (1699) is a satire
+called forth by the opposition of the Society of Apothecaries,
+to an edict of the College, and is a mock-heroic poem, which
+the quarrel made so effective at the time that it passed
+through several editions. The merit of achieving what the
+satirist intended may therefore be granted to the <i>Dispensary</i>.
+Few modern readers, however, will appreciate the
+welcome it received, and it is ludicrous to read in Anderson's
+edition of the poet that the poem 'is only inferior in
+humour, discrimination of character, and poetical ardour
+to the <i>Rape of the Lock</i>.' It would be far more accurate to
+say that the <i>Dispensary</i> has not a single merit in common
+with that poem, and but slight merit of any kind.</p>
+
+<p>The following passage upon death is the most vigorous,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
+and is interesting as having supplied Cowper with a line
+in the poem on his Mother's Picture:<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">''Tis to the vulgar Death too harsh appears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The ill we feel is only in our fears;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To die is landing on some silent shore<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where billows never break, nor tempests roar;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere well we feel th' friendly stroke 'tis o'er.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wise through thought th' insults of death defy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The fools through blest insensibility.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis what the guilty fear, the pious crave;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sought by the wretch and vanquished by the brave.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It eases lovers, sets the captive free,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And though a tyrant, offers liberty.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Addison in defending Garth in the <i>Whig-Examiner</i> from
+the criticisms of Prior in the <i>Examiner</i>, the organ of the
+Tory party, says he does not question but the author 'who
+has endeavoured to prove that he who wrote the <i>Dispensary</i>
+was no poet, will very suddenly undertake to show that he
+who gained the battle of <i>Blenheim</i> is no general.' The
+comparison was an unfortunate one. Marlborough's military
+reputation has grown brighter with time, Garth's fame
+as a poet has long ago ceased to exist.</p>
+
+<p>A literary although not a poetical interest is associated
+with the name of "well-natured Garth," who, as Pope
+acknowledges, was one of his earliest friends; like Arbuthnot,
+he lived among the wits, and as a member of the
+famous Kit-cat Club he wrote verses upon the Whig
+beauties toasted by its members. His name is linked
+with Dryden's as well as with that of his illustrious
+successor. It will be remembered how, on the death of
+Dryden, the poet's body lay in state in the College of Phy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>sicians,
+and how, before the great procession started for
+Westminster Abbey, Sir Samuel, who was then President,
+delivered a Latin oration.</p>
+
+<p>Garth died in January, 1717-18, and, according to Pope,
+was a good Christian without knowing it. Addison, however,
+who visited Garth in his last illness, told Dr. Berkeley
+that he rejected Christianity on the assurance of his friend
+Halley that its doctrines were incomprehensible, and the
+religion itself an imposture. According to another report
+which comes through Pope, he actually 'died a papist.'</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Ambrose Philips
+(1671-1749).</div>
+
+<p>Ambrose Philips, who belonged, like Tickell, to Addison's
+'little senate,' was born in 1671, and
+educated at St. John's, Cambridge. His
+<i>Pastorals</i> were published in Tonson's <i>Miscellany</i>
+(1709), and the same volume contained the <i>Pastorals</i>
+of Pope. Log-rolling was understood in those days, and
+Philips's verses received warm praise in more than one
+number of the <i>Guardian</i>, the writer in one place declaring
+that there have been only four masters of the art in above
+two thousand years: 'Theocritus, who left his dominions
+to Virgil; Virgil, who left his to his son Spenser; and
+Spenser, who was succeeded by his eldest born, Philips.'</p>
+
+<p>Pope's <i>Pastorals</i> were not mentioned, and in revenge he
+devised the consummate artifice of sending an anonymous
+paper to the <i>Guardian</i>, in which, while appearing to praise
+Philips, he exalted himself. Steele took the bait, and considering
+that the essay depreciated Pope would not publish
+it without his permission, which was of course readily
+granted. 'From that time,' says Johnson, 'Pope and
+Philips lived in a perpetual reciprocation of malevolence.'</p>
+
+<p>Philips's tragedy, <i>The Distrest Mother</i> (1712), a translation,
+or nearly so, of Racine's <i>Andromaque</i>, was puffed in
+the <i>Spectator</i>. It is the play to which Sir Roger de
+Coverley was taken by his friends, and the representa<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>tion
+supplied the good knight with an opportunity for
+much humorous comment.</p>
+
+<p>'When Sir Roger saw Andromache's obstinate refusal
+to her lover's importunities, he whispered me in the ear
+that he was sure she would never have him; to which he
+added with a more than ordinary vehemence, "You cannot
+imagine, sir, what it is to have to do with a widow."
+Upon Pyrrhus his threatening afterwards to leave her, the
+knight shook his head, and muttered to himself, "Ay, do
+if you can." This part dwelt so much upon my friend's
+imagination that at the close of the third Act, as I was
+thinking of something else, he whispered in my ear, "These
+widows, sir, are the most perverse creatures in the world.
+But pray," says he, "you that are a critic, is this play
+according to your dramatic rules, as you call them? Should
+your people in tragedy always talk to be understood?
+Why, there is not a single sentence in this play that I do
+not know the meaning of."'<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> Addison also inserted and
+praised in the <i>Spectator</i> Philips's translations from Sappho
+(Nos. 223, 229).</p>
+
+<p>His odes to babes and children earned for him the
+<i>sobriquet</i> of 'Namby Pamby,' 'a term which has been incorporated
+into the English language to designate mawkish
+sentiment. Namby was the infantine pronunciation of
+Ambrose, and Pamby was formed by the first letter of
+Philips's surname and that reduplication of sound which
+is natural to lisping children.'<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a></p>
+
+<p>Between simplicity and absurdity the line is a narrow
+one, and Philips stepped over it when he wrote to a child
+in the nursery&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Dimply damsel, sweetly smiling,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All caressing, none beguiling;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bud of beauty, fairly blowing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Every charm to nature owing.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The longest of his baby songs is addressed to the Hon.
+Miss Carteret, in which he pictures the child's progress to
+womanhood, and anticipates her future loveliness and
+maiden reign:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Then the taper-moulded waist<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a span of ribbon braced;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the swell of either breast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the wide high-vaulted chest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the neck so white and round,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Little neck with brilliants bound;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the store of charms which shine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Above, in lineaments divine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Crowded in a narrow space<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To complete the desperate face;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These alluring powers, and more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall enamoured youths adore;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These and more in courtly lays<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Many an aching heart shall praise.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The inventory of the maiden's physical charms which follows
+includes veiny temples, sloping shoulders, a hazely
+lucid eye, and cheek of health; but in the category the
+only allusion to the attractions of intellect and heart is in
+a couplet foretelling her</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">'Gentleness of mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gentle from a gentle kind.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>That Philips translated <i>The Persian Tales</i> is indelibly
+recorded by Pope:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The bard whom pilfered Pastorals renown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who turns a Persian tale for half-a-crown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Just writes to make his barrenness appear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And strains from hard-bound brains eight lines a year.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But even Pope could award praise to Philips. In a letter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>
+to Henry Cromwell, in 1710, he observes that he was capable
+of writing very nobly, 'as I guess by a small copy of his,
+published in the <i>Tatler</i>, on the Danish winter;' and two
+years later he says to his friend Caryll: 'Mr. Philips has
+two lines which seem to me what the French call very
+<i>picturesque</i>, that I cannot omit to you:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'All hid in snow in bright confusion lie,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with one dazzling waste fatigue the eye!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The lines, not quite accurately quoted by Pope, are from
+an epistle, addressed to Lord Dorset from Copenhagen,
+which contains a few striking couplets, two of which may
+be transcribed before bidding adieu to Ambrose Philips:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The vast leviathan wants room to play,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And spout his waters in the face of day.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The starving wolves along the main sea prowl,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And to the moon in icy valleys howl.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">John Philips
+(1676-1708).</div>
+
+<p>Ambrose Philips must not be confounded with his namesake
+John, the author of a clever burlesque
+of Milton, called <i>The Splendid Shilling</i> (1705);
+of <i>Blenheim</i> (1705), a poem which he was
+urged to write by the Tories in opposition to Addison's
+<i>Campaign</i>; and of a poem upon <i>Cider</i> (1706), in 'Miltonian
+verse,' which seems to have afforded several suggestions to
+Pope in his <i>Windsor Forest</i>. It is said to display a considerable
+knowledge of the subject, and in that its principal
+merit consists. From <i>The Splendid Shilling</i> a brief extract
+may be given:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'So pass my days. But when nocturnal shades<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This world envelop, and th' inclement air<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Persuades men to repel benumbing frosts<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With pleasant wines, and crackling blaze of wood;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Me, lonely sitting, nor the glimmering light<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of make-weight candle, nor the joyous talk<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of loving friend delights; distressed, forlorn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Amidst the horrors of the tedious night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Darkling I sigh, and feed with dismal thoughts<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My anxious mind; or sometimes mournful verse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Indite, and sing of groves and myrtle shades,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or desperate lady near a purling stream,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or lover pendent on a willow tree.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Meanwhile I labour with eternal drought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And restless wish, and rave; my parched throat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Finds no relief, nor heavy eyes repose.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But if a slumber haply does invade<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My weary limbs, my fancy still awake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thoughtful of drink, and eager, in a dream<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tipples imaginary pots of ale<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In vain; awake I find the settled thirst<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still gnawing, and the pleasant phantom curse.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>'Philips,' says the poet Campbell, 'had the merit of
+studying and admiring Milton, but he never could imitate
+him without ludicrous effect, either in jest or earnest. His
+<i>Splendid Shilling</i> is the earliest and one of the best of our
+parodies; but <i>Blenheim</i> is as completely a burlesque upon
+Milton as <i>The Splendid Shilling</i>, though it was written and
+read with gravity, ... yet such are the fluctuations of
+taste that contemporary criticism bowed with solemn
+admiration over his Miltonic cadences.'</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Nicholas Rowe
+(1673-1718).</div>
+
+<p>Nicholas Rowe had the honour, if it was one in those
+days, of being made Laureate on the accession
+of George I. His odes, epistles, and
+songs are without merit, but he gained
+reputation as the translator of Lucan's <i>Pharsalia</i>, of which
+Sir Arthur Gorges had produced a version in 1614, and
+his plays entitle him to a place, though not a high one, in
+our dramatic literature.</p>
+
+<p>Rowe edited an edition of Shakespeare, and should
+have known his author, yet in a prologue he declares that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
+he could not draw women&mdash;an amazing assertion echoed
+by Collins, who praises Fletcher for his knowledge of the
+'female mind,' and adds that 'stronger Shakespeare felt
+for man alone.'</p>
+
+<p>The chronological list of Rowe's dramas runs as
+follows: <i>The Ambitious Step-mother</i> (1700); <i>Tamerlane</i>
+(1702); <i>The Fair Penitent</i> (1703); <i>Ulysses</i> (1705); <i>The
+Royal Convert</i> (1707); the <i>Tragedy of Jane Shore</i>
+(1714); and the <i>Tragedy of Lady Jane Grey</i> (1715).
+Measured by his contemporary dramatists he is a distinguished
+playwright. His characters do not live, but he
+could invent effective scenes, though in some cases the poet's
+taste may be questioned.</p>
+
+<p>For many years <i>Tamerlane</i> was acted at Drury Lane on
+the anniversary of King William's landing in England, and
+under the names of Tamerlane and Bajazet the king is belauded
+at the expense of Louis XIV. <i>The Fair Penitent</i>,
+a piece even more successful upon the stage, will still
+please the reader, though he may question the high eulogium
+of Johnson, that "scarcely any work of any poet is at
+once so interesting by the fable, and so delightful by the
+language." Rowe has not the tragic power which can express
+passion without rant, and pathos without extravagance.
+In <i>The Fair Penitent</i> Calista gives utterance to
+her feelings by piling up expletives. Thus, when her
+husband attacks the lover who has ruined her, she exclaims,
+'Destruction! fury! sorrow! shame! and death!'
+and, on another occasion, she cries out, 'Madness! confusion!'
+words which give a sense of the ludicrous rather
+than of the tragic; and so also does Calista's last utterance
+when, addressing Altamont, she says:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">'Had I but early known<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy wondrous worth, thou excellent young man<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We had been happier both&mdash;now 'tis too late!'<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Rowe may be regarded as the principal representative of
+tragedy in the 'age of Pope,' but his respectable work
+shows a fatal degeneration from the 'gorgeous tragedy'
+of the Elizabethans.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Aaron Hill
+(1684-1749).</div>
+
+<p>Aaron Hill, unlike Rowe, was not distinguished as a
+dramatist, and succeeded only in two or three
+adaptations from the French. His claims as a
+poet are also insignificant. He was born in
+London in 1684, with expectations that were not destined to
+be realized, but Fortune was not unkind to him. His uncle,
+Lord Paget, Ambassador at Constantinople, gave the youth
+a warm welcome, supplied him with a tutor, and sent him to
+travel in the East. On Lord Paget's return to England, Hill
+accompanied him, and together they are said to have visited
+a great part of Europe. Some time later Hill went abroad
+again, and was absent two or three years. For awhile&mdash;it
+could not have been long&mdash;he was secretary to the Earl of
+Peterborough, and at the age of twenty-six, his good star
+being still in the ascendant, he married a young lady 'of
+great merit and beauty, with whom he had a very handsome
+fortune.' Hill was then appointed manager of Drury Lane,
+and he wrote a number of plays, the very names of which
+are now forgotten. Few men indeed so well known in his
+own day have sunk into such insignificance in ours. He
+wrote eight books of a long and unfinished epic called
+<i>Gideon</i>, which I suppose no one in the present century has
+had the hardihood to read; like Young he wrote a poem
+on <i>The Judgment Day</i>, a theme attempted also, shortly
+before his death, by John Philips, and that, after his kind,
+he produced a Pindaric ode goes without saying. A long
+poem called <i>The Northern Star</i>, a panegyric on Peter the
+Great, is said to have passed through several editions.
+The poem does not prove Hill to be a poet, but it shows
+his command of the heroic couplet. The style of the poem,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+which is an indiscriminate panegyric, may be judged from
+the following lines:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Transcendent prince! how happy must thou be!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What can'st thou look upon unblessed by thee?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What inward peace must that calm bosom know,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whence conscious virtue does so strongly flow!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Such are the kings who make God's image shine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor blush to dare assert their right divine!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No earth-born bias warps their climbing will,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No pride their power, no avarice whets their skill.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They poise each hope which bids the wise obey,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And shed broad blessings from their widening sway;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To raise the afflicted, stretch the healing hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drive crushed oppression from each rescued land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bold in alternate right, or sheath or draw<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sword of conquest, or the sword of law;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spare what resists not, what opposes bend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And govern cool, what they with warmth defend.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Hill has the merit of having turned the tables upon
+Pope, who had put him into the treatise on the <i>Bathos</i>,
+and then into the <i>Dunciad</i>, where, however, the lines have
+more of compliment than censure, since he is made to
+mount 'far off among the swans of Thames.' Irritated
+by a note in the <i>Dunciad</i>, Hill replied in a long poem
+entitled <i>The Progress of Wit, a Caveat</i>, which opens with
+the following pointed lines:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Tuneful Alexis, on the Thames' fair side,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The ladies' plaything, and the Muses' pride;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With merit popular, with wit polite,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Easy though vain, and elegant though light;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Desiring, and deserving others' praise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Poorly accepts a fame he ne'er repays;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unborn to cherish, sneakingly approves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wants the soul to spread the worth he loves.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In a letter to Hill Pope complained of these lines, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+had the hypocrisy to say that he never thought any great
+matters of his poetical capacity, but prided himself on the
+superiority of his moral life. Hill returned a masterly
+and incisive reproof to this ridiculous statement, in the
+course of which he says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'I am sorry to hear you say you never thought any
+great matters of your poetry. It is in my opinion the
+characteristic you are to hope your distinction from. To
+be honest is the duty of every plain man. Nor, since the
+soul of poetry is sentiment, can a great poet want morality.
+But your honesty you possess in common with a million
+who will never be remembered; whereas your poetry is a
+peculiar, that will make it impossible that you should be
+forgotten.'</p></div>
+
+<p>He adds that if Pope had not been in the spleen when he
+wrote, he would have remembered that humility is a moral
+virtue; and how, asks the writer, can you know that your
+moral life is above that of most of the wits 'since you tell
+me in the same letter that many of their names were
+unknown to you?'</p>
+
+<p>Aaron Hill, though he could write a sensible letter,
+was not a wise man. He was 'everything by turns and
+nothing long.' Poetry was but one of his accomplishments,
+and we are told that he cultivated it 'as a relaxation
+from the study of history, criticism, geography, physic,
+commerce, agriculture, war, law, chemistry, and natural
+philosophy, to which he devoted the greatest part of his
+time.'</p>
+
+<p>As a poet Hill has the facility in composition exhibited
+by so many of his contemporaries, and he has occasionally
+a pretty turn of fancy. His last labour was the successful
+adaptation of Voltaire's <i>Merope</i> to the English stage (1749);
+sixteen years before he had adapted <i>Zara</i> with equal
+success.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Thomas Parnell
+(1679-1718).</div>
+
+<p>Among the minor poets of the period an honourable
+place must be given to Parnell, who possessed
+the soul of a poet, but gave limited
+expression to it, for it was only during the
+later years of a short life that he discovered where his
+genius lay. The friend of Pope, Arbuthnot, and Swift,
+his biography has been written by Johnson, and more discursively
+by his countryman Goldsmith.</p>
+
+<p>Thomas Parnell was born in Dublin, 1679, entered Trinity
+College at the early age of thirteen, and in 1700 obtained the
+degree of Master of Arts. Having taken orders he gained
+preferment in the Church, became, in 1706, Archdeacon of
+Clogher, and through the recommendation of Swift obtained
+also a good living. Parnell was fond of society, and was
+accustomed as often as possible to join the wits in London.
+He was a member of the Scriblerus Club, wrote for the
+<i>Spectator</i>, preached eloquent sermons, and had the ambition
+of a poet. But the loss of his wife preyed upon his mind,
+and he is said, though I believe chiefly on Pope's authority,
+to have given way to intemperance. He died suddenly at
+Chester at the age of thirty-nine in 1718.</p>
+
+<p>Parnell was one of the poets whose fortunes Swift did
+his best to promote. Writing in 1712, he says, 'I gave Lord
+Bolingbroke a poem of Parnell's. I made Parnell insert
+some compliments in it to his lordship. He is extremely
+pleased with it, and read some parts of it to-day to Lord
+Treasurer, who liked it as much. And indeed he outdoes
+all our poets here a bar's length.' And a month later he
+writes, 'Lord Bolingbroke likes Parnell mightily, and it is
+pleasant to see that one who hardly passed for anything in
+Ireland, makes his way here with a little friendly forwarding.'</p>
+
+<p><i>The Hermit</i>, the <i>Hymn to Contentment</i>, an <i>Allegory on
+Man</i>, and a <i>Night Piece on Death</i>, give Parnell his title<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
+to a place among the poets. <i>The Rise of Woman</i>, and <i>Health,
+an Eclogue</i>, have also much merit, and were praised by
+Pope (but this was to their author) as 'two of the
+most beautiful things he ever read.' The story of <i>The
+Hermit</i>, written originally in Spanish, is given in <i>Howell's
+Letters</i> (1645-1655), and is admirably told by Parnell,
+but much that he wrote, including a series of long
+poems on Scripture characters, is poetically worthless.
+His poems, published five years after his death, were
+edited by Pope, who wisely suppressed some pieces unworthy
+of the poet. Then, as now, literary scavengers
+were at work. In 1758 the suppressed poems were published,
+and called forth the comment from Gray, 'Parnell
+is the dunghill of Irish Grub Street.' To Parnell Pope
+was indebted for the <i>Essay on Homer</i> prefixed to the translation,
+with which he does not seem to have been well
+pleased. He complained of the stiffness of the style, and
+said it had cost him more pains in the correcting than the
+writing of it would have done.</p>
+
+<p>If Parnell's prose has the defect of stiffness, his lines
+glide with a smoothness that must have satisfied the ear of
+Pope. The higher harmonies of verse were unknown to
+him, but ease is not without a charm, and in illustration of
+Parnell's gift the final lines of <i>A Night Piece on Death</i>
+shall be quoted:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'When men my scythe and darts supply,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How great a king of fears am I!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They view me like the last of things,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They make and then they draw my stings.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fools! if you less provoked your fears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No more my spectre form appears.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Death's but a path that must be trod,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If man would ever pass to God;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A port of calms, a state to ease<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the rough rage of swelling seas.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why then thy flowing sable stoles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deep pendent cypress, mourning poles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Loose scarfs to fall athwart thy weeds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Long palls, drawn hearses, covered steeds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And plumes of black that as they tread,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nod o'er the scutcheons of the dead?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor can the parted body know,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor wants the soul these forms of woe;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As men who long in prison dwell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With lamps that glimmer round the cell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whene'er their suffering years are run,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spring forth to greet the glittering sun;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such joy, though far transcending sense,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have pious souls at parting hence.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On earth and in the body placed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A few and evil years they waste;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But when their chains are cast aside,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See the glad scene unfolding wide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Clap the glad wing, and tower away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And mingle with the blaze of day.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Thomas Tickell
+(1686-1740).</div>
+
+<p>Tickell wished to be remembered as the friend of Addison,
+and with Addison his name is indissolubly
+associated. The poem dedicated
+to the essayist's memory is perhaps over-praised
+by Macaulay when he says that it would do honour
+to the greatest name in our literature, but it proved incontestibly
+that Tickell, as a poet, was superior to the master
+whom he so loved and honoured. His reputation hangs
+upon this elegy, which Fox pronounced perfect.<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> The <i>Prospect
+of Peace</i>, which passed through several editions, had
+at one time a considerable reputation, not assuredly for its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
+poetry, but because it appealed to the spirit of the time
+The style of the poem may be judged from these lines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Accept, great Anne, the tears their memory draws,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who nobly perished in their sovereign's cause;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For thou in pity bidd'st the war give o'er,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mourn'st thy slain heroes, nor wilt venture more.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Vast price of blood on each victorious day!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(But Europe's freedom doth that price repay.)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lamented triumphs! when one breath must tell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That Marlborough conquered and that Dormer fell.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>His <i>Colin and Lucy</i> called forth high praise from Goldsmith
+as one of the best ballads in our language, and Gray
+terms it the prettiest ballad in the world. Three stanzas
+from this once famous poem shall be quoted:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'"I hear a voice you cannot hear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which says I must not stay;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I see a hand you cannot see,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which beckons me away.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By a false heart and broken vows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In early youth I die;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was I to blame because his bride<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Was thrice as rich as I?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'"Ah, Colin, give not her thy vows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Vows due to me alone;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor thou, fond maid, receive his kiss,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor think him all thy own.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To-morrow in the church to wed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Impatient, both prepare!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But know, fond maid, and know, false man,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That Lucy will be there!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'"Then bear my corse, my comrades, bear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">This bridegroom blithe to meet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He in his wedding trim so gay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I in my winding-sheet."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She spoke, she died; her corse was borne<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The bridegroom blithe to meet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He in his wedding trim so gay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">She in her winding-sheet.'<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>There is some fancy but no imagination in the machinery
+of Tickell's long poem on <i>Kensington Gardens</i>, a title which
+recalls Matthew Arnold's exquisite stanzas. But the pathetic
+beauty of Arnold's lines belongs to a world of poetry wholly
+unlike that in which even the best of the Queen Anne poets
+lived and moved.</p>
+
+<p>Tickell's translation of the first book of the <i>Iliad</i> led to
+the quarrel already mentioned in the account of Pope. He
+wrote, also, a rather lengthy poem on Oxford, in which there
+is some absurd criticism of insignificant poetasters, and,
+as a matter of course, an extravagant eulogium of Addison.</p>
+
+<p>The few facts recorded of Tickell's life may be summed
+up in a paragraph. He was born in 1686 at Bridekirk, in
+Cumberland, and entered Queen's College, Oxford, in 1701.
+In 1708 he obtained his M.A. degree, and two years later
+was chosen Fellow. For sixteen years Tickell held his
+fellowship, but resigned it on his marriage in 1726. In
+a poem addressed to the lady before marriage, he asks
+whether</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'By thousands sought, Clotilda, canst thou free<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy crowd of captives and descend to me?'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Praise which in those days would be regarded as fulsome
+secured the friendship and patronage of Addison, who
+employed him in public affairs, and when he became Secretary
+of State made Tickell Under-Secretary. To him Addison
+left the charge of editing his works, which were published
+by subscription, and appeared in four quarto volumes
+in 1721. In 1725 he was made secretary to the Lord Justices
+of Ireland, 'a place of great honour,' which he held
+until his death in 1740. The praise of Wordsworth, a poet
+always chary of expressing approbation, has been bestowed
+upon Tickell. 'I think him,' he said, 'one of the very best
+writers of occasional verses.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">William Somerville
+(1692-1742).</div>
+
+<p>Tickell had written some lines on hunting, which he
+published as a fragment. His contemporary
+Somerville, selecting the same
+subject, wrote <i>The Chase</i> (1735), a poem
+in blank verse. He was born at Edston, in Warwickshire,
+and was said, Dr. Johnson writes, 'to be of the first family
+in his county.' He was educated at Winchester and Oxford,
+and had the tastes of a scholar as well as of a country
+gentleman, which, among other accomplishments, included
+that of hard drinking. We know little about him, and
+what we do know is deplorable, for his friend Shenstone
+writes that he was plagued and threatened by low wretches,
+and 'forced to drink himself into pains of the body in order
+to get rid of the pains of the mind.' He died in 1742, the
+owner of a good estate, which, owing to a contempt for
+economy, he was never able to enjoy. 'I loved him for
+nothing so much,' said Shenstone, 'as for his flocci-nauci-nihili-pili-fication
+of money.'</p>
+
+<p>In <i>The Chase</i> Somerville had the advantage of knowing
+his subject, but knowledge is not poetry, and the interest
+of the poem is not due to its poetical qualities. He deserves
+some credit for his skill in handling a variety of
+metres as well as blank verse, in which his principal poem
+is written. In an address <i>To Mr. Addison</i>, the couplet,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'When panting Virtue her last efforts made,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You brought your Clio to the virgin's aid,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>is praised by Johnson as one of those happy strokes which
+are seldom attained. In the same poem Shakespeare and
+Addison are brought together in a way that is far from
+happy:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'In heaven he sings; on earth your muse supplies<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Th' important loss, and heals our weeping eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Correctly great, she melts each flinty heart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With equal genius, but superior art.'<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Praise can be too strong even for a poet's digestion, and
+Somerville, who writes a great deal more nonsense in the
+same strain, should have remembered that he was not
+addressing a fool. If the poetical adulation of the time is
+to be excused, it must be on the ground that a poet had to
+live by patronage and not by the public. In a pecuniary
+point of view his subservience to men in high position was
+often successful. An almost universal custom, it was not
+regarded as degrading; but the poet must have been peculiarly
+constituted who was not degraded by it.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">John Dyer
+(1698(?)-1758).</div>
+
+<p>In the last century any subject was deemed suitable for
+poetry, and the Welsh poet, John Dyer, who was
+born about 1698, found in his later life poetical
+materials in <i>The Fleece</i> (1757), a poem in four
+books of blank verse. His genius for descriptive poetry and
+his passionate and intelligent delight in natural objects are
+seen more pleasantly in <i>Grongar Hill</i> (published in the
+same year as Thomson's <i>Winter</i>), a poem not without grammatical
+inaccuracies, one of which deforms the first couplet,
+but full of poetical feeling. In an ease of composition
+which runs into laxity he reminds us occasionally of George
+Wither. His chief merit is, that while independent of
+Thomson, he was inspired by the same love, and wrote
+with the same aim. Dyer is not content with bare description,
+but likes to moralize on the landscape he surveys.
+Thus, when looking on a ruined tower, the poet exclaims:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Yet time has seen, that lifts the low,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And level lays the lofty brow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Has seen this broken pile compleat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Big with the vanity of state;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But transient is the smile of fate!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A little rule, a little sway,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A sunbeam in a winter's day,'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is all the proud and mighty have<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Between the cradle and the grave.'<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Dyer who is best seen in the octosyllabic metre, chose it
+also for <i>The Country Walk</i>, a poem in which, notwithstanding
+an occasional lapse into the conventional diction
+of the period, the rural pictures are drawn from life. He
+takes the reader into the farm-yard and fields as he writes:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I am resolved this charming day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the open field to stray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And have no roof above my head<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But that whereon the gods do tread.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before the yellow barn I see<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A beautiful variety<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of strutting cocks, advancing stout,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And flirting empty chaff about;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hens, ducks, and geese, and all their brood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And turkeys gobbling for their food;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While rustics thrash the wealthy floor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And tempt all to crowd the door.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And now into the fields I go,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where thousand flaming flowers glow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And every neighbouring hedge I greet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With honey-suckles smelling sweet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now o'er the daisy meads I stray<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And meet with, as I pace my way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweetly shining on the eye<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A rivulet gliding smoothly by,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which shows with what an easy tide<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The moments of the happy glide.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><i>An Epistle to a Friend in Town</i>, records his satisfaction with
+the country retirement in which his days are passed. In a
+rather awkward stanza he says that he is more than content,
+and is indeed charmed with everything, and the lines
+close with the moralizing that was dear to Dyer's heart:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Alas! what a folly that wealth and domain<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We heap up in sin and in sorrow!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Immense is the toil, yet the labour how vain!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is not life to be over to-morrow?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then glide on my moments, the few that I have,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Smooth-shaded and quiet and even;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While gently the body descends to the grave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the spirit arises to heaven.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Dyer was an artist as well as a poet, and visited Italy,
+which suggested a poem in blank verse, <i>The Ruins of
+Rome</i> (1740). After his return to England he entered into
+holy orders, took a wife, who is said to have been a descendant
+of Shakespeare, and settled at Calthorp in Leicestershire,
+which he afterwards exchanged for a living in
+Lincolnshire. There is much to like in Dyer, and he has
+had the good fortune to win the applause of two great
+poets. Gray says, in a letter to Horace Walpole, that
+he had 'more of poetry in his imagination than almost any
+of our number,' and Wordsworth in a sonnet, <i>To the Poet,
+John Dyer</i>, writes:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Though hasty Fame hath many a chaplet culled<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For worthless brows, while in the pensive shade<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of cold neglect she leaves thy head ungraced,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet pure and powerful minds, hearts meek and still,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A grateful few, shall love thy modest Lay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Long as the shepherd's bleating flock shall stray<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O'er naked Snowdon's wide aerial waste;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Long as the thrush shall pipe on Grongar Hill!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">William Shenstone
+(1714-1764).</div>
+
+<p>'The true rustic style,' Charles Lamb writes, 'I think is
+to be found in Shenstone,' and he calls
+his <i>Schoolmistress</i> the 'prettiest of poems.'</p>
+
+<p>William Shenstone was born in 1714 at the Leasowes in
+Hales-Owen, a spot upon which he afterwards expended his
+skill as a landscape gardener. In 1732 he went up to
+Pembroke College, Oxford, and remained there for some
+years without taking a degree. Those years appear to
+have been devoted to poetry. In 1737 Shenstone published<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+a small volume anonymously. This was followed by the
+<i>Judgment of Hercules</i> (1741), and by the <i>Schoolmistress</i>
+(1742). In 1745 he undertook the management of his
+estate, and began, to quote Dr. Johnson's quaint description,
+'to point his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle
+his walks, and to wind his waters; which he did with such
+judgment and such fancy, as made his little domain the
+envy of the great and the admiration of the skilful; a
+place to be visited by travellers and copied by designers.'
+On this estate, with its lakes and cascades, its urns and
+poetical inscriptions, its hanging woods, and 'wild shaggy
+precipice,' Shenstone appears to have spent all his fortune.
+He led the life of a dilettante, and died unmarried at the
+age of fifty. His elegies and songs are dead, and whatever
+vitality remains in his verse will be found in the <i>Pastoral
+Ballad</i> and the <i>Schoolmistress</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The ballad written in anapæstic verse has an Arcadian
+grace, against which even Johnson's robust intellect was
+not proof. For the following lines he says, 'if any mind
+denies its sympathy it has no acquaintance with love or
+nature':</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'When forced the fair nymph to forego,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">What anguish I felt in my heart!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet I thought&mdash;but it might not be so&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">'Twas with pain that she saw me depart.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She gazed as I slowly withdrew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My path I could hardly discern;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So sweetly she bade me adieu,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I thought that she bade me return.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The <i>Schoolmistress</i>, written in imitation of Spenser, has
+the merits of simplicity and homely humour. The village
+dame is a life-like character, and the urchins whom she is
+supposed to teach, and does sometimes teach by chastisement,
+are cunningly portrayed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>From the verses <i>Written at an Inn in Henley</i> three
+stanzas may be quoted. The last will be already known
+to readers familiar with their Boswell:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I fly from pomp, I fly from plate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I fly from falsehood's specious grin!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Freedom I love, and form I hate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And choose my lodgings at an inn.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Here, waiter! take my sordid ore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which lacqueys else might hope to win;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It buys what courts have not in store,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">It buys me freedom at an inn!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where'er his stages may have been,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May sigh to think he still has found<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The warmest welcome at an inn.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Unhappily this final verse, which Johnson is said to have
+repeated 'with great emotion,' has lost its application.
+The modern traveller, instead of being warmly welcomed
+at an inn, loses his identity and becomes a number.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Mark Akenside
+(1721-1770).</div>
+
+<p>Akenside, who was born at Newcastle, 1721, received his
+education in Edinburgh, where he was
+sent to prepare for the ministry among
+the Dissenters. He, however, changed
+his mind, became a medical student, and finally, though
+much disliked for his manners, gained reputation as a physician
+in London. He is stated to have been excessively
+stiff and formal, and a frigid stiffness marks the <i>Pleasures
+of Imagination</i> (1744), a remarkable work considering the
+writer's age, since it is without the faults of youth. The
+poem is founded on Addison's <i>Essays</i> on the subject in the
+<i>Spectator</i>, and the poet also owes a considerable debt to
+Shaftesbury. Akenside's blank verse has the merits of
+dignity and strength. But the work is as cold as the
+author's manners were said to be, and in spite of what may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
+be called poetical power, as distinct from a high order of
+inspiration, the poem leaves the reader unmoved. Pope,
+who saw it in MS., said that Akenside was 'no everyday
+writer,' which is a just criticism. The <i>Pleasures of Imagination</i>
+has the merits of careful workmanship and of some
+originality, but the interest which it at one time excited is
+not likely to be revived. In 1757 Akenside re-wrote the
+poem, and I believe that no critic, with the exception of
+Hazlitt, regards the second attempt as an improvement
+on the first. His skill in the use of classical imagery is
+seen to advantage in the <i>Hymn to the Naiads</i> (1746), and
+he deserves praise, too, for his inscriptions, which are distinguished
+for conciseness and vigour of style. The poet,
+it may be added, wrote a great number of odes that lack
+all, or nearly all, the qualities which should distinguish
+lyrical poetry. Not a spark of the divine fire warms or
+illuminates these reputable verses, but the author states
+that his chief aim was to be correct, and in that he has
+succeeded.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">David Mallet
+(1700-1765).</div>
+
+<p>David Mallet, a friend or acquaintance of Thomson, was
+contemptible as a man and comparatively
+insignificant as a poet. He did a large
+amount of dirty work, and appears to have
+made a good income by it. The base character of the man
+was known to Bolingbroke, of whose basest purpose he
+made him the instrument (see c. vii.). Mallet's ballad of
+<i>William and Margaret</i> (1724) is known to many readers,
+and so is the inferior ballad <i>Edwin and Emma</i>, which was
+written many years afterwards. In 1728 he published
+<i>The Excursion</i>, a poem not sufficiently significant to prevent
+Wordsworth from selecting the same title. In Mallet's
+poem on <i>Verbal Criticism</i> (1733), Johnson states that he
+paid court to Pope, and was rewarded by a travelling
+tutorship gained through the poet's influence. In 1731 his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>
+tragedy, <i>Eurydice</i>, was acted at Drury Lane. He joined
+Thomson, as we have said elsewhere, in the composition of
+the masque of <i>Alfred</i>, and 'almost wholly changed' the
+piece after Thomson's death. <i>Amyntor and Theodora</i>, a
+long poem in blank verse, appeared in 1747; <i>Britannia</i>,
+a masque, in 1753, and <i>Elvira</i>, a tragedy, in 1763. Mallet,
+who was without qualifications for the task, wrote a life of
+Lord Bacon. He is said to have obtained a pension for
+inflaming the mind of the public against Admiral Byng,
+and thereby hastening his execution.</p>
+
+<p>In Anderson's edition of the poets, Mallet's biography is
+related with more fulness than by Dr. Johnson, and, after
+frankly recording acts which fully justify Macaulay's statement
+that Mallet's character was infamous, the writer
+adds, 'his integrity in business and in life is unimpeached.'</p>
+
+
+<p class="center gap3"><span class="smcap">Scottish Song-Writers.</span></p>
+
+<p>When the poets of England were writing satires, moral
+essays, and elaborate didactic treatises, the poets of Scotland
+were singing, in bird-like notes, songs of humour and
+of love. It is remarkable that the Scotch, the shrewdest,
+hardest, and most business-like people in these islands,
+should be so richly endowed with a gift shared and enjoyed
+by rich and poor alike. The most exquisite of English
+lyrics fall, where culture is wanting, on regardless ears;
+the songs of Ramsay and of Burns, of Lady Anne Lindsay
+and Jane Elliot, of Hogg and Lady Nairne, of Tannahill
+and Macneil, are household words in Scotland to
+gentle and simple. A few of the choicest songs of Scotland
+are due to ladies of rank, but the larger number have
+sprung from 'the huts where poor men lie.' Ramsay was a
+barber and wig-maker; Burns, as all the world knows,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+followed the plough; Tannahill was a weaver; Hogg a
+shepherd; and Robert Nicoll the son of a small farmer,
+'ruined out of house and hold.'</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Allan Ramsay
+(1686-1758).</div>
+
+<p>Allan Ramsay was, born at Leadhills, in Lanarkshire, in
+1686, and was therefore Pope's senior by
+two years. He has been called 'the restorer
+of Scottish poetry,' and by his compilation
+of <i>The Evergreen</i> (1724), and of <i>The Tea-Table
+Miscellany</i>, published in the same year, he gathered up
+the wealth of song scattered through the country. <i>The
+Miscellany</i> extended to four volumes, and before the poet's
+death had reached twelve editions. An undying interest
+belongs to both anthologies. <i>The Evergreen</i> was the first
+poetry Walter Scott perused, and in a marginal note on
+his copy of <i>The Tea-Table Miscellany</i> he writes: 'This book
+belonged to my grandfather, Robert Scott, and out of it I
+was taught <i>Hardiknute</i> by heart before I could read the
+ballad myself. It was the first poem I ever learnt, the
+last I shall ever forget.' The ballad Scott loved so well, I
+may say in passing, was written as a whole or in part by
+Lady Wardlaw (1677-1727),<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> and belongs therefore either
+to our period or to the later years of the seventeenth
+century.</p>
+
+<p>In 1725 Ramsay published <i>The Gentle Shepherd</i>, a pastoral
+that puts to shame the numerous semi-classical and
+mythological poems which appeared under that name in
+England. It is essentially a rural poem, in which the
+action and language harmonize with what we know, or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>
+think we know, of country manners and life. There is
+neither striking invention in the plot nor much individuality
+in the characters, but there is poetical harmony
+throughout, many pretty rustic scenes, and sufficient interest
+to carry the reader pleasantly over the ground. <i>The
+Gentle Shepherd</i> is the work of a poet, and gives a higher
+impression of Ramsay's power than his songs alone would
+warrant. His lyrical pieces, though not wholly without
+the lilt and charm such verse exacts, are perhaps mainly
+of service in showing the immeasurable superiority of
+Burns. Ramsay was a successful poet, and not too much
+of a poet to be also a successful man of business.
+He exchanged wig-making for bookselling, kept a shop
+in the High Street of Edinburgh, and finally retired
+to a villa which he had built for himself on the Castle
+Hill. A good-humoured, care-defying man, he enjoyed
+life in an easy way, and was not disposed to repine when
+his road lay down the hill. In an epistle to a friend he
+writes:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'And now in years and sense grown auld,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In ease I like my limbs to fauld,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Debts I abhor, and plan to be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From shackling trade and dangers free;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I may, loosed frae care and strife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With calmness view the edge of life;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when a full ripe age shall crave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Slide easily into my grave.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Among the Scottish song-writers of the period may be
+mentioned Robert Crawford (1695?-1732), whose love
+verses, written in a conventional strain, are not without
+music; Lord Binning (1696-1732), the author of a pretty
+song called <i>Ungrateful Nanny</i>; and William Hamilton of
+Bangour (1704-1754), who wrote the well-known <i>Braes of
+Yarrow</i>. The most charming of Scottish lyrics belong,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
+however, to a later period of the century than the age of
+Pope.</p>
+
+
+<p class="gap3">The student who reads the minor poets who figured, in
+some cases with much applause, during the years of Pope's
+ascendency, will be struck by the almost total absence from
+their works of creative power. These rhymers wrote for
+the age, and illustrate it, but they did not write for all time,
+and a small volume would suffice to hold all their verse
+which is of permanent value. Too often they imagined that
+by the composition of flowing couplets they proved their
+title to rank with inspired poets. They confounded the art
+of verse-making with the divine art of poetry, and were not
+aware that the substance of their work is prose. Now and
+then the digger in this mine will discover a small nugget
+of gold, but for the most part the interest called forth by
+the poets mentioned in the present chapter, is more historical
+than poetical, and the reader in passing to the great
+prose writers of the age will be conscious of gain rather
+than of loss.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> Cowper's line,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Where tempests never beat nor billows roar,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>is not an improvement upon Garth's. Tempests, it has been justly
+said, do not beat.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> The <i>Spectator</i>, No. 335.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> Elwin and Courthope's <i>Pope</i>, vol. vii., p. 62.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> Edward Young tried his skill on the same theme in a poetical
+epistle to Tickell, but his lines are leaden and his praise absurd.
+Addison's glory was so great, he says, as a statesman and a patriot,
+that
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">'It borders on disgrace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To say he sung the best of human race.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> To Lady Wardlaw Dr. Robert Chambers attributed twenty-five
+ballads, and among them several of the finest we possess, which are
+regarded as ancient by every other authority. If the assumption
+were proved, this lady would hold a distinguished and unique
+position among the poets of the Pope period, but there is absolutely
+no ground for the theory so zealously advocated by Chambers.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3 class="gap3"><a name="PART_II" id="PART_II"></a>PART II.</h3>
+
+<h2>THE PROSE WRITERS</h2>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+<h3>JOSEPH ADDISON&mdash;SIR RICHARD STEELE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>As essayists, the writings of Addison and of Steele are
+familiar to all readers of eighteenth-century literature.
+Their work in other departments may be neglected without
+much loss; but the student who disregards the <i>Tatler</i>,
+the <i>Spectator</i>, the <i>Guardian</i>, and some of the essay-volumes
+which follow in their wake, will be blind to one of the
+most significant literary features of the period.</p>
+
+<p>The alliance between Addison and Steele was so intimate,
+that to judge of one apart from the other, would be
+fair to neither. It may be well, therefore, after giving the
+leading facts in the lives of the two friends, to bring them
+together again while considering the work they accomplished
+in their literary partnership. One point, I think,
+will come out clearly in this examination, namely, that
+while Steele might, under very inferior conditions, have
+produced the <i>Tatler</i> and <i>Spectator</i> without Addison,
+it is highly improbable that Addison, as an essayist,
+would have existed without Steele.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Joseph Addison
+(1672-1719).</div>
+
+<p>Addison lives on the reputation of his prose works,
+but he thought that he was a poet, and
+was regarded as a poet by his contemporaries.
+It was by verse that he won his
+earliest reputation, and it was on his Pegasus that he
+rose to be Secretary of State. He was born on May 1st,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
+1672, at Milston, in Wiltshire, a parish of which his
+father was the rector, and was educated at the Charterhouse,
+where he contracted his memorable friendship with
+Steele. Thence, in 1687, at the boyish age of fifteen,
+he went up to Queen's College, Oxford, and in a few
+months, thanks to his Latin verses, gained a scholarship
+at Magdalen, of which college ten years later he became
+a fellow.</p>
+
+<p>While at Oxford he acquired, after the fashion of the
+day, what Johnson calls 'the trade of a courtier.' His
+Latin poem on the <i>Peace of Ryswick</i> was dedicated to
+Montague, and two years later a pension of £300 a year,
+gained through Somers and Montague, enabled him to
+travel, in order that by gaining a knowledge of French
+and Italian, he might be fitted for the diplomatic service.
+Some time after his return to England he published his
+<i>Remarks on Several Parts of Italy</i> (1705), and dedicated the
+volume to Swift, 'the most agreeable companion, the truest
+friend, and the greatest genius of his age.'</p>
+
+<p>Addison's patrons had now lost their power, and he was
+left to his own exertions. His difficulties did not last long.
+In 1704 the battle of Blenheim called forth several weak
+efforts from the poetasters, and as the Government
+required verse more worthy of the occasion, the Chancellor
+of the Exchequer, on the recommendation of Montague,
+now Earl of Halifax, applied to Addison, who, in answer
+to the appeal, published <i>The Campaign</i>, in 1705. The
+poem contains the well-known similitude of the angel,
+and also an apt allusion to the great storm that had lately
+destroyed fleets and devastated the country.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'So when an angel by divine command<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><i>The Campaign</i>, which has no other passage worth
+quoting, proved a happy hit, and was of such service to
+the Ministry, that Addison found the way to fame and
+fortune. He was appointed Commissioner of Appeals,
+and not long after Under Secretary of State. In 1707 he
+accompanied his friend and patron, Halifax, on a mission
+to Hanover, and two years later he was appointed Chief
+Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. In Dublin
+he gained golden opinions. 'I am convinced,' Swift
+writes, 'that whatever Government come over, you will
+find all marks of kindness from any parliament here with
+respect to your employment; the Tories contending with
+the Whigs which should speak best of you. In short, if
+you will come over again when you are at leisure, we will
+raise an army and make you king of Ireland.' When the
+Whig Ministry fell in 1710, and Addison lost his appointment,
+he must have gained a fortune, for he was able to
+purchase an estate for £10,000.</p>
+
+<p>In the early years of the century the Italian opera,
+which had been brought into England in the reign of
+William and Mary, excited the mirth and opposition of the
+wits. Lord Chesterfield, who called it 'too absurd and extravagant
+to mention,' said, 'Whenever I go to the opera
+I leave my sense and reason at the door with my half-guinea,
+and deliver myself up to my eyes and ears.'
+Steele, Gay, and Pope ridiculed the new-fangled entertainment,
+and Colley Cibber, too, pointed his jest at these
+'poetical drams, these gin-shops of the stage that intoxicate
+its auditors, and dishonour their understanding with
+a levity for which I want a name.' Addison, who has
+some lively papers on the subject in the <i>Spectator</i>, undertook
+to give a faithful account of the progress of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
+Italian opera on the English stage, 'for there is no question,'
+he writes, 'but our great grandchildren will be very
+curious to know why their forefathers used to sit together
+like an audience of foreigners in their own country; and to
+hear whole plays acted before them in a tongue which
+they did not understand.'</p>
+
+<p>Before writing thus in the <i>Spectator</i>, Addison, in order
+to oppose the Italian opera, by what he regarded as a
+more rational pastime, produced his English opera of
+<i>Rosamond</i>, which was acted in 1706, and proved a failure
+on the stage. The music is said to have been bad, and the
+poetry is the work of a writer destitute of lyrical genius.
+Lord Macaulay, who finds a merit in almost everything
+produced by Addison, praises 'the smoothness with which
+the verses glide, and the elasticity with which they
+bound,' and considers that if he 'had left heroic couplets
+to Pope, and blank verse to Rowe, and had employed himself
+in writing airy and spirited songs, his reputation as a
+poet would have stood far higher than it now does.' The
+gliding movement of the verse may be admitted; but lyric
+poetry demands the higher qualities of music and imaginative
+treatment, and Addison's 'smoothness,' so far from
+being a poetical gift, is a mechanical acquisition.</p>
+
+<p>In 1713 his <i>Cato</i>, with its stately rhetoric and cold
+dignity, received a very different reception. The prologue,
+written by Pope, is in admirable accordance with the spirit
+of the play. Addison's purpose is to exhibit a great man
+struggling with adversity, and Pope writes:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'He bids your breasts with ancient ardour rise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And calls forth Roman drops from British eyes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Virtue confessed in human shape he draws,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What Plato thought, and God-like Cato was:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No common object to your sight displays,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But what with pleasure Heaven itself surveys;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And greatly falling with a falling state!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While Cato gives his little senate laws,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What bosom beats not in his country's cause?'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Addison has proved that he could draw a life-like character
+in his representation of Sir Roger de Coverley, but
+the <i>dramatis personæ</i>, who act a part, or are supposed to
+act one, in <i>Cato</i>, are mere dummies, made to express fine
+sentiments. There is no flesh and blood in them, and
+owing to the dramatist's regard for unity of place, the play
+is full of absurdities. Yet <i>Cato</i> was received with immense
+applause. It was regarded from a political aspect, and
+both Whig and Tory strove to turn the drama to party
+account. 'The numerous and violent claps of the Whig
+party,' Pope writes, 'on the one side of the theatre, were
+echoed back by the Tories on the other; while the author
+sweated behind the scenes with concern to find their
+applause proceeding more from the hand than the head.'</p>
+
+<p>In another letter he says: 'The town is so fond of it,
+that the orange wenches and fruit women in the parks
+offer the books at the side of the coaches, and the prologue
+and epilogue are cried about the streets by the common
+hawkers.' It would be interesting to ascertain what
+there was in the state of public affairs in the spring of
+1713, which created this enthusiasm. Swift, writing to
+Stella, alludes to a rehearsal of the play, but makes no
+criticism upon it; and Berkeley, who was in London at
+the time, and had a seat in Addison's box on the first night,
+is also silent about it. In a letter written, as it happens,
+by Bolingbroke, on the day that <i>Cato</i> was produced, he
+indicates the signs of the time, as they appeared to a Tory
+statesman: 'The prospect before us,' he writes, 'is dark
+and melancholy. What will happen no man is able to
+foretell.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was this sense of doubt and insecurity in the nation
+that gave significance to trifles. The political atmosphere
+was charged with electricity. The Tories, though in office,
+were far from feeling themselves secure, and both Harley
+and Bolingbroke were in correspondence with the Pretender.
+Atterbury, who was heart and soul with him, had
+just been made a bishop, Protestant ascendancy was in
+danger, the security of the country seemed to hang on the
+frail life of the Queen, and the strong party spirit of the
+time was easily fanned into a flame. We cannot now
+place ourselves in the position of the spectators whose
+passions gave such popularity to <i>Cato</i>. Its mild platitudes
+and rhetorical periods, its coldness and sobriety, seem ill
+fitted to arouse the fervour of playgoers, but Addison,
+whose good luck rarely failed him, was especially fortunate
+in the moment chosen for the representation of the play.
+Had <i>Cato</i> exhibited genius of the highest order, it could
+not have been more successful. Cibber writes that it
+was acted in London five times a week for a month to constantly
+crowded houses, and when the tragedy was acted
+at Oxford, 'Our house,' he says, 'was in a manner invested,
+and entrance demanded by twelve o'clock at noon,
+and before one it was not wide enough for many who came
+too late for places.'<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Cato</i> had the good fortune to run in London for thirty-five
+nights, and gained also some reputation on the continent.
+It is formed on the French model, and Addison was therefore
+praised by Voltaire as 'the first English writer who
+composed a regular tragedy.' He added that <i>Cato</i> was
+'a masterpiece.' If so, it is one of the masterpieces that
+has long ceased to be read. Little could its author have
+surmised that his tragedy, received with universal praise,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
+had but a brief life to live, while the Essays which he had
+already contributed to the <i>Tatler</i> and <i>Spectator</i> would make
+his name familiar to future generations.</p>
+
+<p>Addison's poetry may now be regarded as extinct, and
+most of the poems he wrote are probably unknown to the
+present generation of readers even by name. His Latin
+verses are pronounced excellent by all competent critics,
+but when a man writes verses in a dead language he does
+so generally to show his scholarship, and not to express his
+inspiration. Latin verse is, as M. Taine says, a faded
+flower. Now and then, indeed, a poem has been written
+with merits apart from its latinity&mdash;witness the <i>Epitaphium
+Damonis</i> of Milton&mdash;but Addison, who lacked poetic fire in
+his native language, was not likely to find it in a dead tongue.
+His English poems are generally dull, and sometimes, as
+in his earliest poem, the <i>Account of the greatest English
+Poets</i> (1694), the tameness of the verse is matched by the
+ignorance of the criticism. The student will observe how
+differently the theme is treated by a true poet like Drayton
+in his <i>Epistle to Reynolds</i>; or, like Ben Jonson, in the
+many allusions that he makes to his country's poets. Compare,
+too, Addison's <i>Letter from Italy</i> (1701) with the
+lovely lines on a like theme in Goldsmith's <i>Traveller</i>, and
+the contrast between a verseman and a poet is at once
+apparent. Addison, it may be added, is remembered for
+his hymns, which may be found in most selections of
+sacred verse, and deserve a place in the best of them. As
+the forerunner of Isaac Watts (1674-1748) and of Charles
+Wesley (1708-1788), he struck upon what at that time
+might, in our country, be almost called a new department
+of literature; and it is remarkable that an age which so
+dreaded enthusiasm should have originated verse which
+gives utterance to the most emotional form of spiritual
+aspiration. As hymn-writers, Englishmen were more than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
+a century behind the best sacred poets of Germany.
+Luther had taught the German people the power of
+hymnody, but it was during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648),
+and after its conclusion, that the spirit of devotion
+found full expression in religious verse. Just before the
+engagement at Leipzic, Gustavus Adolphus wrote his well-known
+battle hymn, and the peace was celebrated in a
+noble hymn by Martin Rinkart. He was followed by a
+succession of sacred singers whose devout utterances influenced
+and in some degree inspired the Wesleys.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"A verse may find him whom a sermon flies,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>says George Herbert, and the enormous power wielded
+by Methodism owes a large portion of its strength to
+song.</p>
+
+<p>Amidst much in their writings that is questionable in
+taste and weak in expression, both Watts and Charles
+Wesley have written hymns which prove their incontestible
+right to a place among the poets, and the influence
+they have exerted over the English-speaking race is beyond
+the power of the literary historian to estimate. The external
+divisions of the Christian Church are numerous; its
+unity is to be seen in the Hymn Book. 'Men whose theological
+views contrast most strongly,' says Mr. Abbey in
+his essay on <i>The English Sacred Poetry of the Eighteenth
+Century</i>, 'meet on common ground when they express in
+verse the deeper aspirations of the heart and the voice of
+Christian praise.'</p>
+
+<p>In 1714, on the death of the Queen, Addison was once
+more in office, and held his old position of Irish Secretary.
+In the following year he defended the Whig Government
+and Whig principles in the <i>Freeholder</i>, a paper published
+twice weekly. In it he gives no niggard praise to the
+Government of George I., and to the King himself, for his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
+'civil virtues,' and for his martial achievements. Addison's
+praise disagrees, it need scarcely be said, with the more
+minute and veracious description of the King given by
+Thackeray, but a party politician in those days could
+scarcely be a faithful chronicler. He could see what he
+wished to see, but found it necessary to shut his eyes when
+the prospect became unpleasant. George was a heartless
+libertine, but Addison observes with great satisfaction that
+the women most eminent for virtue and good sense are in
+his interest. 'It would be no small misfortune,' he says,
+'to a sovereign, though he had all the male part of the
+nation on his side, if he did not find himself king of the
+most beautiful half of his subjects. Ladies are always
+of great use to the party they espouse, and never fail
+to win over numbers to it. Lovers, according to Sir
+William Petty's computation, make at least the third
+part of the sensible men of the British nation, and it
+has been an uncontroverted maxim in all ages, that though
+a husband is sometimes a stubborn sort of a creature, a
+lover is always at the devotion of his mistress. By this
+means it lies in the power of every fine woman to secure at
+least half-a-dozen able-bodied men to his Majesty's service.
+The female world are likewise indispensably necessary in
+the best causes to manage the controversial part of them, in
+which no man of tolerable breeding is ever able to refute
+them. Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.'</p>
+
+<p>The essayist thinks it fortunate for the Whigs 'that
+their very enemies acknowledge the finest women of Great
+Britain to be of that party;' and in an amusing but rather
+absurd way he discourses to maids, wives, and widows on
+the advantages of adhering to the Hanoverian Government.
+It is characteristic of Addison that a political paper like
+the <i>Freeholder</i> should be flavoured with the humour and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>
+badinage he found so effective in the <i>Spectator</i>. To the
+ladies he appeals again and again, but not to their reason.
+He gives them mirth instead of argument, and thinks it
+more likely to prevail with the 'Fair Sex.' The <i>Freeholder</i>
+has several papers worthy of the author in his best moods,
+the best of them, perhaps, being the 'Tory Fox-hunter,'
+with which, to quote Johnson's words, 'bigotry itself must
+be delighted.' In the year which gave birth to the <i>Freeholder</i>,
+<i>The Drummer</i>, a comedy, was acted at Drury Lane,
+and ran three nights. The play was not acknowledged
+by Addison, neither was it printed in Tickell's edition of
+his works; but Steele, who published an edition of the
+play, with a dedication to Congreve, never doubted, and
+there is no reason to doubt, that Addison was the
+author. 'The piece,' Mr. Courthope writes, 'is like <i>Cato</i>,
+a standing proof of Addison's deficiency in dramatic
+genius. The plot is poor and trivial, nor does the dialogue,
+though it shows in many passages traces of its author's
+peculiar vein of humour, make amends by its brilliancy
+for the tameness of the dramatic situation.'<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a></p>
+
+<p>After the <i>Freeholder</i> Addison wrote nothing of importance,
+unless we except the essay published after his death
+<i>On the Evidences of Christianity</i>. Of this essay it will
+suffice to quote the judgment of his most distinguished
+eulogist. After observing that the treatise shows the
+narrow limits of Addison's classical knowledge, Lord
+Macaulay adds: 'It is melancholy to see how helplessly
+he gropes his way from blunder to blunder. He assigns
+as grounds for his religious belief stories as absurd as that
+of the Cock Lane Ghost, and forgeries as rank as Ireland's
+Vortigern; puts faith in the lie about the Thundering
+Legion; is convinced that Tiberius moved the senate to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>
+admit Jesus among the gods, and pronounces the letter of
+Agbarus, King of Edessa, to be a record of great authority.
+Nor were these errors the effects of superstition, for to
+superstition Addison was by no means prone. The truth
+is, that he was writing about what he did not understand.'</p>
+
+<p>In 1716, after having been made one of the Commissioners
+for Trades and Colonies, he married the Countess
+Dowager of Warwick, with whom he had been acquainted
+for some years. The marriage, according to the doubtful
+authority of Pope, was not a happy one, and is said to
+have driven Addison to the consolations of the tavern.
+He did not need them long. In 1717 Sunderland became
+Prime Minister, and made Addison a Secretary of State,
+an appointment which he resigned eleven months afterwards;
+and in 1719 he died at Holland House at the age of forty-seven,
+leaving one daughter as the memorial of the union.
+He lies, as is fitting, in the great Abbey of which he has
+written so beautifully.</p>
+
+<p>Tickell's noble tribute to his friend's memory belongs
+to the undying poetry which neither age nor fresher forms
+of verse can render obsolete. It must suffice to quote here
+a few lines from a poem which, despite some conventional
+expressions common to the time, is worthy of its theme
+throughout:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'If pensive to the rural shades I rove,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His shape o'ertakes me in the lonely grove;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Twas there of Just and Good he reasoned strong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cleared some great truth, or raised some serious song;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There patient showed us the wise course to steer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A candid censor, and a friend severe;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There taught us how to live; and (oh! too high<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The price for knowledge) taught us how to die.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There are few men of literary eminence in the eighteenth
+century of whom we know so little as of Addison. His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
+own <i>Spectator</i>, who never opened his lips but in his club,
+is scarcely more silent than the essayist's biographers, so
+trifling are the details they have to record beyond the
+bare facts of his official and literary career. Steele knew
+him better, and, in spite of an unhappy estrangement at
+the last, probably loved him more than anyone else, and
+had he written his story, as he once proposed doing, the
+narrative might have been charming; but, alas for Steele's
+resolutions!</p>
+
+<p>That Addison was a shy man we know&mdash;Lord Chesterfield
+said he was the most timid man he ever knew&mdash;and
+it speaks well for his resolution and strength of purpose
+that he should have risen notwithstanding this timidity
+to so high a position in public affairs. His want of oratorical
+power was a drawback to his efficiency, and Sir
+James Macintosh was probably right in saying that
+Addison as Dean of St. Patrick's, and Swift as Secretary
+of State, would have been a happy stroke of fortune,
+putting each into the place most fitted for him. The
+essayist's reserve, while it closed his lips in general
+society, did not prevent him from being one of the most
+fascinating of companions in the freedom of conversation
+with a few intimate friends. Swift, Steele, and even
+Pope, testify to Addison's irresistible charm in the select
+society that he loved. Young said he could chain the
+attention of every hearer, and Lady Mary Montagu declared
+that he was the best company in the world.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Richard Steele
+(1672-1729).</div>
+
+<p>Richard Steele was born in Dublin, 1672, of English
+parents, and educated at the Charterhouse,
+where, as we have said, Addison was at the
+same time a pupil. In 1690 he matriculated
+at Christ Church, Oxford, Addison being then demy at
+Magdalen. Steele left college without taking a degree,
+and entered the army as a cadet. After a time he ob<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>tained
+the rank of captain in Lord Lucas's fusiliers, and
+wrote his treatise, <i>The Christian Hero</i> (1701), with the
+design, he says, 'principally to fix upon his own mind a
+strong impression of virtue and religion in opposition to
+a stronger propensity towards unwarrantable pleasure.'
+Steele was an honest lover of the things most worthy of
+love, but his frailty too often proved stronger than his
+virtue, and the purpose of <i>The Christian Hero</i> was not
+answered.</p>
+
+<p>Jeremy Collier's <i>Short View of the Immorality and Profanity
+of the English Stage</i>, published in 1698, had made,
+as it well might, a powerful impression, and Steele, who
+was always ready to inculcate morality on other people,
+wrote four comedies with a moral purpose. <i>The Funeral;
+or Grief à-la-Mode</i> was acted with success at Drury Lane
+in 1701, and when published passed through several
+editions. <i>The Lying Lover</i> followed two years later,
+and was, in the comfortable judgment of the author,
+'damned for its piety.' This was followed, in 1705, by
+<i>The Tender Husband</i>, a play suggested by the <i>Sicilien</i>
+of Molière, as <i>The Lying Lover</i> had been founded on the
+<i>Menteur</i> of Corneille. Many years later Steele's last play,
+<i>The Conscious Lovers</i> (1722), completed his performances
+as a dramatist. It was dedicated to the King, who is said
+to have sent the author £500. The modern reader will
+find little worthy of attention in the dramas of Steele.
+His sense of humour enlivens some of the scenes, and is,
+perhaps, chiefly visible in <i>The Funeral</i>; but for the most
+part dulness is in the ascendant, and the sentiment is
+frequently mawkish. <i>The Conscious Lovers</i>, said Parson
+Adams, contains 'some things almost solemn enough for
+a sermon.' This may be true, but we do not desire a
+sermon in a play, and Steele, who is always a lively
+essayist, loses his liveliness in writing for the stage. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
+has been observed by Mr. Ward that, taking a hint from
+Colley Cibber, he 'became the real founder of that sentimental
+comedy which exercised so pernicious an influence
+upon the progress of our dramatic literature.' 'It would
+be unjust,' he adds, 'to hold him responsible for the
+feebleness of successors who were altogether deficient in
+the comic power which he undoubtedly even as a dramatist
+exhibits; but in so far as their aberrations were the result
+of his example, he must be held to have contributed,
+though with the best of motives, to the decline of the
+English drama.'<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> One of the prominent offenders who
+followed in Steele's wake was George Lillo (1693-1739),
+whose highly moral tragedies, written for the edification
+of playgoers, have the kind of tragic interest which is
+called forth by any commonplace tale of crime and
+misery. In Lillo's two most important dramas, <i>George
+Barnwell</i> (1731), a play founded on the old ballad, and
+<i>The Fatal Curiosity</i> (1736), there is a total absence of the
+elevation in character and language which gives dignity to
+tragedy. His plays are like tales of guilt arranged and
+amplified from the Newgate Calendar. The author wrote
+with a good purpose, and the public appreciated his work,
+but it is not dramatic art, and has no pretension to the
+name of literature.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout his life Steele was at war with fortune.
+His hopefulness was inexhaustible, but he learnt no lessons
+from experience, and escaped from one slough to fall into
+another. He was as unthrifty as Goldsmith, whom in
+many respects he resembles, and his warm, impulsive
+nature was allied to a combativeness and jealousy which
+sometimes led him to quarrel with his best friends. Of
+his passion for the somewhat exacting lady whom he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
+married,<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> and of the 400 and odd notelets addressed by
+the lover-husband to his 'dear, dearest Prue,' and 'absolute
+Governess,' it is enough to say here, that the story
+told offhand in his own words, shows how lovable the man
+was in spite of the faults which he never attempted to
+conceal. Only about a week before the marriage the
+lady had fair warning of one probable drawback to her
+happiness as a wife.<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> On the morning of August 30th,
+1707, Steele advised his 'fair one' to look up to that
+heaven which had made her so sweet a companion, and in
+the evening of that day he wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p style="margin-left:2em;">'<span class="smcap">Dear lovely Mrs. Scurlock</span>,</p>
+
+<p>'I have been in very good company, where your
+health, under the character of <i>the woman I loved best</i>, has
+been often drunk, so that I may say I am dead drunk for
+your sake, which is more than I <i>die for you</i>.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-right:2em;text-align:right;">'<span class="smcap">Rich. Steele</span>.'</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>After marriage Steele's extravagance and impecuniosity
+must have proved a severe trial to Prue. At times he
+would live in considerable style, and Berkeley, who writes,
+in 1713, of dining with him frequently at his house in
+Bloomsbury Square, praises his table, servants, and coach
+as 'very genteel.' At other times the family were without
+common necessaries, and on one occasion there was not 'an
+inch of candle, a pound of coal, or a bit of meat in the
+house.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p><p>On the 12th April, 1709, Steele issued the first number
+of the <i>Tatler</i>, its supposed author being the Isaac Bickerstaff,
+whose name, thanks to Swift, had been 'rendered
+famous through all parts of Europe.' The essays appeared
+every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, for the convenience
+of the post, and at the outset contained political
+news, which Steele, by his government appointment of
+Gazetteer, was enabled to supply. After awhile, however,
+much to the advantage of the <i>Tatler</i>, this news was
+dropped. The articles are dated from White's Chocolate-house,
+from Will's Coffee-house, from the Grecian, and
+from the St. James's. It is probable that the column in
+Defoe's <i>Review</i>, containing <i>Advice from the Scandal Club</i>,
+suggested his 'Lucubrations' to Steele. If so, it does not
+detract from his originality of treatment, for Defoe's town
+gossip is poor stuff. Addison, who knew nothing of the
+project beforehand, came, ere long, to his friend's assistance;
+but it was not until about eighty numbers had
+appeared, that he became a frequent contributor, and
+before that time Steele had made his mark. When the
+essays were afterwards reprinted in four volumes, Steele,
+who was never wanting in gratitude, generously acknowledged
+the help he had received. 'I fared,' he says,
+'like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbour
+to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary. When I had
+once called him in, I could not subsist without dependence
+on him.' The <i>Tatler</i> still supplies delightful
+entertainment, and in the almost total absence of amusing
+and wholesome reading in Steele's time, must have proved
+a welcome companion. Readers who are inundated by
+what is called 'light literature' can with difficulty
+imagine the dearth suffered in Pope's day, when the interminable
+romances of Calprenède, of Mdlle. de Scuderi
+and her brother, and of Madame la Fayette, were the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
+liveliest books considered fit for a modest woman to read.
+A novel, however, in ten volumes, like the <i>Grand Cyrus</i>
+or <i>Clélie</i>, had one advantage over the cheap fictions of
+our time, its interest was not soon exhausted.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Tatler</i> has claims upon the student's attention,
+apart from the entertainment it affords. Steele, who lived
+from hand to mouth, and wrote, as he lived, on the impulse
+of the moment, had unwittingly begun a work
+destined to form an epoch in English literature. The
+<i>Essay</i>, as we now understand the word, dates from the
+<i>Lucubrations of Isaac Bickerstaff</i>, and Steele and Addison,
+who may boast a numerous progeny, have in Charles
+Lamb the noblest of their sons.</p>
+
+<p>On the 2nd January, 1711, Steele wrote the final number
+of the <i>Tatler</i>, partly on the plea that the essays would
+suffice to make four volumes, and partly because he was
+known to be the author, and could not, as Mr. Steele,
+attack vices with the freedom of Mr. Bickerstaff. Addison,
+who had done so much to assist Steele in his first venture,
+was as ignorant of his intention to close the work as he
+was of its initiation. Two months later <i>The Spectator</i>
+appeared, and this time the friends worked in concert. It
+proved a brilliantly successful partnership. The second
+number, in which the characters of the club are introduced,
+was written by Steele, and to him we owe the first
+sketch of the immortal Sir Roger de Coverley:</p>
+
+<p>'When he is in town he lives in Soho Square. It is
+said he keeps himself a bachelor by reason he was crossed
+in love by a perverse, beautiful widow of the next county
+to him. Before his disappointment, Sir Roger was what
+you call a fine gentleman, had often supped with my Lord
+Rochester and Sir George Etheridge, fought a duel upon
+his first coming to town, and kicked bully Dawson in a
+public coffee-house for calling him youngster. But being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>
+ill-used by the above-mentioned widow, he was very
+serious for a year and a half; and though, his temper
+being naturally jovial, he at last got over it, he grew careless
+of himself, and never dressed afterwards. He continues
+to wear a coat and doublet of the same cut that
+were in fashion at the time of his repulse, which, in his
+merry humours, he tells us has been in and out twelve
+times since he first wore it.... He is now in his fifty-sixth
+year, cheerful, gay, and hearty, keeps a good house
+both in town and country; a great lover of mankind; but
+there is such a mirthful cast in his behaviour, that he is
+rather beloved than esteemed. His tenants grow rich, his
+servants look satisfied, all the young women profess love
+to him, and the young men are glad of his company.
+When he comes into a house he calls the servants by their
+names, and talks all the way upstairs to a visit. I must
+not omit that Sir Roger is a justice of the quorum; that
+he fills the chair at a quarter-session with great abilities;
+and three months ago gained universal applause by explaining
+a passage in the Game Act.'</p>
+
+<p>In their daily issue, as well as afterwards in volumes,
+the essays had an extensive sale. They were to be found
+on every breakfast-table, and so popular did they prove,
+that when the imposition of a halfpenny tax destroyed a
+number of periodicals, Steele found it safe to double the
+price of the <i>Spectator</i>. The vivacity and humour of the
+paper were visible from the beginning. 'Mr. Steele,' Swift
+wrote, 'seems to have gathered new life, and to have a new
+fund of wit.' Of 555 papers, Addison wrote 274 and
+Steele 236, while the remaining forty-five were the work
+of occasional contributors. In the full tide of its success,
+and without any assigned reason, the <i>Spectator</i> was
+brought to a conclusion in December, 1712, and in the following
+spring Steele started the <i>Guardian</i>, which might<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>
+have been as fortunate as its predecessor, had not the
+editor's zeal tempted him to diverge to politics. He
+had also a disagreement with his publisher, and the
+<i>Guardian</i> was allowed but a short life of 175 numbers.
+Of these about fifty were due to Addison, and upwards of
+eighty to Steele.</p>
+
+<p>Steele's political ardour was irrepressible, and a paper in
+the <i>Guardian</i> (No. 128), demanding the abolition of Dunkirk,
+called forth a pamphlet from Swift, in which the
+weaknesses of his former friend are sneered at and denounced
+with enough of truthfulness to enhance their
+malice. After allowing that Steele has humour, and is no
+disagreeable companion 'after the first bottle,' Swift adds,
+'Being the most imprudent man alive, he never follows the
+advice of his friends, but is wholly at the mercy of fools
+and knaves, or hurried away by his own caprice, by which
+he has committed more absurdities in economy, friendship,
+love, duty, good manners, politics, religion, and writing
+than ever fell to one man's share.' A little later, in
+anticipation of the Queen's death, Steele published <i>The
+Crisis</i> (1714), a political pamphlet, which led to his expulsion
+from the House of Commons. It was answered
+by one of the most masterly of Swift's pamphlets, <i>The
+Public Spirit of the Whigs</i>, in which it is suggested that
+Steele might be superior to other writers on the Whig side
+'provided he would a little regard the propriety and disposition
+of his words, consult the grammatical part, and get
+some information in the subject he intends to handle.'</p>
+
+<p>The reader is chiefly concerned with Steele as an essayist,
+and it is unnecessary to follow his career in the House of
+Commons and out of it. Yet there is one anecdote too
+characteristic to be omitted in the briefest notice of his
+life. Lady Charlotte Finch had been attacked in the
+<i>Examiner</i> 'for knotting in St. James's Chapel during<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+divine service, in the immediate presence both of God and
+her Majesty, who were affronted together.' Steele denounced
+the calumny in the <i>Guardian</i>. Upon taking his
+seat as member for Stockbridge, he was attacked by the
+Tories on account of <i>The Crisis</i>, which they deemed an inflammatory
+libel, and defended himself in a speech which
+occupied three hours. When he left the House, Lord Finch,
+who, like Steele, was a new member, rose to make his maiden
+speech in defence of the man who had defended his sister;
+a nervous feeling caused him to hesitate, and he sat down,
+exclaiming, 'It is strange I cannot speak for this man,
+though I could readily fight for him.' The House cheered
+these generous words, and Lord Finch rising again, made
+an able speech. The effort was a vain one, and Steele
+lost his seat. A few months later, after the death of
+Queen Anne, he entered the House again as member for
+Boroughbridge, and having been placed in the commission
+of peace for Middlesex, on presenting an address from the
+county, he received the honour of knighthood.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile he had not renounced his vocation of essayist.
+The <i>Guardian</i> was followed by the <i>Englishman</i> (1713),
+the <i>Englishman</i> by the <i>Lover</i> (1714), and the <i>Lover</i> by the
+<i>Reader</i> (1714), a journal strongly political in character.
+Of this only nine numbers were issued. Then came <i>Town
+Talk</i>, the <i>Tea Table</i>, <i>Chit-chat</i>, and the <i>Theatre</i>. Sir Richard
+appears to have been always in a hurry to break new
+ground, a foible not confined to literature. He was continually
+starting new projects, and never doubted, in spite
+of numberless failures, that his latest effort to make a
+fortune would be successful.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding his appointments as manager of Drury
+Lane and as a Commissioner in Scotland to inquire into the
+Estates of Traitors, Steele's money difficulties did not lessen
+as he advanced in life; worse still, he had the misfortune to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>
+quarrel with his oldest and dearest friend. For this he and
+Addison were alike to blame, and Addison dying a few months
+later, there was no time for reconciliation. In 1718 Steele
+had lost his wife, and some years afterwards his only remaining
+son. Ultimately, broken in health and fortune, Sir
+Richard retired to Carmarthen, and there, in 1729, he died.</p>
+
+<p>'I was told,' says Victor, 'he retained his cheerful sweetness
+of temper to the last; and would often be carried out
+in a summer's evening, when the country lads and lasses
+were assembled at their rural sports, and with his pencil
+give an order on his agent, the mercer, for a new gown to
+the best dancer.'<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a></p>
+
+<p>All literature worthy of the name is the expression of the
+writer's life, of his aspirations, and of his ultimate aims;
+and since man is a moral being, it cannot be severed from
+morality. To point a moral, if it be within the scope of
+imaginative art, is subordinate to its main purpose. To
+delight by stimulating the imagination, to give a new
+beauty to existence by widening the realm of thought,&mdash;these
+are some of the noblest purposes of literature;
+and while men and women of creative genius are among
+our wisest teachers, the wisdom we gain from them
+comes to us without direct enforcement. In the last century,
+however, authors of good character, and authors who
+had no character to boast of, were equally impressed with
+the necessity of adorning their pages with moral maxims,
+and if this moral was not inserted in the body of the
+work, it was inevitable that it should be tacked on to the
+end of it like a tail to a kite. Steele in his artless way had
+a moral end in view, though his method of reaching it was
+not always wise or even discreet. Addison had his moral
+also. It pervades everything he wrote, but so artfully does<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>
+he make use of it, that the reader is not unpleasantly conscious
+of a purpose. His allegories belong to an obsolete
+form of literature, but one of them at least <i>The Vision of
+Mirza</i>, may be still read with pleasure. His Saturday
+essays, which are nearly always serious in character, are
+the sermons of a layman, expressed in the most lucid
+style and in the purest English. His tales, like his allegories,
+have lost much of their flavour, but the humorous
+essays, in which he depicts the manners of the time, as
+well as the numbers devoted to the Spectator Club and to
+Addison's beloved Sir Roger, have a perennial charm.
+There is a felicity in the essayist's touch which is beyond
+imitation, although a reader might give, as Johnson suggested,
+days and nights to the study. The style is the
+man, and to write as Addison wrote it would be necessary
+to reach his moral and intellectual level, to see with his
+shrewd but kindly eyes, and to have his fine sense of
+humour. His faults, too, must be shared by his imitator&mdash;the
+somewhat too delicate refinement of a nature that
+never yields to impulse&mdash;the feminine sensitiveness that is
+allied to jealousy. Addison, in the judgment of his admirers,
+comes very near to perfection, and that is an irritating
+quality in a fellow mortal. It is, if it be not paradoxical
+to say so, the defect of his essays. There is nothing
+definite to find fault with in them, but we feel that strength
+is wanting. The clear and silent stream is a beautiful object,
+but after awhile it becomes monotonous, and we long for
+the swift and impetuous movement of a mountain torrent.
+It would be a thankless task, however, to dwell insistently
+on the deficiencies of a writer who has done so much for literature,
+and so much, too, for what is better than literature.
+We may wish that he had more warmth in him, somewhat
+more of energy and passion, yet such merits would be
+scarcely consonant with the graceful charm which gives to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
+the prose writings of Addison an unrivalled position in
+Pope's age, and, it might be added, in the eighteenth century,
+were it not for the priceless literary gift bestowed
+upon Oliver Goldsmith.</p>
+
+<p>Steele's fame as a writer has been overshadowed by the
+more exquisite genius of Addison, and his reputation has
+suffered partly from his own frailties and partly from the
+contemptuous way in which he has been treated by the
+panegyrists and critics of Addison. Pity is closely allied
+to contempt, and Sir Richard has come to be regarded as
+a scapegrace whose chief honour in life was the friendship
+of the accomplished essayist. Yet it was Steele who
+created the form of literature in which Addison earned his
+laurels, and without which he would in the present day be
+utterly forgotten. Steele was the discoverer of a new
+country, and if Addison took possession of its fairest portion,
+it was after his friend had pointed out the path and
+made the way easy. It would be very unjust, however, to
+treat of Steele solely as a pioneer. His own work, though
+less perfect than that of Addison, a consummate master
+of composition, is rich in variety and spirit, in pathos and
+in knowledge of the world. Steele is often careless, but
+he is never dull, and writes with a glow of enthusiasm
+that excites the reader's sympathy. Truly does Mr. Dobson
+say that while Addison's essays are faultless in their art
+and beyond the range of his friend's more impulsive
+nature, 'for words which the heart finds when the head is
+seeking; for phrases glowing with the white heat of a
+generous emotion; for sentences which throb and tingle
+with manly pity or courageous indignation, we must go to
+the essays of Steele.'<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a></p>
+
+<p>Sir Richard's pathetic touches and artless turns of ex<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>pression
+come from the heart. He is the most natural of
+writers, but does not seem to be aware that nature, in
+order to be converted into good literature, needs a little
+clothing. His essays have often a looseness or negligence
+of aim unpardonable in a man who can write so well. A
+conspicuous illustration of this defect may be seen in
+No. 181 of the <i>Tatler</i>, one of the most beautiful pieces
+from Steele's pen.</p>
+
+<p>'The first sense of sorrow,' he writes, 'I ever knew was
+upon the death of my father, at which time I was not
+quite five years of age; but was rather amazed at what all
+the house meant, than possessed with a real understanding
+why nobody was willing to play with me. I remember I
+went into the room where his body lay, and my mother
+sat weeping alone by it. I had my battledore in my hand,
+and fell a-beating the coffin and calling "Papa," for, I
+know not how, I had some slight idea that he was locked
+up there. My mother catched me in her arms, and transported
+beyond all patience of the silent grief she was
+before in, she almost smothered me in her embraces; and
+told me in a flood of tears, "Papa could not hear me, and
+would play with me no more, for they were going to put
+him under ground, whence he could never come to us again."
+She was a very beautiful woman of a noble spirit, and
+there was a dignity in her grief amidst all the wildness of
+her transport, which, methought, struck me with an instinct
+of sorrow, that before I was sensible of what it was
+to grieve, seized my very soul, and has made pity the
+weakness of my heart ever since.'</p>
+
+<p>Later on in the essay, and still looking back on the past,
+Steele recalls the untimely death of the first object his
+eyes ever beheld with love, and then abruptly dismissing
+his regrets he carelessly finishes the paper with this characteristic
+passage: 'A large train of disasters were coming<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
+on to my memory when my servant knocked at my closet
+door, and interrupted me with a letter, attended with a
+hamper of wine of the same sort with that which is to be
+put to sale on Thursday next at Garraway's Coffee-house.
+Upon the receipt of it I sent for three of my friends. We
+are so intimate that we can be company in whatever state
+of mind we meet, and can entertain each other without
+expecting always to rejoice. The wine we found to be
+generous and warming, but with such a heat as moved us
+rather to be cheerful than frolicsome. It revived the spirits,
+without firing the blood. We commended it until two
+of the clock this morning, and having to-day met a little
+before dinner, we found that though we drank two bottles
+a man, we had much more reason to recollect than forget
+what had passed the night before.'</p>
+
+<p>Steele, to quote Johnson's phrase, was 'the most agreeable
+rake that ever trod the rounds of indulgence,' but he
+had many a fine quality that does not harmonize with the
+character of a rake; and although he hurt himself by his
+follies, he did his best to help others by his genial wisdom.
+If he did not sufficiently regard his own interests, his
+thoughts, as Addison said, 'teemed with projects for his
+country's good.' Savage Landor, with an impulse of
+somewhat extravagant eulogy, exclaimed, 'What a good
+critic Steele was! I doubt if he has ever been surpassed.'
+This is one of the sayings that will not bear examination.
+Steele had doubtless the fine perception of what is
+noble in art and literature, which some men possess instinctively.
+He felt what was good, but does not appear
+either to have reached or strengthened his conclusions by
+any process of study.</p>
+
+<p>As an essayist Steele is careless, rapid, emotional, and
+disposed to be on the best terms with himself and with his
+readers. He makes them sure that if they could have met<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
+him in his rollicking mood at Will's Coffee-house, he would
+have treated them all round, even if, like Goldsmith, he
+had been forced to borrow the money to do it. But he
+was not always in this reckless humour. His heart was
+expansive in its sympathies and tender as a woman's; his
+mind was open to all kindly influences, and his essays
+have in them the rich blood and vivid utterances of a man
+who has 'warmed both hands before the fire of life.'</p>
+
+<p>Between Steele's <i>Guardian</i> (1713) and the <i>Rambler</i> of
+Johnson (1750), a period of thirty-seven years, a swarm
+of periodicals testify to the fame of Steele and Addison.
+The reader curious on the subject will find in Dr. Drake's
+essays a minute account of the numerous essayists who
+flourished, or who made an effort to live, between the
+close of the eighth volume of the <i>Spectator</i> and the beginning
+of the present century. Of these a few have still
+a place on our shelves, but for the most part they enjoyed
+a butterfly existence, and serve but to prove the immeasurable
+superiority of the writers who created the English
+Essay.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> Cibber's <i>Apology</i>, p. 386.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> Courthope's <i>Addison</i>, p. 150.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> <i>English Dramatic Literature</i>, vol. ii., p. 603.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> 'It is a strange thing,' he writes, 'that you will not behave
+yourself with the obedience people of worse features do, but that I
+must be always giving you an account of every trifle and minute of
+my time.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> Steele had been previously married to Mrs. Stretch, a widow,
+who possessed an estate in the West Indies; but the lady did not
+long survive the marriage.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> Victor's <i>Original Letters, Dramatic Pieces, and Poems</i>, vol. i.,
+p. 330.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> <i>Selections from Steele</i>, by Austin Dobson. Introduction, p. xxx.
+Clarendon Press.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<h3>JONATHAN SWIFT&mdash;JOHN ARBUTHNOT.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The booksellers who employed the most famous man of
+letters then living (1777), to write the <i>Lives of the Poets</i>,
+selected the authors whose biographies were to accompany
+the poems they proposed to publish. They did not know
+the difference between versemakers and poets; but they
+probably did know what authors of the rhyming tribe
+were likely to prove the most popular. Dr. Johnson,
+who was then in his sixty-ninth year, was willing to
+write the <i>Lives</i> to order. He added, indeed, three or four
+names to the list which had been given him; but he made
+no protest, and contented himself, as he told Boswell, in
+saying that a man was a dunce when he thought that he
+was one.</p>
+
+<p>Among the biographies included by Johnson in the
+<i>Lives</i>, appears the illustrious name of Swift. He was far
+indeed from being a dunce; but just as certainly he was
+not a poet, unless the title be given to him by courtesy. On
+the other hand, Swift ranks among the most distinguished
+prose writers of his time&mdash;many critics consider him the
+greatest&mdash;and he therefore finds his natural place in the
+prose section of this volume.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Jonathan Swift
+(1667-1745).</div>
+
+<p>Swift's life is an extraordinary psychological study, but
+it will suffice to state here the bare outline
+of his career. He was a posthumous child,
+and born in Dublin of English parents,
+November 30th, 1667. When a year old he was kidnapped<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>
+by his nurse out of pure affection, and carried off to
+Whitehaven, where she remained with the child for three
+years. At the age of six the boy was sent to Kilkenny
+school, and there he had William Congreve (1670-1729),
+the future dramatist, for a schoolfellow. Neither at school
+nor at Trinity College, Dublin, which he entered as a boy
+of fifteen, did Swift distinguish himself, and he left the
+University in disgrace. At the Revolution he found a
+refuge with his mother at Leicester, and she, through a
+family relationship, obtained a position for her boy in the
+house of Sir William Temple (1628-1698), who was accounted
+a great man in his own day, and was famous alike
+for statecraft and literature. By many readers he will be
+best remembered as the husband of the charming Dorothy
+Osborne, whose innocently sweet love-letters have not lost
+their freshness in the lapse of two centuries.</p>
+
+<p>There was a degree of servitude in Swift's position of
+secretary, which galled his proud spirit. But Temple, so
+far from treating him unkindly, introduced him to the
+King, and employed him in 'affairs of great importance.'
+In 1694 he left Temple, went to Dublin, took holy
+orders, and lived as prebend of Kilroot on £100 a year.
+In 1696 he resigned the office and returned to Moor
+Park, where he remained until Sir William Temple's
+death, in 1699. There he studied hard, ran up a steep hill
+daily for exercise, and cultivated the acquaintance of
+Esther Johnson, the 'Stella' destined to take a strange
+part in Swift's history, then a mere girl, and a companion
+of Temple's sister, who lived with him after his wife's death.</p>
+
+<p>Swift began his literary career by writing Pindaric
+odes, one of which led Dryden to say, and the prediction
+was amply verified, 'Cousin Swift, you will never be a
+poet.' Probably no man of genius ever wrote worse
+poetry than is to be found in these portentous efforts.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Here is one fair illustration of his flights as an ode
+writer, and the reader will not ask for more:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Were I to form a regular thought of Fame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which is perhaps, as hard to imagine right<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As to paint Echo to the sight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would not draw the idea from an empty name;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Because, alas! when we all die,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Careless and ignorant posterity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Although they praise the learning and the wit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And though the title seems to show<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The name and man by whom the book was writ,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Yet how shall they be brought to know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whether that very name was he, or you, or I?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Less should I daub it o'er with transitory praise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And water-colours of these days:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These days! where e'en th' extravagance of poetry<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is at a loss for figures to express<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Men's folly, whimsies, and inconstancy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And by a faint description makes them less.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then tell us what is Fame, where shall we search for it?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Look where exalted Virtue and Religion sit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Enthroned with heavenly Wit!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Look where you see<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The greatest scorn of learned Vanity!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">(And then how much a nothing is mankind!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose reason is weighed down by popular air.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who, by that, vainly talks of baffling death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And hopes to lengthen life by a transfusion of breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which yet whoe'er examines right will find<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To be an art as vain as bottling up of wind!)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when you find out these, believe true Fame is there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Far above all reward, yet to which all is due;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And this, ye great unknown! is only known in you.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is remarkable that at the very time Swift was perpetrating
+these lyrical atrocities, he was at work on the <i>Tale
+of a Tub</i>, which is generally regarded as the most masterly
+effort of his genius. A critic has said that Swift's poetry
+'lacks one quality only&mdash;imagination,' but verse without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
+imagination is like a body without a soul, like a house without
+windows, like a landscape-painting without atmosphere, and
+no license of language will allow us to call Swift a poet.
+Enough that he became a master of rhyme, and used it
+with extraordinary facility. Dr. Johnson's estimate of
+Swift's powers in this respect is a just one:</p>
+
+<p>'In the poetical works of Dr. Swift there is not much
+upon which the critic can exercise his powers. They are
+often humorous, almost always light, and have the qualities
+which recommend such compositions, ease and gaiety.
+They are, for the most part, what their author intended.
+The diction is correct, the numbers are smooth, and the
+rhymes exact. There seldom occurs a hard-laboured expression,
+or a redundant epithet; all his verses exemplify
+his own definition of a good style; they consist of proper
+words in proper places.'</p>
+
+<p>The merits with which Swift's verse is credited are,
+therefore, not poetical merits, unless we accept what
+Schlegel calls the miserable doctrine of Boileau, that the
+essence of poetry consists in diction and versification.</p>
+
+<p>The great bulk of Swift's verse is suggested by the
+incidents of the hour. No subject is too trivial for his
+pen; but the poems which are addressed to Stella, and
+others which, like <i>Cadenus and Vanessa</i>, and <i>On the
+Death of Dr. Swift</i>, have a personal interest, are by far the
+most attractive. We see the best side of Swift when he
+addresses Stella, whether in verse or prose. The birthday
+rhymes he delighted to write in her praise have the mark
+of sincerity, and there is true feeling in the lines which
+describe her as a ministering angel in his sickness:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'When on my sickly couch I lay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Impatient both of night and day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lamenting in unmanly strains,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Called every power to ease my pains;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then Stella ran to my relief<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With cheerful face and inward grief;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And though by Heaven's severe decree<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She suffers hourly more than me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No cruel master could require<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From slaves employed for daily hire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What Stella, by her friendship warmed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With vigour and delight performed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My sinking spirits now supplies<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With cordials in her hands and eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now with a soft and silent tread<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unheard she moves about my bed.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I see her taste each nauseous draught<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And so obligingly am caught,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I bless the hand from whence they came,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor dare distort my face for shame.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The poem in which Swift imagines what will take place
+upon his death, is full of satiric humour, combined with
+that vein of bitterness that is never long absent from his
+writings. His humour is always allied to sadness; his
+mirth often sounds like a cry of misery. In this poem he
+pictures his gradual decay, and how his special friends,
+anticipating the end, will show their tenderness by adding
+largely to his years:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'He's older than he would be reckoned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And well remembers Charles the Second.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He hardly drinks a pint of wine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that I doubt is no good sign.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His stomach too begins to fail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Last year we thought him strong and hale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But now he's quite another thing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I wish he may hold out till Spring.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>No enemy can match a friend, Swift adds, in portending a
+great misfortune:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'He'd rather choose that I should die<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than his prediction prove a lie,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No one foretells I shall recover,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But all agree to give me over.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>So he dies, and the first question asked is, 'What has
+he left and who's his heir?' and when these questions are
+answered, the Dean is blamed for his bequests. The news
+spreads to London and is told at Court:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Kind Lady Suffolk, in the spleen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Runs laughing up to tell the Queen.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Queen so gracious, mild, and good,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cries, "Is he gone? 'tis time he should."'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But the loss of the Dean will cause a brief regret to his
+most intimate friends:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Poor Pope will grieve a month; and Gay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A week; and Arbuthnot a day.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">St. John himself will scarce forbear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To bite his pen and drop a tear.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The rest will give a shrug, and cry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"I'm sorry&mdash;but we all must die."'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Why grieve, indeed, at the death of friends, since no loss is
+more easy to supply, and in a year the Dean will be forgotten,
+and his wit be out of date.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Some country squire to Lintot goes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Inquires for "Swift in Verse and Prose."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Says Lintot, "I have heard the name;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He died a year ago." "The same."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He searches all the shop in vain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Sir, you may find them in Duck Lane,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I sent them with a load of books<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Last Monday to the pastrycook's.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To fancy they could live a year!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I find you're but a stranger here.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Dean was famous in his time,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And had a kind of knack at rhyme.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His way of writing now is past,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The town has got a better taste."'<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Enough has been transcribed to show Swift's art in this
+poem, which is of considerable, but not of wearisome
+length. Perhaps ten or twelve pieces, in addition to those
+already mentioned, will repay the student's attention.
+One of the worthiest is a <i>Rhapsody on Poetry</i>. <i>Baucis and
+Philemon</i>, too, is a lively piece that pleased Goldsmith,
+and will please every reader. It was much altered from
+the original draught at Addison's suggestion; but the
+alterations are not improvements.<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> <i>The City Shower</i> is a
+piece of Dutch painting, reminding us of Crabbe. <i>Mrs.
+Harris's Petition</i> is an admirable bit of fooling; <i>Mary the
+Cook-Maid's Letter</i>, is in its way inimitable; and so, too, is
+the amusing talk of 'my lady's waiting-woman' in <i>The
+Grand Question Debated</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult, unhappily, to pursue one's way through
+Swift's poems, without being repelled again and again by
+the filth in which it pleases him to wade. <i>The Beast's
+Confession</i>, which has been reprinted in the <i>Selections from
+Swift</i> (Clarendon Press), is not obscene, like <i>The Lady's
+Dressing-Room</i>, <i>Strephon and Chloe</i>, and other poems of the
+class; but it has the inhumanity which deforms the description
+of the Houyhnhnms. Strange to say, in private
+life Swift appears to have been not only moral in conduct,
+but refined in conversation, and he is even said to have
+rebuked Stella on one occasion for a slightly coarse
+remark. His imagination was diseased, and he was himself
+always apprehensive of the calamity under which he
+became at last 'a driveller and a show.' 'I shall be like
+that tree,' he said once to the poet Young, 'I shall die at
+the top.'</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p>
+<p>It has been already said that <i>The Tale of a Tub</i> was
+written at Moor Park. It appeared in 1704, and although
+published anonymously and never owned, the book
+effectually stood in the way of Swift's high preferment in
+the Church. Queen Anne declined, and not without
+reason, to make its author a bishop.</p>
+
+<p>It is a satire of amazing power, written by a man who
+takes, as Swift took throughout life, a misanthropical view
+of human nature, and who agrees with the cynical judgment
+of Carlyle, that men are mostly fools. Swift, however,
+did not consider fools useless, but observes that they
+'are as necessary for a good writer as pen, ink, and paper.'
+Never was volume written which betrayed in larger
+characters the opinions and disposition of its author.
+Swift was consistent in defending the National Church as
+a political institution; but in the <i>Tale of a Tub</i> he does
+so with weapons an atheist might use if he possessed the
+skill. The author maintains that in his ridicule of the
+Church of Rome and of Protestant dissenters, he is only
+displaying the abuses which deform the Christian Church;
+but no defence can be urged for his wild and irreverent
+method of turning subjects into ridicule which by a vast
+number of people are regarded as sacred. In judging of
+Swift's satire from a moral standing-point, one test, as Mr.
+Leslie Stephen observes, may be supposed to guide our decision.
+'Imagine the <i>Tale of a Tub</i> to be read by Bishop
+Butler and by Voltaire, who called Swift a <i>Rabelais perfectionné</i>.
+Can anyone doubt that the believer would be
+scandalized, and the scoffer find himself in a thoroughly
+congenial element? Would not any believer shrink from
+the use of such weapons, even though directed against his
+enemies?'<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p>
+<p>Although the wit poured out with such profusion in the
+<i>Tale of a Tub</i>, in so far as it offends the moral sense, fails
+to give pleasure, the reader is astonished, as Swift in later
+life was himself, at the genius displayed in this allegory,
+the argument of which may be told in a few words.</p>
+
+<p>A man is supposed to have three sons by one wife, and
+all at a birth. On his deathbed he leaves to each of them
+a new coat, which he says will grow with their growth, and
+last as long as they live. In his will he leaves directions,
+saying how the coats are to be used, and warning them
+against neglecting his instructions. For some years all
+goes well, the will is studied and followed, and the
+brothers, Peter (the Church of Rome), Martin (the Church
+of England), and Jack (the Calvinist), live in unity. How
+by degrees they misinterpret their father's will, how Peter
+begins by adding topknots to his coat, and afterwards
+grows so scandalous that his brothers resolve to leave him,
+and then fall out between themselves, is told with abundant
+wit. A great part of the volume consists of digressions
+written in Swift's most vigorous style, and with the
+cynical humour in which he has no competitor.</p>
+
+<p>It is always interesting to observe the influence of a
+work of genius on other minds, and in connection with the
+<i>Tale of a Tub</i> a story told of his boyhood by William Cobbett
+is worth recording:</p>
+
+<p>'I was trudging through Richmond,' he writes, 'in my
+blue smock-frock, and my red garters tied under my knees,
+when, staring about me, my eyes fell upon a little book in
+a bookseller's window, on the outside of which was written,
+"<i>Tale of a Tub</i>, price threepence." The title was so odd
+that my curiosity was excited.... It was something so
+new to my mind that though I could not at all understand
+some of it, it delighted me beyond description; and it produced
+what I have always considered a sort of birth of in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>tellect.
+I read on till it was dark, without any thought of
+supper or bed.' Cobbett adds, that having read till he
+could see no longer, he put the volume in his pocket, and
+'tumbled down' by the side of a haystack, 'where I slept
+till the birds in Kew Gardens awakened me in the morning;
+when off I started to Kew, reading my little book.'</p>
+
+<p>One of the greatest masters of prose in the language has
+also recorded the impression made upon him by this wonderful
+book. At the age of eighty-three Landor wrote: 'I
+am reading once more the work I have read oftener than
+any other prose work in our language.... What a writer!
+Not the most imaginative or the most simple, not Bacon
+or Goldsmith had the power of saying more forcibly or
+completely whatever he meant to say.' 'Simplicity,' said
+Swift, 'is the best and truest ornament of most things in
+human life;' and Landor, commenting on Swift's style,
+observes that 'he never attempted to round his sentences
+by redundant words, aware that from the simplest and the
+fewest arise the secret springs of genuine harmony.'</p>
+
+<p>The volume containing the <i>Tale of a Tub</i> had also within
+its covers the <i>Battle of the Books</i>, which was suggested by
+a controversy that originated in France, and had been
+carried on by Sir W. Temple in England, as to the relative
+merits of the Ancients and the Moderns. Out of this, too,
+arose a discussion by some <i>savants</i>, with Richard Bentley
+(1662-1742), the greatest scholar of the age, at their head,
+with regard to the genuineness of the <i>Epistles of Phalaris</i>,
+a subject discussed in Macaulay's essay on Temple in his
+usually brilliant style. Swift, in the <i>Battle of the Books</i>
+sides with Temple and with Charles Boyle, the nominal
+editor of the <i>Epistles</i>, who, in the famous <i>Reply to Bentley</i>,
+fought behind the shield of Atterbury. In a combat,
+which takes place in the Homeric style, the enemies of
+the Ancients, Bentley and Wotton, are slain by one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>
+lance upon the field. The mighty deed was achieved
+by Boyle. 'As when a slender cook has trussed a brace
+of woodcocks, he with iron skewer pierces the tender
+sides of both, their legs and wings close pinioned to their
+ribs, so was this pair of friends transfixed, till down they
+fell joined in their lives, joined in their deaths; so closely
+joined, that Charon would mistake them both for one, and
+waft them over Styx for half his fare.' The humour of the
+piece is delightful, and it matters not a whit for the enjoyment
+of it, that the wrong heroes gain the victory.</p>
+
+<p>In 1708 Swift produced several pamphlets or tracts, and
+in one of them, the <i>Argument against Abolishing Christianity</i>,
+he found ample scope for the irony of which he was so
+consummate a master.</p>
+
+<p>'Great wits,' he writes, 'love to be free with the highest
+objects; and if they cannot be allowed a God to revile or renounce,
+they will speak evil of dignities, abuse the Government,
+and reflect upon the ministry; which I am sure few
+will deny to be of much more pernicious consequence;' and
+he observes, in concluding the argument: 'Whatever some
+may think of the great advantages to trade by this favourite
+scheme, I do very much apprehend that in six months'
+time the Bank and East India Stock may fall at least one
+<i>per cent.</i> And since that is fifty times more than ever the
+wisdom of our age thought fit to venture for the preservation
+of Christianity, there is no reason we should be at so
+great a loss merely for the sake of destroying it.'</p>
+
+<p>An amusing piece which appeared also at this time from
+Swift's pen, is of literary interest. Under the name of
+Isaac Bickerstaff he predicted the death, upon a certain
+day, of Partridge, a notorious astrologer and almanac
+maker. When the day arrived his decease was announced,
+and he was afterwards decently buried by Swift, despite
+a loud protest from the poor man that he was not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
+only alive, but well and hearty. The town took up the
+joke, all the wits joined in it, and Steele, who started
+the <i>Tatler</i> in the following year (1709), found it of
+advantage to assume the name of Bickerstaff, which these
+squibs had made so popular. Swift loved practical
+jokes, and sometimes yielded to a license that bordered
+on buffoonery. He was now in London, charged with a
+mission from the Irish Church, and hoping for Church
+preferment himself. With the latter object in view
+he published the <i>Sentiments of a Church of England
+Man</i> (1708). Two years later, vexed at heart at being
+unable to gain for the Irish clergy privileges enjoyed by
+their English brethren, and foiled, too, in his ambition,
+Swift forsook the Whig party, which he had never loved,
+and going over to the Tories, fought their battle for some
+years with so masterly a pen, as to become a great power
+in the country.</p>
+
+<p>Some time before his return to London in 1710, a
+weekly Tory paper had been started by Bolingbroke and
+Prior called <i>The Examiner</i>, and in opposition to it, upon
+September 14th in that year, Addison produced the <i>Whig
+Examiner</i> which lived a brief life of five numbers and died
+on the 8th of October. Three weeks later, on the 2nd
+November, after thirteen numbers of the <i>Examiner</i> had
+been published, Swift took up the pen, and from that date
+to June 14th, 1711, every paper was from his hand. Never
+before had a political journal exercised such power. In
+his change of party Swift was sincere in purpose, but unscrupulous
+in his methods of pursuing it, and to gain his
+ends told lies with a vigour that has rarely been surpassed.
+He is never delicate in his treatment of opponents,
+and when finer weapons would be useless, strikes
+with a sledge hammer. That such a writer, a master of
+every method most effective in controversy, should have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+been valued by the statesmen of the day is not surprising.
+When he forsook the Whig camp there was no opponent to
+pit against him, for neither Addison with his delicate
+humour, nor Steele with his brightness and versatility,
+could grapple with an enemy like this.</p>
+
+<p>Swift's arrogance in these days of his power was that of
+a despot. He was doing great things for ministers, and
+took care that they should know it. He was proud of his
+self-assertion, proud of being rude. Great men, and great
+ladies too, who wished for his acquaintance, had to make
+the first advances. He caused Lady Burlington to burst
+into tears by rudely ordering her to sing. 'She should
+sing or he would make her.' 'I was at court and church
+to-day,' he tells Stella, 'I generally am acquainted with about
+thirty in the drawing-room, and am so proud I make all the
+lords come up to me.' On one occasion he sent the Lord
+Treasurer into the House of Commons to call out the principal
+Secretary of State in order to say that he would not dine
+with him if he intended to dine late. He relates, too, how
+he warned St. John not to appear cold to him, for he would
+not be treated like a school-boy, and if he heard or saw anything
+to his disadvantage to let him know in plain words,
+and not to put him in pain by the change of his behaviour,
+for it was what he would hardly bear from a crowned head.
+'If we let these great ministers pretend too much,' he says,
+'there will be no governing them.' And in a letter to
+Pope he makes the following confession: 'All my endeavours
+from a boy to distinguish myself were only for want
+of a great title and fortune that I might be treated like a
+lord ... whether right or wrong it is no great matter;
+and so the reputation of great learning does the work of a
+blue ribbon, and of a coach and six horses.'</p>
+
+<p>It would be out of place in this volume to dwell on
+Swift's feats as a political writer; for us the most interest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>ing
+fact connected with the years 1710-14 is that during
+that eventful period of Swift's life, in which he was hobnobbing
+with Ministers of State and doing them infinite
+service by his pen, he was writing at odd moments
+his inimitable <i>Journal to Stella</i>, and gaining the love which
+ended so tragically, of Hester Vanhomrigh. This strange
+chapter in Swift's life is closely bound up with his literary
+history, and must therefore be briefly noticed.</p>
+
+<p>At Moor Park Swift, who was more than twenty years
+her senior, had seen Esther Johnson growing up into
+womanhood. He had been to her as a master, a position
+he always liked to assume towards women.<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> When he
+settled in Ireland it was arranged that Esther and her
+companion, Mrs. Dingley, should also live there. Her
+preceptor, in his regard for propriety, appears never to
+have seen Esther apart from the useful Dingley, and his
+letters are apparently addressed to both of them, but
+Esther knew, as we know, that all the tenderness and affectionate
+humour they contain was meant for her alone.
+Swift never writes as a lover, but the kind of love he gave
+to 'Stella' sufficed to bind her to him for life. If there
+were moments when she wished to escape from his power,
+the wish was hopeless. Having once submitted to his
+fascination, she was held by it to the end. Hester Vanhomrigh,
+who was about ten years younger than Stella, felt
+the same spell, and having a far less restrained nature than
+Miss Johnson, gave free expression to the passion which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
+devoured her. Between his two admirers, for such they
+were, Swift had a difficult course to steer. To Stella he
+was linked by strong ties of companionship, and to her,
+according to some authorities, he was secretly married.
+Whether this were the case or not she had the larger claims
+upon him, and if one of the twain had to be sacrificed,
+Vanessa must be the victim.</p>
+
+<p>In <i>Cadenus and Vanessa</i> (1713) a poem which every
+student of Swift will read, the author strove to achieve an
+impossibility. His aim was to ignore the lover and to
+assume the character of a master to an intelligent and
+favourite pupil, or of a father to a daughter. His dignity
+and age, he says, forbade the thought of warmer feelings.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'But friendship in its greatest height,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A constant rational delight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On Virtue's basis fixed to last<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When love's allurements long are past,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which gently warms but cannot burn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He gladly offers in return;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His want of passion will redeem<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With gratitude, respect, esteem;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With that devotion we bestow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When goddesses appear below.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And this was Swift's method of dealing with a woman
+who confessed the 'inexpressible passion' she had for him,
+and that his 'dear image' was always before her eyes.
+'Sometimes,' she wrote, 'you strike me with that prodigious
+awe, I tremble with fear; at other times a charming compassion
+shines through your countenance which moves my soul.'
+Swift had acted far more than indiscreetly in encouraging
+a friendship with Vanessa, and when she followed him to
+Dublin, in the neighbourhood of which she had some property,
+he knew not how to escape from the snare his own
+folly had laid. To Stella he had given 'friendship and
+esteem,' but, as he is careful to add, 'ne'er admitted love a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>
+guest;' the same cold gift was offered to Vanessa, but in vain.
+According to a report, the authority of which is doubtful,
+Miss Vanhomrigh wrote to Stella, in 1723, asking if she
+was Swift's wife. She replied that she was, and sent the
+letter she had received to Swift. In a towering passion he
+rode to Vanessa's house, threw the letter on the table, and
+left again without saying a word. The blow was fatal, and
+Vanessa died soon afterwards, revoking her will in Swift's
+favour and leaving to him the legacy of remorse. Having
+told in outline this episode in Swift's story, I return to the
+<i>Journal to Stella</i>, which dates from September 2nd, 1710,
+to June 6th, 1713.</p>
+
+<p>Little did Swift imagine that the chit-chat he was
+writing every day for Esther Johnson's sake would be read
+and enjoyed by thousands who care little or nothing for
+the party questions upon which the strenuous efforts
+of his intellect were expended. The early years of the
+eighteenth century contain nothing more delightful than
+this <i>Journal</i>. Its gossip, its nonsense, its freshness and
+ease of style, the tenderness concealed, or half-revealed, in
+its 'little language,' and the illustrations it supplies incidentally
+of the manners of the court and town, these are
+some of the charms that make us turn again and again to
+its pages with ever-increasing pleasure. We enjoy Swift's
+egotism and trivialities, as we enjoy the egotism of Pepys
+or Montaigne, and can imagine the eagerness with which the
+<i>Letters</i> were read by the lovely woman whose destiny it
+was to receive everything from Swift save the love which
+has its consummation in marriage. The style of the <i>Journal</i>
+is not that of an author composing, but of a companion
+talking; and it is all the more interesting since it reveals
+Swift's character under a pleasanter aspect than any of his
+formal writings. We see in it what a warm heart he had
+for the friends whom he had once learnt to love, and with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>
+what zeal he exerted himself in assisting brother-authors,
+while receiving little beyond empty praise from ministers
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>In the winter of 1713-14 Swift joined the Scriblerus
+Club, an association of such wits as Pope, Parnell, Arbuthnot,
+and Gay, and it was about this time that his friendship
+with Pope began. The members proposed writing a
+satire between them, and when Swift was exiled to Dublin
+as Dean of St. Patrick's, he pursued indirectly the suggestion
+of the Scriblerus wits by writing <i>Gulliver's Travels</i>
+(1726), a book that has made his name known throughout
+Europe, and in all the lands where English literature is
+read. Although Swift did not hesitate to make use of
+hints and descriptions which he had met with in the
+course of his reading, this is one of the most original works
+of fiction ever written, and one of the wittiest. Yet like
+almost everything that Swift wrote, it is deformed by grossness
+of expression, and in the latter portion by a malignant
+contempt for human nature which betrays a diseased imagination.
+The stories of the Lilliputians and Brobdingnags,
+purified from coarse allusions, are the delight of children;
+but the description of the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos excites
+disgust and indignation. He said that his object in
+writing the satire was to vex the world, and he has
+succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>'It cannot be denied,' says Sir Walter Scott, one of the
+sanest and healthiest of imaginative writers, 'that even a
+moral purpose will not justify the nakedness with which
+Swift has sketched this horrible outline of mankind degraded
+to a bestial state; since a moralist ought to hold with the
+Romans that crimes of atrocity should be exposed when
+punished, but those of flagitious impurity concealed. In
+point of probability, too&mdash;for there are degrees of probability,
+proper even to the wildest fiction&mdash;the fourth part<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>
+of <i>Gulliver</i> is inferior to the three others.... The mind
+rejects, as utterly impossible, the supposition of a nation
+of horses, placed in houses which they could not build, fed
+with corn which they could neither sow, reap, nor save,
+possessing cows which they could not milk, depositing that
+milk in vessels which they could not make, and, in short,
+performing a hundred purposes of rational and social life
+for which their external structure altogether unfits them.'<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a></p>
+
+<p>Neither morality, nor a regard for probability are so
+outraged in the story of the Lilliputians and Brobdingnags.</p>
+
+<p>Having once accepted Swift's assumption of the existence
+of little people not six inches high, and of a country in which
+the inhabitants 'appeared as tall as an ordinary spire-steeple,'
+the exactness and verisimilitude of the narrative,
+with its minute geographical details, make it appear so
+reasonable that a young reader may feel inclined to resent
+the criticism of an Irish bishop who said that 'the book
+was full of improbable lies, and for his part he hardly
+believed a word of it.' It is curious to note that Swift,
+who made a strange vow in early life 'not to be fond of
+children, or let them come near me hardly,' should have
+done more to delight them than any author of his century,
+with the exception, perhaps, of Defoe. Gay and Pope
+wrote a joint letter to Swift on the appearance of the
+<i>Travels</i>, pretending that they did not know the author,
+and advising him to get the book if it had not yet reached
+Ireland. 'From the highest to the lowest,' they declare, 'it
+is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery....
+It has passed Lords and Commons <i>nemine contradicente</i>,
+and the whole town, men, women, and children,
+are quite full of it.' A book which attained in the author's
+lifetime a wellnigh unprecedented popularity should have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>
+yielded him a large profit. What it did yield we do not
+know, but in a letter dated 1735, in which, perhaps, he
+alludes to the <i>Travels</i>, Swift says, 'I never got a farthing
+for anything I writ, except once, about eight years ago,
+and that by Mr. Pope's prudent management for me.'</p>
+
+<p>The injustice done to Ireland in the last century, as
+short-sighted as it was cruel, is described at large in the
+second volume of Mr. Lecky's <i>History</i>. Swift, who hated
+Ireland, felt a righteous indignation at the misgovernment
+which threatened the country with ruin, and some of his
+most powerful phillipics were secretly written in her defence.</p>
+
+<p>In 1720 he issued a pamphlet urging the Irish to use
+only Irish manufactures: 'I heard the late Archbishop of
+Tuam,' he writes, 'mention a pleasant observation of somebody's,
+that Ireland would never be happy till a law were
+made for burning everything that came from England,
+except their people and their coals. I must confess, that
+as to the former, I should not be sorry if they would stay
+at home; and for the latter, I hope, in a little time we shall
+have no occasion for them</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Non tanti mitra est, non tanti judicis ostrum&mdash;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>but I should rejoice to see a staylace from England be
+thought scandalous, and become a topic for censure at
+visits and tea-tables.'</p>
+
+<p>The pamphlet is a forcible attack on the oppression
+under which Ireland laboured, and the Government
+answered it by prosecuting the printer. Nine times the
+jury were sent back by the Chief Justice before they consented
+to bring in a 'special verdict,' and ultimately the
+prosecution was dropped.</p>
+
+<p>Two years later the English Government granted a
+patent to a man of the name of Wood to issue a new<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
+copper coinage for Ireland to an extravagant amount, out
+of which, in return for bribes to the Duchess of Kendal, it
+was supposed that the speculator would make a considerable
+profit at Ireland's expense. The country was
+aroused, and Swift, by the issue of the <i>Drapier's Letters</i>,
+purporting to come from a Dublin draper, roused the
+passions of the people to a white heat. It was known
+perfectly well from whom the <i>Letters</i> came, but no one
+would betray Swift, and when the printer was thrown into
+prison the jury refused to convict. The battle was fought
+with vigour, Swift conquered, and the patent was withdrawn.
+A brief passage from the fourth and final letter
+'To the Whole People of Ireland' shall be quoted. It will
+be seen that the writer is not afraid of plain speaking.
+After saying that the king cannot compel the subject to
+take any money except it be sterling gold or silver, he
+adds:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Now here you may see that the vile accusation of
+Wood and his accomplices, charging us with disputing the
+King's prerogative by refusing his brass, can have no place&mdash;because
+compelling the subject to take any coin which is
+not sterling is no part of the King's prerogative, and I am
+very confident, if it were so, we should be the last of his
+people to dispute it, as well from that inviolable loyalty we
+have always paid to his Majesty, as from the treatment we
+might in such a case justly expect from some, who seem to
+think we have neither common sense nor common senses.
+But, God be thanked, the best of them are only our fellow-subjects,
+and not our masters. One great merit I am sure
+we have which those of English birth can have no pretence
+to&mdash;that our ancestors reduced this kingdom to the
+obedience of England; for which we have been rewarded
+with a worse climate&mdash;the privilege of being governed by
+laws to which we do not consent&mdash;a ruined trade&mdash;a House
+of Peers without jurisdiction&mdash;almost an incapacity for all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
+employments&mdash;and the dread of Wood's halfpence. But
+we are so far from disputing the king's prerogative in
+coining, that we own he has power to give a patent to any
+man for setting his royal image and superscription upon
+whatever materials he pleases, and liberty to the patentee
+to offer them in any country from England to Japan; only
+attended with one small limitation&mdash;that nobody alive is
+obliged to take them.'</p></div>
+
+<p>With much humour, in the last paragraph of the letter,
+Swift undertakes to show that Walpole is against Wood's
+project 'by this one invincible argument, that he has the
+universal opinion of being a wise man, an able minister,
+and in all his proceedings pursuing the true interest of the
+King his master; and that as his integrity is above all
+corruption, so is his fortune above all temptation.'</p>
+
+<p>Swift's arguments in the <i>Drapier's Letters</i> are sophistical,
+his statements grossly exaggerated, and his advice
+sometimes shameless, as, for instance, in recommending
+what is now but too well known as 'boycotting.'
+The end, however, was gained, and the Dean
+was treated with the honours of a conqueror. On his
+return from England in 1726, a guard of honour conducted
+him through the streets, and the city bells sounded
+a joyful peal. Wherever he went he was received with
+something like royal honours, and when Walpole talked
+of arresting him, he was told that 10,000 soldiers would
+be needed to make the attempt successful. The Dean's
+hatred of oppression and injustice had its limits. He
+defended the Test Act, and assailed all dissenters with
+ungovernable fury. It was his aim to exclude them from
+every kind of power.</p>
+
+<p>In 1729, with a passion outwardly calm and in a moderate
+style, which makes his amazing satire the more
+appalling, Swift published <i>A Modest Proposal for Prevent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>ing
+the Children of Poor People in Ireland from being a
+Burden to their Parents or Country and for making them
+Beneficial to the Public</i>. A more hideous piece of irony
+was never written; it is the fruit of an indignation that
+tore his heart. The <i>Proposal</i> is, that considering the great
+misery of Ireland, young children should be used for food.
+'I grant,' he says,'this food will be somewhat dear, and
+therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have
+already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the
+best title to the children. 'A very worthy person, he
+says, considers that young lads and maidens over twelve
+would supply the want of venison, but 'it is not improbable
+that some scrupulous people might be apt to censure
+such a practice (although, indeed, very unjustly), as a
+little bordering upon cruelty; which I confess has always
+been with me the strongest objection against any project,
+how well soever intended.' The business-like way in which
+the argument is conducted throughout, adds greatly to its
+force. Swift has written nothing so terrible as this satire,
+and nothing that surpasses it in power.</p>
+
+<p>The Dean was fretting away his life when he wrote this
+pamphlet. Two years before he had paid his last visit to
+the country where, as he said in a letter to Gay, he had
+made his friendships and left his desires. On the death
+of George I. he visited England, vainly hoping to
+gain some preferment there through the aid of Mrs.
+Howard, the mistress of George II., and returned to
+'wretched Dublin,' to lose the woman he had loved so well
+and treated so strangely, and to 'die in a rage like a
+poisoned rat in a hole.' After Stella's death, in 1728,
+Swift's burden of misanthropy was never destined to be
+lightened. His rage and gloom increased as the years
+moved on, and in penning his lines of savage invective
+against the Irish House of Commons, the Dean had a fit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
+and wrote no more verse. Here is a specimen of his <i>sæva
+indignatio</i>:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Could I from the building's top<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hear the rattling thunder drop,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While the devil upon the roof<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(If the devil be thunder-proof)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Should with poker fiery red<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Crack the stones and melt the lead;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drive them down on every skull,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While the den of thieves is full;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Quite destroy that harpies' nest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How might then our isle be blest!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It should be observed at the same time that even in his
+declining days, when his heart was heavy with bitterness,
+Swift indulged in practical jokes and in the most trivial
+pursuits. <i>Vive la bagatelle</i> was his cry, but it was the cry
+of a man who had as deep a contempt for the wiser pursuits
+of life as for its frivolities. Of the mirth that is the
+natural outcome of a cheerful nature, the Dean knew
+nothing. His hilarity was but a vain attempt to escape
+from despair. In 1740 he writes of being very miserable,
+extremely deaf, and full of pain. Sometimes he gave way
+to furious bursts of temper, and for several years before
+the end came, he fell into a state resembling idiocy. Swift
+died on October 19th, 1745, leaving his money to a hospital
+for lunatics,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'And showed by one satiric touch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No nation needed it so much.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A brilliant writer, who has undertaken to prove the
+'glaring injustice' of the popular estimate of Swift, and by
+his forcible epithets has strengthened the grounds on which
+that estimate is built, observes that Swift's 'philosophy of
+life is ignoble, base, and false,' that 'his impious mockery
+extends even to the Deity,' and that 'a large portion of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>
+works exhibit, and in intense activity, all the worst attributes
+of our nature&mdash;revenge, spite, malignity, uncleanness.'<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a></p>
+
+<p>This harsh judgment is essentially a true one; but Swift's
+was a many-sided character. He was a misanthrope, with
+deep, though very limited affections, a man frugal to
+eccentricity, with a benevolence at once active and extensive.
+His powerful intellect compels our admiration, if
+not our sympathy. His irony, his genius for satire and
+humour, his argumentative skill, his language, which is
+never wanting in strength, and is as clear as the most
+pellucid of mountain streams&mdash;these gifts are of so rare
+an order, that Swift's place in the literary history of his
+age must be always one of high eminence. Doubtless, as
+a master of style, he has been sometimes over-praised. If
+we regard the writer's end, it must be admitted that his
+language is admirably fitted for that end. What more
+then, it may be asked, can be needed? The reply is, that
+in composition, as in other things, there are different
+orders of excellence. The kind, although perfect, may be
+a low kind, and Swift's style wants the 'sweetness and
+light,' to quote a phrase of his own, which distinguish our
+greatest prose writers. It lacks also the elevation which
+inspires, and the persuasiveness that convinces while it
+charms. With infinitely more vigour than Addison, Swift,
+apart from his <i>Letters</i>, has none of Addison's attractiveness.
+No style, perhaps, is better fitted to exhibit scorn
+and contempt; but its author cannot express, because he
+does not possess, the sense of beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Unlike Pope, Swift was a man of affairs rather than of
+letters. He wrote neither for literary fame nor for
+money. His ambition was to be a ruler of men, and in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>
+imperious will he was strong enough to make a second
+Strafford. 'When people ask me,' said Lord Carteret,
+'how I governed Ireland, I say that I pleased Dr. Swift,
+"<i>quæsitam meritis sume superbiam</i>."' As a political
+pamphleteer he succeeded, because he was savagely in
+earnest, and had the special genius of a combatant.
+If argument was against him he used satire; if satire
+failed he tried invective; his armoury was full of
+weapons, and there was not one of them he could not
+wield. He loved power, and exercised it on the ministers
+who needed the services of his pen. And, as we have
+already said, he dispensed his favours like a king! Swift's
+commanding genius gives even to his most trivial productions
+a measure of vitality. The student of our eighteenth
+century literature is arrested by the man and his works,
+and to treat either him or them with indifference would
+be to neglect a significant chapter in the history of the
+time.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">John Arbuthnot
+(1667-1735).</div>
+
+<p>John Arbuthnot, one of the most prominent of the
+Queen Anne wits, and the warm friend of
+Swift and Pope, was born at Arbuthnot,
+near Montrose, in 1667. He studied medicine
+at Aberdeen, and having taken his doctor's degree at
+St. Andrews, came, after the wont of ambitious Scotchmen,
+to seek his fortune in London, where in 1700 he published
+an <i>Essay on the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning</i>,
+and having won high reputation as a man of science, was
+elected a fellow of the Royal Society. A few years later
+he was made Physician Extraordinary to Queen Anne;
+and it was not long before he had as high a repute among
+men of letters as with men of science. He suffered frequently
+from illness; but no pain, it has been said, could
+extinguish his gaiety of mind. In the last century Hampstead
+was a favourite resort of invalids. Arbuthnot had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
+sent Gay there on one occasion, and thither in 1734 he
+went himself, so ill that he 'could neither sleep, breathe,
+eat, nor move.' Contrary to his expectation he regained a
+little strength, and lived until the following spring.
+'Pope and I were with him,' Lord Chesterfield wrote, 'the
+evening before he died, when he suffered racking pains....
+He took leave of us with tenderness, without weakness,
+and told us that he died not only with the comfort,
+but even the devout assurance of a Christian.'</p>
+
+<p>There is not one of Pope's circle who holds a more
+enviable position than Arbuthnot. In strength of intellect
+and readiness of wit Swift only was his equal, and in
+classical learning he was Swift's superior. Like Othello,
+Arbuthnot was of a free and open nature, and his friends
+clung to him with an affection that was almost womanly.
+He had the fine impulses of Goldsmith combined with the
+manliness and practical sagacity of Dr. Johnson, and
+Johnson recognized in this celebrated physician a kindred
+spirit. 'I think Dr. Arbuthnot,' he said, 'the first man
+among the wits of the age. He was the most universal
+genius, being an excellent physician, a man of deep learning,
+and a man of much humour.' His genius and generous
+qualities were amply acknowledged by his contemporaries,
+Pope calls Arbuthnot 'as good a doctor as any man for one
+that is ill, and a better doctor for one that is well;' Swift
+said he had every virtue which could make a man amiable;
+Berkeley wrote of him as a great philosopher who was
+reckoned the first mathematician of the age and had the
+character 'of uncommon virtue and probity,' and Chesterfield,
+who declared that his knowledge and 'almost inexhaustible
+imagination' were at every one's service, added
+that 'charity, benevolence, and a love of mankind appeared
+unaffectedly in all he said and did.'</p>
+
+<p>Strange to say we know little of Arbuthnot but what is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
+to be gleaned from the correspondence of his friends, and
+it is only of late years that an attempt has been made
+to write the doctor's biography, and to collect his works.<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a>
+To edit these works satisfactorily is a difficult and a
+doubtful task&mdash;several of Arbuthnot's writings having
+been produced in connection with Swift, Pope, and Gay.
+So indifferent was he to literary fame, that his children are
+said to have made kites of papers in which he had jotted
+down hints that would have furnished good matter for folios.
+His most famous work is <i>The History of John Bull</i> (1713),
+which Macaulay considered the most humorous political
+satire in the language. It was designed to help the Tory
+party at the expense of the Duke of Marlborough, whose
+genius as a military leader was probably equal to that of
+Wellington, while he fell far below the 'Great Duke'
+in the virtues which form a noble character. The irony
+and dry humour of the satire remind one of Swift, and,
+like Arbuthnot's <i>Art of Political Lying</i>, is so much in
+Swift's vein throughout that M. Taine may be excused
+for attributing both of these pieces to the Dean of St.
+Patrick's.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>History of John Bull</i> is not fitted to attain lasting
+popularity. It will be read from curiosity and for information;
+but the keen excitement, the amusement, and the
+irritation caused by a brilliant satire of living men and
+passing events can be but vaguely imagined by readers
+whose interest in the statecraft of the age is historical
+and not personal. Arbuthnot, like Swift, belonged to
+the Tory camp, and both did their utmost to depreciate
+the great General who never knew defeat, and to promote
+the designs of Harley. When Arbuthnot produced
+his satire, all the town laughed at the representation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
+of Marlborough as an old smooth-tongued attorney who
+loved money, and was said by his neighbours to be hen-pecked,
+'which was impossible by such a mild-spirited
+woman as his wife was.' That an 'honest plain-dealing
+fellow' like John Bull the Clothier, should be deceived by
+such wily men of business as Lewis Baboon of France, and
+Lord Strutt of Spain, and also that other tradesmen should
+be willing to join John and Nic Frog, the linen-draper of
+Holland, in the lawsuit, provided that Bull and Frog, or
+Bull alone, would bear the law charges, is made to appear
+likely enough; and Scott says truly that 'it was
+scarce possible so effectually to dim the lustre of Marlborough's
+splendid achievements as by parodying them
+under the history of a suit conducted by a wily attorney
+who made every advantage gained over the defendant a
+reason for protracting law procedure, and enhancing the
+expense of his client.' In this long lawsuit everybody is
+represented as gaining something except <i>John Bull</i>, whose
+ready money, book debts, bonds, and mortgages go into
+the lawyer's pockets. Whether the nickname of <i>John Bull</i>
+originated with Arbuthnot or was merely adopted by him
+is not known.</p>
+
+<p>Arbuthnot was an active member of the Scriblerus Club,
+and wrote the larger portion of the <i>Memoirs of Martin Scriblerus</i>
+(1741), the design of which was, as Pope said, to ridicule
+false tastes in learning, in the character of a man 'that
+had dipped into every art and science, but injudiciously in
+each.' Dr. Johnson says of this work that no man can be
+wiser, better, or merrier for remembering it. Perhaps he
+is right; but the <i>Memoirs</i> contain some humorous points
+which, if they do not create merriment, may yield some
+slight amusement. The pedant's endeavours to make a
+philosopher of his child are sufficiently ludicrous. He
+is delighted to find that the infant has the wart of Cicero<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>
+and the very neck of Alexander, and hopes that he may
+come to stammer like Demosthenes, 'and in time arrive
+at many other defects of famous men.' As the boy grows
+up his father invents for him a geographical suit of clothes,
+and stamps his gingerbread with the letters of the Greek
+alphabet, which proved so successful a mode of teaching the
+language, that on the very first day the child 'ate as far as
+iota.' He also taught him as a diversion 'an odd and
+secret manner of stealing, according to the custom of the
+Lacedemonians, wherein he succeeded so well that he practised
+it till the day of his death.' Martin studies logic,
+philosophy, and medicine, and discovers that the seat of the
+soul is not confined to one place in all persons, but resides
+in the stomach of epicures, in the brain of philosophers, in
+the fingers of fiddlers, and in the toes of rope-dancers. His
+discoveries, it may be added, are made 'without the trivial
+help of experiments or observations.'</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> <i>Life of Jonathan Swift</i>, by John Forster, vol. i., pp. 164-174.
+Mr. Forster did not live to produce more than one volume
+of a work to which for many years he had given 'much labour and
+time.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> <i>English Men of Letters&mdash;Jonathan Swift</i>, by Leslie Stephen,
+p. 43.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> Mrs. Pendarves writes (1733) 'The day before we came out of
+town we dined at Doctor Delany's, and met the usual company.
+The Dean of St. Patrick's was there <i>in very good humour</i>, he calls
+himself "<i>my master</i>," and corrects me when I speak bad English
+or do not pronounce my words distinctly. I wish he lived in
+England, I should not only have a great deal of entertainment
+from him, but improvement.'&mdash;<i>Life and Correspondence of Mrs
+Delany</i>, vol. i., p. 407.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> <i>Life of Swift</i>, p. 299.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> <i>Jonathan Swift, a Biographical and Critical Study</i>, by J.
+Churton Collins, p. 267.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> See <i>The Life and Works of Dr. Arbuthnot</i>, by George A.
+Aitken. Oxford, Clarendon Press.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<h3>DANIEL DEFOE&mdash;JOHN DENNIS&mdash;COLLEY CIBBER&mdash;LADY
+MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU&mdash;EARL OF CHESTERFIELD&mdash;LORD
+LYTTELTON&mdash;JOSEPH SPENCE.</h3>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">Daniel Defoe
+(1661-1731).</div>
+
+<p>The most voluminous writer of his century is popularly
+remembered as the author of one book, published
+in old age. Everybody has read
+<i>Robinson Crusoe</i>, and knows the name of its
+author; but few readers outside the narrow circle of literary
+students are aware of Defoe's exhaustless labours as a
+politician, social reformer, projector, pamphleteer, and
+novelist.</p>
+
+<p>It would be well for the author's reputation if we knew
+less about him than we do. There was a time when he
+was regarded as a noble sufferer in the cause of civil and
+religious liberty. His faults were credited to his age while
+his virtues were supposed to place him on an eminence far
+above the time-servers who despised him. He has been
+praised as a man courageously living for great aims, who
+was maligned by the malice of party, and to whose memory
+scant justice has been done. 'No one,' says Henry Kingsley,
+'could come up to the standard of his absolute precision,'
+and his 'inexorable honesty alienated everyone.' These
+words were written in 1868. Four years previously, however,
+the discovery of six letters in the State Paper Office,
+in Defoe's own hand, had entirely destroyed his character<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
+for inexorable honesty, and the researches of his latest and
+most exhaustive biographer,<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> who regards his hero's vices as
+virtues, do but serve to give greater prominence to the
+baseness of his conduct. Defoe, by his own confession,
+was for many years in the pay of the Government for secret
+services, taking shares in Tory papers and supervising
+them as editor, in order to defeat the aims of the party to
+which he professed to be allied, and of the proprietors with
+whom he was in partnership. Thus in 1718, he writes as
+a plea that his labours should be remembered: 'I am, Sir,
+for this service, posted among Papists, Jacobites, and enraged
+High Tories&mdash;a generation who I profess my very
+soul abhors; I am obliged to hear traitorous expressions
+and outrageous words against his majesty's person and
+government, and his most faithful servants, and smile at
+it all as if I approved it; I am obliged to take all the
+scandalous and indeed villainous papers that come, and
+keep them by me as if I would gather materials from them
+to put them into the <i>News</i>; nay, I often venture to let
+things pass which are a little shocking that I may not
+render myself suspected. Thus I bow in the House of
+<i>Rimmon</i>, and must humbly recommend myself to his lordship's
+protection, or I may be undone the sooner, by how
+much the more faithfully I execute the commands I am
+under.' It would not be fair to judge Defoe altogether
+by the moral standard of our own day, but the part he
+played as a servant and spy of the government would have
+been an act of baseness in any age, and of this he seems to
+have been conscious.</p>
+
+<p>Daniel Foe, who about 1703 assumed the prefix of De,
+for no assignable reason, was the son of a butcher and
+Nonconformist in Cripplegate, who had the youth educated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>
+for the ministry. Daniel, however, preferred a more
+exciting occupation, and took part in the unfortunate expedition
+of the Duke of Monmouth. Escaping from that
+peril he began business as a hose factor in Cornhill, and
+carried it on until he failed about the year 1692. Already
+he had learnt to use the pen, and a loyal pamphlet
+secured for him a public appointment which lasted for
+some years. He was also connected with a brick manufactory
+at Tilbury. Meanwhile he wrote for the press, and
+showed himself the possessor of a clear and masculine style,
+which could be 'understanded of the people.'</p>
+
+<p>In 1698 Defoe published his <i>Essay on Projects</i>, 'which
+perhaps,' Benjamin Franklin says, 'gave me a turn of
+thinking that had an influence on some of the principal
+future events of my life.'</p>
+
+<p>One of the most interesting projects in the book is the
+proposal to form an Academy on the French model. In
+1712 Swift wrote a pamphlet (the only piece he published
+with his name) entitled <i>A proposal for correcting, improving,
+and ascertaining the English tongue</i>, in which he suggests
+the foundation of an Academy under the protection of the
+Queen and her ministers. The idea it will be seen had
+been anticipated fifteen years before.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The peculiar study of the Academy of France,' Defoe
+writes, 'has been to refine and correct their own language,
+which they have done to that happy degree that we see it
+now spoken in all the courts of Christendom as the language
+allowed to be most universal. I had the honour once
+to be a member of a small society who seemed to offer at
+this noble design in England; but the greatness of the work
+and the modesty of the gentlemen concerned prevailed with
+them to desist from an enterprise which appeared too great
+for private hands to undertake. We want indeed a Richelieu
+to commence such a work, for I am persuaded were there
+such a genius in our kingdom to lead the way, there would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>
+not want capacities who could carry on the work to a glory
+equal to all that has gone before them. The English
+tongue is a subject not at all less worthy the labours of
+such a society than the French, and capable of a much
+greater perfection. The learned among the French will
+own that the comprehensiveness of expression is a glory in
+which the English tongue not only equals, but excels its
+neighbours.... It is a great pity that a subject so noble
+should not have some as noble to attempt it; and for a
+method what greater can be set before us than the Academy
+of Paris, which, to give the French their due, stands foremost
+among all the great attempts in the learned part of
+the world.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Defoe also projected a Royal Military Academy, and an
+academy for women which should have only one entrance
+and a large moat round it. With these precautions, spies, he
+observes, would be unnecessary, since, in his opinion,
+'there needs no other care to prevent intriguing than to
+keep the men effectually away.' He had the Eastern
+notion of guarding women from danger by preventing the
+access to it, yet he could write:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'A woman of sense and manners is the finest and most
+delicate part of God's creation; the glory of her Maker,
+and the great instance of His singular regard to man, His
+darling creature, to whom He gave the best gift either God
+could bestow or man receive. And it is the sordidest piece
+of folly and ingratitude in the world to withhold from the
+sex the due lustre which the advantages of education gives
+to the natural beauty of their minds. A woman well bred
+and well taught, furnished with the additional accomplishments
+of knowledge and behaviour, is a creature without
+comparison; her society is the emblem of sublime enjoyments;
+her person is angelic and her conversation heavenly....
+She is every way suitable to the sublimest wish, and
+the man that has such a one to his portion has nothing to
+do but to rejoice in her and be thankful.'</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In verse Defoe published the <i>True Born Englishman</i>
+(1701), in defence of King William and his Dutch
+followers:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'William's the name that's spoke by every tongue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">William's the darling subject of my song;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Listen, ye virgins, to the charming sound,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in eternal dances hand it round.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your early offerings to this altar bring,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Make him at once a lover and a king.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The nonsense deepens as the rhyme goes on. For
+William every tender vow is to be made, he is to be the
+first thought in the morning, and his name will act as a
+charm, affrighting the infernal powers and guarding from
+the terror of the night.</p>
+
+<p>The poem proved very popular, and Defoe writes that
+had he been able to enjoy the profit of his own labour he
+would have gained above £1,000. He printed nine editions
+at the price of one shilling a copy, but meanwhile twelve
+surreptitious editions were published and sold for a few
+pence, a fraud for which he says he had no remedy but
+patience. Throughout his busy life of authorship he was
+indeed continually victimized by pirates.</p>
+
+<p>While in verse Defoe extolled the king as if he
+were a demi-god, he did William good service by his
+pamphlets, and was in some degree admitted into his
+confidence.</p>
+
+<p>Up to the king's death in 1702 his course appears to
+have been straightforward; after the accession of Anne he
+acted a less honourable part. No fault can be found with
+his design that year in writing <i>The Shortest Way with the
+Dissenters</i>, a piece of irony unsurpassed in that age until
+the publication of Swift's <i>Modest Proposal</i>, twenty-seven
+years later. The satire was at first accepted as a serious
+argument. The Dissenters were alarmed, and the most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>
+bigoted of High Churchmen delighted. Then, Defoe's
+aim being discovered, both parties joined in the cry for
+vengeance. He was condemned to stand for three days in
+the pillory, and was afterwards imprisoned in Newgate.
+To the 'hieroglyphic state machine, contrived to punish
+Fancy in,' the undaunted man addressed a hymn which was
+hawked about the streets, and the mob instead of pelting
+him with offensive missiles, covered him with flowers.
+'Earless on high stood unabashed Defoe,' says Pope. He
+was unabashed, but he was not earless.</p>
+
+<p>In Newgate he remained until 1704, when he was released
+by Harley. In prison he wrote a minutely circumstantial
+account of the great storm commemorated in Addison's
+<i>Campaign</i>. How much of Defoe's narrative is truth and
+how much invention it is impossible to say. The fact that
+he solemnly vouches for the accuracy of his statements inclines
+one to believe that they are not to be trusted, for this
+was always Defoe's <i>rôle</i> as a writer of fiction. His first
+and most deliberate effort is to impose upon his readers,
+and in this art he is without a rival.</p>
+
+<p>While in Newgate he began his <i>Review</i>, a political journal
+of great ability. The first number was published in
+February, 1704, and it existed, though not in its original
+form, for more than nine years.</p>
+
+<p>'When it is remembered that no other pen was ever
+employed than that of Defoe, upon a work appearing at
+such frequent intervals, extending over more than nine
+years, and embracing, in more than five thousand printed
+pages, essays on almost every branch of human knowledge,
+the achievement must be pronounced a great one, even if
+he had written nothing else. If we add that between the
+dates of the first and last numbers of the <i>Review</i> he wrote
+and published no less than eighty other distinct works,
+containing 4,727 pages, and perhaps more not now known,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
+the fertility of his genius must appear as astonishing as
+the greatness of his capacity for labour.'<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a></p>
+
+<p>Defoe was permitted to leave his prison upon condition
+that he should act in the secret service of the Government,
+and his work was that of an hireling writer unburdened
+by principle. When Harley was ejected he made himself
+useful to Godolphin; when Godolphin was dismissed he
+went back to Harley, and 'the spirit of the <i>Review</i> changed
+abruptly.' A more useful man for the work he had
+undertaken could not be found. His dexterity, his boldness,
+his knowledge of men and of affairs, his readiness as
+a writer, and it must be added his unscrupulousness,
+fitted him admirably for services which had to be done in
+secret.</p>
+
+<p>Much that he did openly was deserving of high praise.
+He was tolerant in an intolerant age, he did his best to forward
+the Union of England and Scotland, his patriotic
+spirit was not feigned, his words are often weighty with
+wisdom, and it has been truly said, that 'his powerful
+advocacy was enlisted in favour of almost every practicable
+scheme of social improvement that came to the front in his
+time.'<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a></p>
+
+<p>With equal truth the writer adds that Defoe was 'a
+wonderful mixture of knave and patriot.' The knavery is
+seen to some extent in his method of workmanship as a
+man of letters. In <i>A True Relation of the Apparition of
+one Mrs. Veal<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> the next day after her Death to one Mrs. Bar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>grave
+at Canterbury, 8th September, 1705</i> (1706) Defoe's
+art of mystification is skilfully practised.</p>
+
+<p>'This relation,' he says in the Preface, 'is matter of fact,
+and attended with such circumstances as may induce any
+reasonable man to believe it. It was sent by a gentleman,
+a Justice of Peace at Maidstone, in Kent, and a very intelligent
+person, to his friend in London as it is here worded;
+which discourse is here attested by a very sober and understanding
+gentleman, who had it from his kinswoman who
+lives in Canterbury, within a few doors of the house in
+which the within-named Mrs. Bargrave lives ... and
+who positively assured him that the whole matter as it is
+related and laid down is really true, and what she herself
+had in the same words, as near as may be, from Mrs.
+Bargrave's own mouth.'</p>
+
+<p>In addition to this circumstantial statement, the veritable
+appearance of the ghostly lady is confirmed by the fact
+that she wore a scoured silk gown, newly made up, which,
+as Mrs. Bargrave told a friend, she felt and commended.
+'Then Mrs. Watson cried out, "you have seen her indeed,
+for none knew but Mrs. Veal and myself that the gown
+was scoured."' The ghost came chiefly for the purpose of
+recommending Drelincourt's volume, <i>A Christian's Defence
+Against the Fear of Death</i>, then in its third edition. The
+fourth edition contained Mrs. Bargrave's story. 'I am
+unable to say,' Mr. Lee writes, 'when Defoe's "Apparition"
+became a necessary appendage to the book; but think,
+that since the eleventh edition, to the present time, Drelincourt
+has never been published without it.'</p>
+
+<p>When in 1719, at the age of fifty-nine, he produced his
+first and greatest work of fiction, <i>Robinson Crusoe</i>, he
+aimed by the constant reiteration of commonplace details
+to give a matter-of-fact aspect to the narrative, and in most
+of his later novels, with the exception of <i>Colonel Jack</i> (1722),<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
+which he allows to be in part a 'moral romance,' Defoe
+boldly maintains that his relations are in every respect
+true to biography and to history. To make this more
+probable he overloads his pages with a number of business-like
+statements, and with affairs so insignificant and sordid
+that only his genius can save the narrative from being
+wearisome. To inculcate morality he carries his readers
+into the worst dens of vice&mdash;his heroes being pickpockets,
+pirates, and convicts, and his heroines depraved women of
+the lowest order. The interest felt in <i>Captain Singleton</i>
+(1720), in <i>Moll Flanders</i> (1722), in <i>Colonel Jack</i> (1722),
+and in <i>Roxana</i> (1724), is to be found in the minute record
+of their shameless adventures, their miseries and vices.
+When the characters reform, Defoe's occupation is gone.
+The atmosphere the reader is forced to breathe in these
+tales is indeed so oppressive that he will be glad to
+escape from it into the pure and exhilarating air of a
+Shakespeare or a Scott.</p>
+
+<p>A critic has asserted that as models of fictitious narrative
+these tales are supreme, but it is impossible to agree with
+this judgment. The highest imaginative art is not deceptive
+art. The fact that Lord Chatham thought the
+<i>Memoirs of a Cavalier</i><a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> (1720) a true history, is not to
+the credit of the work as fiction. As well, it has been said,
+might you claim the highest genius for the painter, whose
+fruit and flowers were so deceptively painted as to tempt
+birds to peck at the canvas.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p>
+<p>Whatever interest the reader feels in Defoe's 'secondary
+novels,' of which <i>Roxana</i> is the most powerful, is due to
+scenes which disgust as much as they impress. The vividness
+with which they are depicted is undeniable, but one
+does not desire to inspect filth with a microscope. Happily
+<i>Robinson Crusoe</i>, on which the author's fame rests, is a
+thoroughly healthy book that still holds its place as the
+best, or one of the best, volumes ever written for boys.
+There is genius as well as extraordinary skill in the way
+this admirable story is told, but it is not among the fictions
+which are read with as much pleasure in old age as in
+youth. Defoe's amazing gift of invention does not compensate
+for the want of a creative and elevating imagination.</p>
+
+<p><i>The History of the Plague in London</i> (1722) stands next
+to <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> in literary merit. Had Defoe been a
+witness, as he pretends to have been, of the scenes which
+he describes, the record could not be more vivid. It professes
+to have been 'written by a citizen who continued
+all the while in London,' and 'lived without Aldgate
+Church and Whitechapel Bars, on the left hand or north
+side of the street.' In this case, as in others, the circumstantial
+character of the narrative led readers to regard it
+as a true history, and Dr. Mead, in his <i>Discourse on the
+Plague</i> (1744), quotes the book as an authority.</p>
+
+<p>Highly characteristic of Defoe's style, and of his art as a
+moralist is the <i>Religious Courtship</i>, also published in 1722.
+It is the fictitious history of a family told partly in
+dialogue, and so written as to attract the reader in spite
+of repetitions and of reflections as praiseworthy as they are
+commonplace. It appeals to a class whose attention would
+not be won by fine literature, and has not appealed in vain,
+for the book, after passing through a large number of
+editions, has not yet lost its popularity. Morally the work
+is unobjectionable, though not a little narrow, and it is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>
+strange that it should have appeared about the same time
+as a story so offensively coarse as <i>Moll Flanders</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The most veracious book written by Defoe is <i>A Tour
+through the Whole Island of Great Britain, By a Gentleman</i>,
+1724, in three volumes. The full title of the work is too
+long to quote, but it may be observed that the promises it
+holds out under five headings are satisfactorily fulfilled.
+The <i>Tour</i> bears the marks of having been written with great
+care and from personal observation throughout. Defoe
+states that before publishing the book he had made
+seventeen large circuits or separate journeys, and three
+general tours through the whole island. It contains
+curious information as to the state of England and Scotland
+one hundred and seventy years ago, and readers
+interested in our social progress and the industrial life
+of the country will find much to interest them in the
+traveller's shrewd observations and careful details. The
+love of mountain and lake scenery felt by Gray more than
+forty years later was a passion unknown to Defoe and
+to most of his contemporaries. In the <i>Tour</i> Westmoreland
+is described as the wildest, most barbarous and frightful
+country of any which the author had passed over. He
+observes that it is 'of no advantage to represent horror,'
+and the impassable hills with their snow-covered tops
+'seemed,' he says, 'to tell us all the pleasant part of
+England was at an end.' The <i>Tour</i> exhibits Defoe's
+literary gift of expressing what he has to say in the
+clearest language. A homely style which fulfils its purpose
+has a merit deserving of recognition. For steady work
+upon the road the sober hackney is of more service than
+the race-horse.</p>
+
+<p>Defoe was a husband and father and a man of affairs,
+yet, like his own Crusoe, he lived a lonely life, and in 1731,
+owing to some strange circumstance of which there is no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>
+record, died a lonely death at a lodging-house at Moorfields.
+He has been called the father of the English novel,
+and deserves the title, although on a slighter scale Steele
+and Addison preceded him as writers of fiction. As a
+novelist he is without refinement, without ideality, without
+passion; he looks at life from a low level, but in
+the narrow territory of which he is master&mdash;the art of
+realistic invention&mdash;his power of insight is incontestible.
+Defoe adopted a method dear in our day to some of the
+least worthy of French novelists, who while aiming to copy
+Nature debase her. For Nature must be interpreted by
+Art, since only thus can we obtain a likeness that shall be
+both beautiful and true. Defoe, nevertheless, has contributed
+one book of lasting value to the literature of his
+country, and such a gift, in the eyes of the literary
+chronicler, hides a multitude of faults.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">John Dennis
+(1657-1733-4).</div>
+
+<p>John Dennis was born in London and educated at
+Harrow and Caius College, Cambridge. His
+relations with Pope give him a more prominent
+position among men of letters than he
+would otherwise deserve, and mark with unpleasing distinctness
+the coarse methods of literary warfare adopted in
+Pope's day. The poet began the attack in his <i>Essay on
+Criticism</i>. Dennis had written a tragedy called <i>Appius
+and Virginia</i>, and Pope, who had a grudge against him
+for not admiring his <i>Pastorals</i>, showed his spite in the
+following lines:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'But Appius reddens at each word you speak,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And stares tremendous, with a threatening eye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It was perilous in Pope to allude to the personal defects
+of an antagonist, and Dennis attacked him coarsely in
+return as a 'young, squab, short gentleman, an eternal
+writer of amorous pastoral madrigals, and the very bow of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>
+the god of Love.' 'He has reason,' he adds, 'to thank the
+good gods that he was born a modern; for had he been
+born of Grecian parents, and his father by consequence
+had by law the absolute disposal of him, his life had been
+no longer than one of his poems&mdash;the life of half a day.'</p>
+
+<p>Dennis's pamphlet on the <i>Essay</i> caused Pope some pain
+when he heard of it, 'But it was quite over,' he told
+Spence, 'as soon as I came to look into his book and found
+he was in such a passion.'</p>
+
+<p>The critic, however, was a thorn in Pope's flesh for
+many a year, and the poet showed his irritation by assaulting
+him in prose and verse. Dennis was equally ready,
+although not equally capable of returning the poet's blows,
+and when free from the impotence of anger, made several
+shrewd critical thrusts which his antagonist felt keenly.</p>
+
+<p>Dennis aspired to be a poet and dramatist. He wrote a bombastic
+poem in blank verse called <i>The Monument</i>, sacred to
+the immortal memory of 'the good, the great, the god-like,
+William III.'; a poem, also in blank verse, and still more
+'tremendous,' to quote his favourite word, on the <i>Battle of
+Blenheim</i>, in which he frequently invokes his soul to say
+and sing a thousand things far beyond his soul's reach&mdash;and
+a poem equally laboured and grandiloquent, on the
+Battle of Ramillies, in which there are passages that read
+like a burlesque of Milton. Dennis observes in his
+<i>Grounds of Criticism in Poetry</i> (1704) that 'poetry unless
+it pleases, nay, and pleases to a height, is the most contemptible
+thing in the world.' This is just criticism, but
+the writer did not recognize that his own verse was
+contemptible. In this essay, which contains many sound
+critical remarks and an appreciation of Milton seldom felt
+at that time, he has the bad taste to quote as an illustration
+of the sublime, a passage from his own paraphrase of
+the Te Deum:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Where'er at utmost stretch we cast our eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the vast frightful spaces of the skies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ev'n there we find Thy glory, there we gaze<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On Thy bright Majesty's unbounded blaze;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ten thousand suns prodigious globes of light<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At once in broad dimensions strike our sight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Millions behind, in the remoter skies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Appear but spangles to our wearied eyes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when our wearied eyes want farther strength<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To pierce the void's immeasurable length<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our vigorous towering thoughts still further fly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And still remoter flaming worlds descry;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But even an Angel's comprehensive thought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cannot extend so far as Thou hast wrought;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our vast conceptions are by swelling, brought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swallowed and lost in Infinite, to nought.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is significant of Dennis's judgment of his own verse
+that these inflated lines follow one of the loveliest passages
+contained in <i>Paradise Lost</i>. Milton describes the moon
+unveiling her peerless light; and the poet-critic exhibits
+in juxtaposition his 'vigorous towering thoughts' about
+the stars. The comparison forced upon the reader is
+unfortunate.</p>
+
+<p>His tragedies, <i>Iphigenia</i> (1704), <i>Liberty Asserted</i> (1704),
+<i>Appius and Virginia</i> (1709), and a comedy called <i>A Plot
+and No Plot</i> (1697) were brought upon the stage. <i>Liberty
+Asserted</i>, which was received with applause due to the
+violence of its attacks upon the French, although called a
+tragedy, does not end tragically. The heroine's patriotism
+is so fervid that she professes herself willing, while loving
+one man, to marry another whom she does not love, if her
+country deems him the more worthy.</p>
+
+<p>Among other poetical attempts, Dennis addressed a
+Pindaric Ode to Dryden, and the great poet, with the
+flattery which he was always ready to lavish on his well-wishers,
+called him 'one of the greatest masters' in that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
+kind of verse. 'You have the sublimity of sense as well
+as sound,' he wrote, 'and know how far the boldness of a
+poet may lawfully extend.'</p>
+
+<p>It may be added that Dennis on one occasion successfully
+opposed one of the ablest controversialists of the age. In
+<i>The Absolute Unlawfulness of Stage Entertainments fully
+demonstrated</i>, William Law attacked dramatic representations,
+not on account of the evils at that time associated
+with them, but as 'in their own nature grossly sinful.'
+'To suppose an innocent play,' Law says, 'is like supposing
+innocent lust, sober rant, or harmless profaneness,' and
+throughout the pamphlet this strain of fierce hostility is
+maintained.</p>
+
+<p>'Law,' says his biographer,'measured his strength with
+some of the very ablest men of his day, with men like
+Hoadly and Warburton, and Tindal and Wesley; and it
+may safely be said that he never came forth from the
+contest defeated. But, absurd as it may sound, it is
+perfectly true that what neither Hoadly nor Warburton,
+nor Tindal, nor Wesley could do, was done by John Dennis....
+"Plays," wrote Law, "are contrary to Scripture as
+the devil is to God, as the worship of images is to the
+second commandment." To this Dennis gave the obvious
+and unanswerable retort that "when St. Paul was at
+Athens, the very source of dramatic poetry, he said a great
+deal publicly against the idolatry of the Athenians, but not
+one word against their stage. At Corinth he said as little
+against theirs. He quoted on one occasion an Athenian
+dramatic poet, and on others Aratus and Epimenides. He
+was educated in all the learning of the Grecians, and could
+not but have read their dramatic poems; and yet, so far
+from speaking a word against them, he makes use of them
+for the instruction and conversion of mankind."'</p>
+
+<p>Dennis's pamphlet, <i>The Stage defended from Scripture,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
+Reason, Experience, and the Common Sense of Mankind for
+Two Thousand Years</i>, was published in 1726. In his latter
+days he suffered from two grievous calamities, poverty and
+blindness. In 1733 Vanbrugh's play, <i>The Provoked Husband</i>,
+was acted for his benefit, and his old enemy Pope
+wrote the prologue, of which the sarcasm is more conspicuous
+than the kindness. There is a story, to which
+allusion is made in the <i>Dunciad</i>, that Dennis had invented
+some kind of theatrical thunder, and how, being once present
+at a tragedy, he fell into a great passion because his
+art had been appropriated, and cried out ''Sdeath! that is
+<i>my</i> thunder.' The critic was also known to have an intense
+hatred of the French and of the Pope, and these peculiarities
+are not forgotten in the prologue.</p>
+
+<p>After saying that Dennis lay pressed by want and
+weakness, his doubtful friend adds:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'How changed from him who made the boxes groan,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And shook the stage with thunders all his own!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stood up to dash each vain Pretender's hope,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Maul the French tyrant, or pull down the Pope!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If there's a Briton then, true bred and born,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who holds Dragoons and wooden shoes in scorn;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If there's a critic of distinguished rage;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If there's a senior who contemns this age;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let him to-night his just assistance lend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And be the Critic's, Briton's, Old Man's friend.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Dennis got £100 by this benefit, but had little time in
+which to spend it, for he died about a fortnight afterwards
+at the age of seventy-seven. Upon his death Aaron Hill
+wrote some memorial verses, in which he prophesies that,
+while the critic's frailties will be no longer remembered,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The rising ages shall redeem his name,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And nations read him into lasting fame.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It will be seen that the poets did not all treat Dennis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>
+unkindly. If praise were substantial food, he would have
+had enough to sustain him from 'glorious John' alone.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Colley Cibber
+(1671-1757).</div>
+
+<p>Colley Cibber holds a more prominent place than
+Dennis in the list of men whom Pope selected
+for attack. He could not have chosen one
+more impervious to assault. The poet's
+anger excited Cibber's mirth, his satire contributed to his
+content. The comedian's unbounded self-satisfaction and
+good humour, his vivacity and spirits, were proof against
+Pope's malice. Graceless he may have been, but a dullard
+the mercurial 'King Colley' was not.</p>
+
+<p>Born in 1671, he disappointed the hopes of his father,
+the famous sculptor, and at the age of eighteen made his
+first appearance on the stage. As actor and as dramatist,
+the theatre throughout his life was Cibber's all-absorbing
+interest. His first play, <i>Love's Last Shift</i> (1696), kept possession
+of the stage for forty years, and his best play, <i>The
+Careless Husband</i> (1704), received a like welcome. As an
+actor he was also successful, and played for £50 a night,
+the highest sum ever given at that time to any English
+player. His career was as long as it was prosperous. 'Old
+Cibber plays to-night,' Horace Walpole wrote in 1741, 'and
+all the world will be there.'</p>
+
+<p>It was only as Poet Laureate, for he could not write
+poetry, that Cibber displayed his inferiority. The honour
+was conferred in 1730, two years after Gay had produced
+the <i>Beggar's Opera</i>, when Pope was in the height of his
+fame, when Thomson had published his <i>Seasons</i> and Young
+<i>The Universal Passion</i>. Pope, as a Roman Catholic, was
+out of the running, but there were poets living who would
+have saved the office from the disgrace brought upon it by
+Cibber. 'As to Cibber,' Swift wrote to Pope, 'if I had any
+inclination to excuse the Court, I would allege that the
+Laureate's place is entirely in the Lord Chamberlain's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+gift; but who makes Lord Chamberlains is another question.'
+The sole result of the appointment that deserves
+to be recorded is an epigram by Johnson, as just as it is
+severe:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Augustus still survives in Maro's strain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Spenser's verse prolongs Eliza's reign;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Great George's acts let tuneful Cibber sing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For Nature formed the Poet for the King!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Of poetry there is no trace in the five volumes of his
+dramatic works; there are few touches of nature, and little
+genuine wit, but these defects are to some extent supplied
+by sparkling dialogue and lively badinage. Cibber is often
+sentimental, and when he is sentimental he is odious. His
+attempts to express strong emotion and honourable feeling
+excite laughter instead of sympathy, and on this account it
+is difficult to accept without some deduction Mr. Ward's
+favourable judgment of <i>The Careless Husband</i>,<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> which, if it
+be one of the cleverest of Cibber's dramas, is also one of
+the most conspicuous for this defect. Here, as elsewhere,
+Cibber should have left sentiment alone. Imagine a lover
+exclaiming to a relenting mistress, 'Oh, let my soul thus
+bending to your power, adore this soft descending goodness!'
+or a man conversing in the following strain with a
+wife who has discovered and forgiven his infidelities:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'<i>Sir Charles.</i> Come, I will not shock your softness by
+any untimely blush for what is past, but rather soothe you
+to a pleasure at my sense of joy for my recovered happiness
+to come. Give then to my new-born love what name you
+please, it cannot, shall not be too kind. Oh! it cannot be
+too soft for what my soul swells up with emulation to deserve.
+Receive me then entire at last, and take what yet
+no woman ever truly had, my conquered heart.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Lady Easy.</i> Oh, the soft treasure! Oh, the dear reward<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>
+of long-desiring love&mdash;thus, thus to have you mine is
+something more than happiness, 'tis double life and madness
+of abounding joy....</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Sir Charles.</i> Oh, thou engaging virtue! But I'm too
+slow in doing justice to thy love. I know thy softness will
+refuse me; but remember, I insist upon it&mdash;let thy woman
+be discharged this minute.'</p></div>
+
+<p>It has been said that Cibber wrote genteel comedy because
+he lived in the best society. If this assertion be true,
+the reader of his plays will decide that the best society of
+those days was unrefined and immoral, and that genteel
+comedy can be extremely vulgar. Cibber's dramas are
+coarse in incident, and often offensive in suggestion. The
+language is frequently gross, and even when he writes, or
+professes to write, with a moral purpose, his method may
+justly offend a rigid moralist. Moreover his comedy, like
+that of the dramatists of the Restoration, is of a wholly
+artificial type. Human nature has comparatively little
+place in it, and the fine ladies and gentlemen, the fops and
+fools who play their parts in his scenes, belong to a
+world which has no existence off the boards of the theatre.</p>
+
+<p>His one work which is still read by all students of the
+drama, and by many who are not students, is the <i>Apology
+for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber</i> (1740), which Dr. Johnson,
+who sneered at actors, allowed to be very entertaining.
+It is that, and something more, for it contains much just
+and generous criticism. Cibber was the author or adapter
+of about thirty plays, and in the latter vocation did not
+spare Shakespeare.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Lady Mary Wortley
+Montagu (1689-1762).</div>
+
+<p>Letter writing, a delightful branch of literature, attained
+its highest excellence in the eighteenth
+century. It is an art which gains
+most, if the paradox may be allowed,
+by being artless. The carefully studied epistle, written<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>
+with a view to publication, may have its value, but it cannot
+have the charm of a letter written in the familiar intercourse
+of friendship. It is the correspondence prompted
+by the heart which reaches the heart of the reader. The
+humour, the gaiety, the tenderness, and the chatty details
+that make a letter attractive, should be prompted by the
+feelings and events of the hour. Carefully constructed
+sentences and rhetorical flourishes ring hollow; to write for
+effect is to write badly, and to make a display of knowledge
+is to reveal an ignorance of the art.</p>
+
+<p>For letter writing, although the most natural of literary
+gifts, is not wholly due to nature. It is the outcome of many
+qualities which need cultivation; the soil that produces such
+fruit must have been carefully tilled. In our day epistolary
+correspondence has been in great measure destroyed by the
+penny post and by rapidity of communication. In the
+last century postage was costly: and although the burden
+was frequently and unjustly lightened by franks, the
+transmission of letters was slow and uncertain. Letters,
+therefore, were seldom written unless the writer had
+something definite to say, and had leisure in which to
+say it. Much time was spent in the occupation, letters
+were carefully preserved as family heirlooms, and thus
+it has come to pass that much of our knowledge of the
+age, and very much of the pleasure to be gained from
+a study of the period, is due to its letter writers. The list
+of them is a striking one, for it includes the names of Swift
+and Steele, of Pope and Gay, of Bolingbroke and Chesterfield,
+of Mrs. Delany and Mrs. Thrale, and of the three
+gifted rivals in the art, Gray, Horace Walpole, and Cowper.</p>
+
+<p>In the band of authors famous for their correspondence,
+Lady Mary Wortley Montagu holds a conspicuous place.
+Reference has been already made to the Pope correspondence,
+large in bulk and large too in interest. To this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>
+Lady Mary contributed slightly, and the greater portion of
+her letters were addressed to her husband, to her sister,
+Lady Mar, and to her daughter, the Countess of Bute.
+She was shrewd enough to know their value: 'Keep my
+letters,' she wrote, 'they will be as good as Madame de
+Sévigné's forty years hence;' and they are, perhaps, as good
+as letters can be which are written with a sense of their
+value, which Madame de Sévigné's were not. Lady Mary,
+who may be said to have belonged to the wits from
+her infancy, for in her eighth year she was made the toast
+of the Kit Kat Club, was not only a beauty, but a woman
+of some learning and of the keenest intelligence. At
+twenty she translated the <i>Encheiridion</i> of Epictetus. She
+was a great reader and a good critic, unless, which often
+happened, political prejudices warped her judgment. She
+had considerable facility in rhyming, and both with tongue
+and pen cultivated many enmities, the deadliest of her foes
+being the poet who was at one time her most ardent
+admirer. The story of Lady Mary's career, with its vicissitudes
+and singularities, may be read in Lord Wharncliffe's
+edition of her <i>Life and Letters</i>. She is a prominent figure
+in the literature of the period, and made several passing
+contributions to it, but apart from a few facile and far
+from decent verses her letters are the sole legacy she has
+left behind her for the literary student. Some of them,
+and especially those addressed to her sister the Countess
+of Mar, are often coarse; those to her daughter the Countess
+of Bute exhibit good sense, and all abound in lively sallies,
+interesting anecdotes, and the personal allusions which give
+a charm to correspondence. The section containing the
+letters written during her husband's embassy to Constantinople
+(1716-1718) is perhaps the best known.</p>
+
+<p>Among the strangest of Lady Mary's letters are those
+addressed to her future husband, whom she requests to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>
+settle an annuity upon her in order to propitiate her friends.
+In one of them she describes her father's purpose to marry
+her as he thought fit without regarding her inclinations, and
+observes that having declined to marry 'where it is impossible
+to love,' she is bidden to consult her relatives: 'I told
+my intention to all my nearest relations. I was surprised
+at their blaming it to the greatest degree. I was told they
+were sorry I would ruin myself; but if I was so unreasonable
+they could not blame my F. [father] whatever he
+inflicted on me. I objected I did not love him. They
+made answer they found no necessity of loving; if I lived
+well with him that was all was required of me; and that if
+I considered this town I should find very few women in
+love with their husbands and yet a many happy. It was
+in vain to dispute with such prudent people.'</p>
+
+<p>This incident is characteristic of the period, but Lady
+Mary's letters to Wortley Montagu are more characteristic
+of the woman who had her own views of female propriety,
+and of the right method of love-making. To escape from
+the man she hated, she eloped with Wortley, and if, in
+story-book phrase, the curiously-matched couple 'lived
+happily ever afterwards,' it was probably because for more
+than twenty years they lived apart.</p>
+
+<p>Of the following letter, written in her old age, it has
+been aptly said that 'the graceful cynicism of Horace and
+Pope has perhaps never been more successfully reproduced
+in prose.'<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Daughter, daughter! Don't call names; You are always
+abusing my pleasures, which is what no mortal will bear.
+Trash, lumber and stuff are the titles you give to my
+favourite amusement. If I called a white staff a stick of
+wood, a gold key gilded brass, and the ensigns of illus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>trious
+orders coloured strings, this may be philosophically
+true, but would be very ill received. We have all our
+playthings; happy are they that can be contented with
+those they can obtain; those hours are spent in the wisest
+manner that can easiest shade the ills of life, and are the
+least productive of ill-consequences.... The active
+scenes are over at my age. I indulge with all the art I
+can my taste for reading. If I would confine it to valuable
+books, they are almost as rare as valuable men. I must
+be content with what I can find. As I approach a second
+childhood, I endeavour to enter into the pleasures of it.
+Your youngest son is perhaps at this very moment riding
+on a poker with great delight, not at all regretting that it
+is not a gold one, and much less wishing it an Arabian
+horse which he would not know how to manage. I am
+reading an idle tale, not expecting wit or truth in it, and
+am very glad it is not metaphysics to puzzle my judgment,
+or history to mislead my opinion. He fortifies his health
+by exercise; I calm my cares by oblivion. The methods
+may appear low to busy people; but if he improves his
+strength, and I forget my infirmities, we both attain very
+desirable ends.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Lady Mary, it may be added, deserves to be remembered
+for her courage in trying inoculation on her own children,
+and then introducing it into this country. This was in
+1721, seventy-eight years before Jenner discovered a more
+excellent way of grappling with the small pox.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Philip Dormer Stanhope
+Earl of Chesterfield
+(1694-1773).</div>
+
+<p>Lord Chesterfield's position in the literature of the
+period is also among the letter
+writers. He was emphatically a
+man of affairs, and as Lord Lieutenant
+of Ireland in 1745, gained a
+high reputation. He entered upon his labours with the
+resolution to be independent of party, and during his brief
+administration did all that man could do for the benefit of
+the country. In his public career, Chesterfield has the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>
+reputation of an orator who spoke 'most exquisitely well;'
+he was an able diplomatist, and probably no man of the
+time took a wider interest in public affairs. In a corrupt
+age, too, he appears to have been politically incorruptible:
+'I call corruption,' he writes, 'the taking of a sixpence
+more than the just and known salary of your employment
+under any pretence whatsoever.' The reform of the
+Calendar, in which he was assisted by two great mathematicians,
+Bradley and the Earl of Macclesfield, is also one of
+his honourable claims to remembrance.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, Chesterfield, whom George II. called
+'a tea-table scoundrel,' was an inveterate gambler, he mistook
+vice for virtue, practised dissimulation as an art, and
+studied men's weaknesses in order that he might flatter
+them. One of the chief ends of man, in the Earl's opinion,
+was to shine in society; we need not therefore wonder that
+Johnson, with his sturdy honesty, revolted from Chesterfield's
+insincerity, and we have to thank the Earl's character
+for, perhaps, the noblest piece of invective in the
+language. If, however, he neglected Johnson at the time
+when his help would have been of service, he appreciated
+the society of men of letters, and took his part among the
+wits of the age. 'I used,' he tells his son, 'to think myself
+in company as much above me when I was with Mr.
+Addison and Mr. Pope as if I had been with all the princes
+in Europe.'</p>
+
+<p>As an essayist, although Chesterfield cannot compete
+with Addison or Steele, he is far from contemptible, and
+his twenty-three papers in the <i>World</i> (1753-1756) may still
+be read with pleasure. His literary reputation is based
+upon the <i>Letters</i> (1774)<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a> to his illegitimate son written for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
+the purpose of making him a fine gentleman, but the young
+man had no aptitude for the part. His father offered him
+'a present of the Graces,' and he despised the gift. The
+<i>Letters</i>, which Johnson denounced in language better fitted
+for his day than for ours, abound in worldly sagacity and
+wise counsels; the best that can be said of them from a
+moral point of view is that they show the extremely low
+standpoint of the writer. He is honestly desirous of benefiting
+his son and advancing his interest in life, and so far
+as morality will do this it is earnestly inculcated. 'A
+real man of fashion,' he says, 'observes decency; at least
+neither borrows nor affects vices; and, if he unfortunately
+has any, he gratifies them with choice, delicacy and
+secrecy.' He observes that an intrigue with a woman of
+fashion is an amusement which a man of sense and decency
+may pursue with a proper regard for his character; gallantry
+without debauchery being 'the elegant pleasure of
+a rational being.'</p>
+
+<p>Chesterfield's son, who was educated for a diplomatist, is
+told that the art of pleasing is more necessary in his profession
+than perhaps in any other. 'Make your court
+particularly, and show distinguished attentions to such
+men and women as are best at Court, highest in the fashion
+and in the opinion of the public; speak advantageously of
+them behind their backs, in companies who you have
+reason to believe will tell them again.'</p>
+
+<p>The necessity for dissimulation, constantly enjoined
+by his father was not forgotten by Philip Stanhope. So
+effectually did he conceal his marriage that the Earl was
+not aware of it until after his son's death.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">George Lyttelton
+(1708-1773).</div>
+
+<p>George Lyttelton, afterwards Lord Lyttelton, has a place
+among the poets in the collections of Anderson and
+Chalmers. Some of his best verses were written when a
+school-boy at Eton, and are worthy of a clever school-boy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
+The <i>Monody</i> on his wife's death has the merit of sincere
+feeling, expressed in one or two passages
+poetically. In 1747 he published his <i>Dissertation
+on the Conversion of St. Paul</i>, 'a
+treatise,' says Dr. Johnson, 'to which infidelity has never
+been able to fabricate a specious answer.' He made himself
+conspicuous in parliament as an opponent of Walpole,
+and after the fall of that minister was appointed one of the
+Lords of the Treasury. In 1760 Lyttelton published his
+<i>Dialogues of the Dead</i>, a volume for which he owes much to
+Fénelon. This was followed a few years later by a History
+of Henry II. in three volumes, upon which great labour
+was expended. He is said to have had the whole history
+printed twice over, and many sheets four or five times, an
+amusement which cost him £1,000. The work is praised
+by Mr. J. R. Green as 'a full and sober account of the
+time.'</p>
+
+<p>Lyttelton died at Hagley Park in his sixty-fourth year.
+Close to Hagley, Shenstone had his little estate of the
+Leasowes, and the poet is said to have cherished the
+absurd fancy that Lord Lyttelton was envious of its beauty.
+He is now chiefly remembered as the patron of Thomson,
+whom he called 'one of the best and most beloved' of his
+friends.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Joseph Spence
+(1698-1768).</div>
+
+<p>Joseph Spence, a warm friend and admirer of Pope
+in the poet's later life, had the happy
+peculiarity of keeping free from the party
+animosities of the time. His course throughout
+was that of a gentleman, and to him we owe the little
+volume of <i>Anecdotes</i> which every student of Pope has
+learnt to value. Spence had much of Boswell's curiosity
+and hero-worship, but there is neither insight into character
+in his pages, nor any trace of the dramatic skill
+which makes Boswell's narrative so delightful. At the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>
+same time there is every indication that he strove to give
+the sayings of the poet, as far as possible, in his own
+words. Johnson and Warton saw the <i>Anecdotes</i> in manuscript,
+but strange to say, the collection was not published
+until 1820, when two separate editions appeared simultaneously.
+The publication by Spence in 1727 of <i>An Essay
+on Pope's Translation of Homer's Odyssey</i> led to an acquaintance
+which soon became intimate between the poet
+and his critic. Apart from literature, they had more than
+one point of interest in common. Like Pope, Spence was
+devoted to his mother, and like Pope he had a passion for
+landscape gardening. His mild virtues and engaging disposition
+are said to be portrayed in the <i>Tales of the Genii</i>,
+under the character of Fincal the Dervise of the Groves.
+In 1747 he published his <i>Polymetis, an Enquiry into the
+agreement between the Works of the Roman Poets and the
+Remains of Ancient Artists</i>. Under the <i>nom de plume</i> of
+Sir Harry Beaumont, Spence produced a volume of <i>Moralities
+or Essays, Letters, Fables and Translations</i> (1753), and
+in the following year an account of the blind poet Blacklock.
+For a learned tailor, Thomas Hill by name, he also
+performed a similarly kind office, comparing him in <i>A
+Parallel in the Manner of Plutarch</i> with the famous linguist
+Magliabecchi. Spence was made Professor of Poetry at
+Oxford in 1728, and held the post for ten years. His end
+was a sad one. He was accidentally drowned in a canal in
+the garden which he had loved so well.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> <i>Daniel Defoe: his Life and recently discovered Writings,
+extending from 1716 to 1729.</i> By William Lee. 3 vols.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> Lee's <i>Defoe</i>, vol. i., p. 85. Of Defoe's fertility and capacity for
+work there cannot be a question; but the biographer's stupendous
+catalogue of his publications&mdash;254 in number&mdash;contains many
+which are ascribed to him solely on what Mr. Lee regards as
+internal evidence.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> <i>English Men of Letters&mdash;Daniel Defoe.</i> By William Minto.
+P. 170.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> See note on page 248.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> There can be no doubt, I think, despite Mr. Lee's arguments,
+that the work is as much a fiction as any other historical novel.
+That it may be based upon some authentic document is highly
+probable, although it is not necessary to agree with his biographer,
+that 'to claim for Defoe the authorship of the <i>Cavalier</i>, as a work
+of pure fiction, would be equivalent to a claim of almost superhuman
+genius.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> Ward's <i>History of English Dramatic Literature</i>, vol. ii., p. 597.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> <i>Four Centuries of English Letters</i>, edited and arranged by W.
+Baptiste Scoones, p. 214.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> These <i>Letters</i> were not published until after the earl's death,
+but many of them belong, chronologically, to our period. The
+first letter of the series was written in 1738.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+<h3>FRANCIS ATTERBURY&mdash;LORD SHAFTESBURY&mdash;BERNARD DE
+MANDEVILLE&mdash;LORD BOLINGBROKE&mdash;BISHOP BERKELEY&mdash;WILLIAM
+LAW&mdash;BISHOP BUTLER&mdash;BISHOP WARBURTON.</h3>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">Francis Atterbury
+(1662-1732).</div>
+
+<p>During the first half of the eighteenth century the position
+held by Bishop Atterbury was one
+of high eminence. Addison ranked him
+with the most illustrious geniuses of his
+age; Pope said he was one of the greatest men in polite
+learning the nation ever possessed; Doddridge called him
+the glory of English orators; and Johnson said that for
+style his sermons are among the best.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately Atterbury's literary gifts, like his oratory,
+lack the merit of permanence, and his sermons, more conspicuous
+for eloquence than for weightiness of matter,
+although extremely popular at the time, have long ceased
+to be read. His prominence among the Queen Anne wits,&mdash;and
+he was admired by them all,&mdash;is a sufficient reason
+for saying a few words about him in these pages.</p>
+
+<p>He was born in 1662, and, like Prior, educated at Westminster
+under the famous Dr. Busby. Thence he went to
+Christ Church, Oxford, where he gained a good reputation.
+He undertook the tutorship of the Hon. C. Boyle, a young
+man of more spirit than judgment, who had the audacity
+to enter the lists with Bentley in a matter of scholarship.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
+For this rash deed Atterbury must be held responsible.
+Sir William Temple had published a foolish but eloquently
+written essay in defence of the ancient writers in comparison
+with the modern. In this essay he praises warmly
+the <i>Letters of Phalaris</i>. Of these letters Boyle, with the
+help of Atterbury and other members of Christ Church,
+published a new edition to satisfy the demand caused by
+Temple's essay. Bentley, roused to reply by a remark of
+Boyle in his preface, proved that the <i>Letters</i> were not only
+spurious but contemptible. Under his pupil's name Atterbury
+replied to Bentley's <i>Dissertations</i>, and to the discussion,
+as the reader will remember, Swift added wit if not
+argument.</p>
+
+<p>For the moment Boyle's, or rather Atterbury's success,
+was great, for wit and rhetoric are powerful persuasives.
+The authors, too, had the Christ Church men to back them,
+the arch-critic having treated them with contempt. Atterbury's
+share in the work, as he tells Boyle, "consisted in
+writing more than half the book, in reviewing a great part
+of the rest, and in transcribing the whole." His <i>Examination
+of Dr. Bentley's Dissertations</i> (1698) is a brilliant piece
+of work, and 'deserves the praise,' says Macaulay, 'whatever
+that praise may be worth, of being the best book ever
+written by any man on the wrong side of a question of
+which he was profoundly ignorant.' Having taken holy
+orders, Atterbury became a court preacher, and ample
+clerical honours fell to his share. In 1700 he published
+a book entitled, <i>The Rights, Powers, and Privileges of an
+English Convocation Stated and Vindicated</i>, which was
+warmly applauded by High Churchmen. In 1701 he was
+appointed Archdeacon of Totness, and afterwards Prebend
+of Exeter. He became the favourite chaplain of Queen
+Anne, and when Prince George died proved the power of
+his eloquence by representing 'his unassuming virtues in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>
+such high relief that his widow could not help feeling her
+irreparable loss.'</p>
+
+<p>Atterbury was made successively Dean of Carlisle and of
+Christ Church, and in 1713 succeeded Sprat as Dean of
+Westminster and Bishop of Rochester. Before making
+Swift's acquaintance he recommended his friend Trelawney,
+Bishop of Exeter, to read the <i>Tale of a Tub</i>, a book which
+is to be valued, 'in spite of its profaneness,' as 'an original
+in its kind, full of wit, humour, good sense, and learning.'
+Atterbury's taste for literature was not always so discriminative.
+He advised Pope, as has been already stated, to
+'polish' <i>Samson Agonistes</i>, declared that all verses should
+have instruction at the bottom of them, and told the poet,
+as though he had discovered a merit, that his poetry was
+'all over morality from the beginning to the end of it.'
+He ventured occasionally into the verse-making field himself,
+and wrote a song to Silvia, in which, after admitting
+that he had loved before as men worship strange deities, he
+adds:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'My heart, 'tis true, has often ranged,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Like bees on gaudy flowers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And many a thousand loves has changed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Till it was fixed on yours.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'But, Silvia, when I saw those eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">'Twas soon determined there;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stars might as well forsake the skies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And vanish into air.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'When I from this great rule do err,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">New beauties to adore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May I again turn wanderer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And never settle more.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The close friendship between Atterbury and Pope did
+honour to both men, and when Pope went to London he
+would 'lie at the deanery.' There, unknown to his friend,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>
+the bishop carried on his Jacobite intrigues, and there may
+still be seen, in a residence made famous by more than
+one great name, a secret room in which Atterbury concealed
+his treasonable correspondence. The poet did not
+believe that his friend was guilty, but it has been well
+known since the publication of the Stuart papers, more
+than forty years ago, that the splendid defence made by
+Atterbury at his trial in the House of Lords was based upon
+a falsehood. For years the bishop appears to have corresponded,
+under feigned names and by the help of ciphers,
+with 'the king over the water;' but the plot which led to
+his imprisonment and ultimate exile was not discovered
+until 1722, when he was arrested for high treason. At his
+trial he called God to witness his innocence; and when
+Pope took leave of him in the Tower he told the poet he
+would allow him to call his sentence a just one if he should
+ever find that he had dealings with the Pretender in his
+exile. Pope gave evidence at his trial, and, as he told
+Spence, lost his self-possession and made two or three
+blunders.</p>
+
+<p>Atterbury was exiled in June, 1723. On reaching Calais
+he heard that Bolingbroke had just arrived there on his
+way to England, having had a royal pardon. 'Then I am
+exchanged,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>The pathetic story of his banishment, and of his devoted
+daughter's illness and voyage to the south of France,
+where after a union of a few hours, she died in her father's
+arms, is full of the most touching details, and may be
+read in Atterbury's correspondence. 'She is gone,' the
+bishop wrote, 'and I must follow her. When I do, may
+my latter end be like hers! It was my business to have
+taught her to die; instead of it, she has taught me.' Like
+Fielding's account of his <i>Voyage to Lisbon</i>, the letters give
+a picture of the time, and of travelling discomforts and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>
+difficulties of which we, in these more fortunate days, know
+nothing. The bishop, who did not long survive his daughter,
+died in 1732, but before the end came he defended himself
+admirably from the accusation of Oldmixon, a libeller
+who stands in the pillory of the <i>Dunciad</i>, that he had
+helped to garble Clarendon's <i>History</i>. The body was
+carried to England and privately buried by the side of
+his daughter in Westminster Abbey. The eloquence of
+Atterbury's sermons&mdash;there are four volumes of them in
+print&mdash;has not secured to them a lasting place in literature,
+but they are distinguished by purity of style, and have
+enough of <i>unction</i> to make them highly effective as pulpit
+discourses. In book form, too, they were for a long time
+popular, and reached an eighth edition about thirty years
+after the bishop's death. The eloquent sermon on the
+death of Lady Cutts endows the lady with such an array
+of virtues, that one is inclined to wonder how so many rare
+qualities could have been exhibited in so brief a life:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'She excelled in all the characters that belonged to her,
+and was in a great measure equal to all the obligations that
+she lay under. She was devout without superstition; strict,
+without ill humour; good-natured, without weakness; cheerful,
+without levity; regular, without affectation. She was
+to her husband the best of wives, the most agreeable of
+companions, and most faithful of friends; to her servants
+the best of mistresses; to her relations extremely respectful;
+to her inferiors very obliging; and by all that
+knew her, either nearly or at a distance, she was reckoned
+and confessed to be one of the best of women. And yet all
+this goodness and all this excellence was bounded within
+the compass of eighteen years and as many days; for no
+longer was she allowed to live among us. She was snatched
+out of the world as soon almost as she had made her
+appearance in it, like a jewel of high price just shown a
+little, and then put up again, and we were deprived of her
+by that time we had learnt to value her. But circles may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>
+be complete though small; the perfection of life doth not
+consist in the length of it.'</p></div>
+
+<p>As a friend of literature and of men of letters, Atterbury
+claims the student's recognition, and the five volumes of
+his correspondence deserve to be consulted.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Anthony, third
+Lord Shaftesbury
+(1671-1713).</div>
+
+<p>'I will tell you,' writes the poet Gray, 'how Lord Shaftesbury
+came to be a philosopher in vogue:
+first, he was a lord; secondly, he was as
+vain as any of his readers; thirdly, men
+are very prone to believe what they do
+not understand; fourthly, they will believe anything at all
+provided they are under no obligation to believe it; fifthly,
+they love to take a new road, even when that road leads
+nowhere; sixthly, he was reckoned a fine writer, and seemed
+always to mean more than he said. Would you have any
+more reasons? An interval of above forty years has pretty
+well destroyed the charm.'</p>
+
+<p>One hundred and thirty-five years have gone by since
+Gray wrote his estimate of Lord Shaftesbury, whose
+<i>Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times</i> (1711)
+passed through several editions in the last century. The
+first volume consists of: <i>A Letter concerning Enthusiasm</i>,
+<i>An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour</i> and <i>Advice
+to an Author</i>; Vol. ii. contains <i>An Inquiry concerning
+Virtue and Merit</i> (1699), and <i>The Moralists, a Philosophical
+Rhapsody</i> (1709), and Vol. iii. contains <i>Miscellaneous Reflections</i>
+and the <i>Judgments of Hercules</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Shaftesbury was a Deist, and while professing to honour
+the Christian faith, which he terms 'our holy religion,'
+exercises his wit and casuistry and command of English to
+undermine it. Pope, who shows in the <i>Essay on Man</i> that
+he had read the <i>Characteristics</i>, said that to his knowledge
+'the work had done more harm to revealed religion in
+England than all the works of infidelity,' a judgment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
+which may seem extravagant, for Shaftesbury is too
+vague and rhetorical greatly to influence thoughtful
+readers, and too much of a 'virtuoso,' to use his own
+words, for readers of another class; yet the fact that the
+work passed, as we have said, through several editions,
+shows that the author had a considerable public to whom
+he could appeal. Moreover, it is clear that what Mr.
+Balfour calls 'the shallow optimism' of his creed was not
+deemed so inconsiderable then as it now appears, or
+Berkeley would not have deemed it necessary to controvert
+his arguments in the third Dialogue of his <i>Alciphron</i>.
+Like Berkeley, Shaftesbury occasionally makes use of the
+dialogue very effectively, but he has not the bishop's
+incisiveness. His style, though often faulty, and giving
+one the impression that the author is affected, and wishes
+to say fine things, is at its best fresh and lucid. The
+reader will observe that whatever be the topic Shaftesbury
+professes to discuss, his one aim is to assert his principles
+as a free-thinking and free-speaking philosopher.
+His inferences, his illustrations, his criticisms, and exaltation
+of the 'moral sense,' are all so many underhanded
+blows at the faith which he never openly opposes.</p>
+
+<p>Thus his essay on the <i>Freedom of Wit and Humour</i> is
+chiefly written in defence of raillery in the discussion of
+serious subjects, when managed 'with good breeding,' and
+for 'a liberty in decent language to question everything'
+amongst gentlemen and friends. He regards ridicule as
+the antidote to enthusiasm, believes in the harmony and
+perfection of nature, and considers that evil only exists in
+our ignorance. Mr. Leslie Stephen, whose impartiality in
+estimating an author like Shaftesbury will not be questioned,
+calls him a wearisome and perplexed writer, whose
+rhetoric is flimsy, but who has 'a true vigour and originality
+which redeems him from contempt.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Judged by his influence on the age Shaftesbury's place
+in the history of literature and of philosophy is an important
+one. Seed springs up quickly when the soil is prepared
+for it, and Shaftesbury by his belief in the perfectibility of
+human nature through the aid of culture, appealed, as
+Mandeville also did from a lower and opposite platform, to
+the views current in polite society. According to Shaftesbury
+men have a natural instinct for virtue, and the sense
+of what is beautiful enables the virtuoso to reject what is
+evil and to cleave to what is good. Let a man once see
+that to be wicked is to be miserable, and virtue will be
+dear for its own sake apart from the fear of punishment or
+the hope of reward. He found salvation for the world in
+a cultivated taste, but had no gospel for the men whose
+tastes were not cultivated.</p>
+
+<p>Voltaire sneered at the optimism of the <i>Essay on Man</i>
+and of the <i>Characteristics</i>. 'Shaftesbury,' he says, 'who
+made the fable fashionable, was a very unhappy man. I
+have seen Bolingbroke a prey to vexation and rage, and
+Pope, whom he induced to put this sorry jest into verse,
+was as much to be pitied as any man I have ever known;
+mis-shapen in body, dissatisfied in mind, always ill, always
+a burden to himself, and harassed by a hundred enemies to
+his very last moment.'</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Bernard de Mandeville
+(1670?-1733).</div>
+
+<p>Bernard de Mandeville gained much notoriety by his
+<i>Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices,
+Public Benefits</i> (1723). The book
+opens with a poem in doggrel verse
+called <i>The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves turned honest</i>, the
+purport of which is to show that as the bees became virtuous,
+they ceased to be successful. He closes with the
+moral that</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'To enjoy the world's conveniences,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be famed in war, yet live in ease,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Without great vices is a vain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Utopia, seated in the brain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fraud, Luxury, and Pride must live,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While we the benefits receive.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the prose which follows the fable, Mandeville may at
+least claim the credit of being outspoken, and he does not
+scruple to say that modesty is a sham and that what seems
+like virtue is nothing but self-love. 'I often,' he says,
+'compare the virtues of good men to your large china jars;
+they make a fine show, but look into a thousand of them,
+and you will find nothing in them but dust and cobwebs.'</p>
+
+<p>While declaring that he is far from encouraging vice, he
+regards it as essential to the well-being of society. The
+degradation of the race excites his amusement, and the
+fact that he cannot see a way of escape from it, causes no
+regret. Shaftesbury's arguments excited the mirth of
+a man who believed neither in present nor future good
+'Two systems,' he says, 'cannot be more opposite than his
+lordship's and mine. His notions, I confess, are generous
+and refined. They are a high compliment to human
+kind, and capable, by the help of a little enthusiasm, of
+inspiring us with the most noble sentiments concerning the
+dignity of our exalted nature. What pity it is that they
+are not true.'</p>
+
+<p>The author of the <i>Fable of the Bees</i> writes coarsely for
+coarse readers, and the arguments by which he supports
+his graceless theory merit the infamy generally awarded to
+them.<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> The book was attacked by Warburton and Law, and
+with much force and humour by Berkeley, in the second<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>
+Dialogue of <i>Alciphron</i>. But the bishop, to use a homely
+phrase, does not hit the right nail on the head. Instead of
+arguing that virtue and goodness are realities, while evil,
+being unreal and antagonistic to man's nature, is an enemy
+to be fought against and conquered, Berkeley takes a lower
+ground, and is content to show in his reply to Mandeville
+that virtue is more profitable to a state than vice. He
+annihilates many of Mandeville's arguments in a masterly
+style, but it was left to the author of the <i>Serious Call</i> to
+strike at the root of Mandeville's fallacy, and to show how
+the seat of virtue, if I may apply Hooker's noble words
+with regard to law, 'is the bosom of God, her voice the
+harmony of the world; all things in heaven and earth do
+her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the
+greatest as not exempted from her power.'</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Lord Bolingbroke
+(1678-1751).</div>
+
+<p>The life of Henry St. John was a mass of contradictions.
+He was a brilliant politician who affected
+to be a wise statesman, a traitor to his
+country while pretending to be a patriot,
+an orator whose lips distilled honied phrases which his
+actions belied, a man of insatiable ambition who masked as
+a philosopher, a profligate without shame, a faithless friend,
+and an unscrupulous opponent. Blessed with every charm
+of manner, features, and voice, with a taste for literature
+and a large faculty of acquisition, he was a slave to the
+meanest vices. A Secretary of State at thirty-two, no man
+probably ever entered upon public life with brighter prospects,
+and the secret of all his failures was due to the
+want of character. 'Few people,' says Lord Hervey, 'ever
+believed him without being deceived or trusted him without
+being betrayed; he was one to whom prosperity was no
+advantage, and adversity no instruction.'</p>
+
+<p>It is said that his genius as an orator was of a high order
+and this we can believe the more readily since the style of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>
+his works is distinctly oratorical. In speech so much
+depends upon voice and manner that it is possible for a
+shallow thinker to be an extremely attractive speaker;
+Bolingbroke's speeches have not been preserved, and we
+may therefore continue, if we please, to hold with Pitt, that
+they are the most desirable of all the lost fragments of
+literature; his writings, far more showy than solid, do not
+convey a lofty impression of intellectual power. Obvious
+truths and well-worn truisms are uttered in high-sounding
+words, but in no department of thought can it be said that
+Bolingbroke breaks new ground. Much that he wrote was
+for the day and died with it, and if his more ambitious
+efforts, written with an eye to posterity, cannot justly be
+described as unreadable, they contain comparatively little
+which makes them worthy to be read.</p>
+
+<p>His defence of his conduct in <i>A Letter to Sir William
+Windham</i>, written in 1717, but not published until after
+the author's death, though worthless as a defence, is a fine
+piece of special pleading in Bolingbroke's best style. It
+could deceive no one acquainted with the part played by
+the author before the death of Queen Anne, and afterwards
+in exile, but it afforded him an opportunity for
+attacking his former colleague, Oxford, with all the weapons
+available by an unscrupulous and powerful assailant. He
+declares in this letter that he preferred exile rather than to
+make common cause with the man whom he abhorred.
+Writing of Oxford as a colleague in the government of the
+country he observes in a skilfully turned passage:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The ocean which environs us is an emblem of our
+government; and the pilot and the minister are in similar
+circumstances. It seldom happens that either of them can
+steer a direct course, and they both arrive at their port by
+means which frequently seem to carry them from it. But
+as the work advances the conduct of him who leads it on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>
+with real abilities clears up, the appearing inconsistencies
+are reconciled, and when it is once consummated, the whole
+shows itself so uniform, so plain, and so natural, that every
+dabbler in politics will be apt to think he could have done
+the same. But on the other hand the man who proposes
+no such object, who substitutes artifice in the place of
+ability, who, instead of leading parties and governing
+accidents, is eternally agitated backwards and forwards by
+both, who begins every day something new, and carries
+nothing on to perfection, may impose awhile on the world:
+but a little sooner or a little later the mystery will be
+revealed, and nothing will be found to be couched under it
+but a thread of pitiful expedients, the ultimate end of
+which never extended farther than living from day to day.
+Which of these pictures resembles Oxford most you will
+determine.'</p></div>
+
+<p>It has been said with somewhat daring exaggeration,
+that Burke never produced anything nobler than this
+passage, and the writer regards the whole composition of
+the <i>Letter to Windham</i> as almost faultless.<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a></p>
+
+<p>That it is Bolingbroke's masterpiece may be readily
+admitted, but in this <i>Letter</i>, as elsewhere, the merits of
+Bolingbroke's style are those of the popular orator who
+conceals repetitions, contradictory statements, and emptiness
+of thought under a dazzling display of rhetoric.
+That he had splendid gifts and exhibited an extraordinary
+ingenuity of resource was acknowledged by friend and
+foe. At one time taking a distinguished part in European
+affairs, at another artfully intriguing, sometimes posing as
+a moralist and philosopher while a slave to debauchery, and
+at other times affecting a love of retirement while a slave
+to ambition&mdash;Bolingbroke acted a part which made him
+one of the most conspicuous figures of the time. He knew
+how to fascinate men of greater genius than he possessed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
+and how to guide men intellectually his superiors. The
+witchcraft of his wit and the charm of his manners no
+longer disturb the judgment. As a statesman Bolingbroke
+is now comparatively despised, as a man of letters he is
+generally regarded as a brilliant pretender, and if his name
+survives in the history of literature it is chiefly due to the
+friendship of Pope. Unfortunately the memory of this
+celebrated friendship is associated with one of the most
+ignoble acts of Bolingbroke's life. When Pope lay dying,
+Bolingbroke wept over his friend exclaiming, 'O great
+God, what is man!' and Spence relates that upon telling
+his lordship how Pope whenever he was sensible said something
+kindly of his friends as if his humanity outlasted
+his understanding, Bolingbroke replied, '"It has so! I
+never in my life knew a man that had so tender a heart
+for his particular friends or a more general friendship for
+mankind. I have known him these thirty years, and value
+myself more for that man's love than"&mdash;sinking his head
+and losing himself in tears.' His sorrow was speedily
+changed to anger. Pope, no doubt in admiration of his
+friend's genius, had privately printed 1,500 copies of his
+<i>Patriot King</i>, one of Bolingbroke's ablest but most sophistical
+works. The philosopher had only allowed a few copies
+to be printed for his friends, and the discovery of Pope's
+conduct roused his indignation. In 1749 he put a corrected
+copy of the work into Mallet's hands for publication with
+an advertisement in which Pope is treated with contempt.
+He had not the courage to assail the memory of his friend
+openly, and hired an unprincipled man to do it. The poet had
+acted trickily, after his wonted habit, though in all likelihood
+with the design of doing Bolingbroke a service. It
+was a fault to be forgiven by a friend, but Bolingbroke,
+after nursing his anger for five years, gave vent to it in
+this contemptible and underhand way. He died two years<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>
+afterwards, and in 1754 the posthumous publication of
+Bolingbroke's <i>Philosophical Writings</i> by Mallet, aroused a
+storm of indignation in the country, which his debauchery
+and political immorality had failed to excite. Johnson's
+saying on the occasion is well-known:</p>
+
+<p>'Sir, he was a scoundrel and a coward; a scoundrel for
+charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a
+coward because he had not resolution to fire it off himself,
+but left half-a-crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the
+trigger after his death.'</p>
+
+<p>The most noteworthy estimate of Bolingbroke's character
+made in our day comes from the pen of Mr. John Morley,<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a>
+who describes as follows his position as a man of letters.
+'He handled the great and difficult instrument of written
+language with such freedom and copiousness, such vivacity
+and ease, that in spite of much literary foppery and
+falsetto, he ranks in all that musicians call execution, only
+below the three or four highest masters of English prose.
+Yet of all the characters in our history Bolingbroke must
+be pronounced to be most of a charlatan; of all the writing
+in our literature, his is the hollowest, the flashiest, the
+most insincere.' This is true. By his 'execution,' consummate
+though it be, he is unable to conceal his insincerity
+and shallowness. 'Bolingbroke,' said Lord Shelburne, was
+'all surface,' and in that sentence his character is written.</p>
+
+<p>'People seem to think,' said Carlyle, 'that a style can
+be put off or put on, not like a skin, but like a coat. Is
+not a skin verily a product and close kinsfellow of all that
+lies under it,&mdash;exact type of the nature of the beast, not to
+be plucked off without flaying and death?'</p>
+
+<p>Two years after the publication of the <i>Philosophical
+Writings</i>, Edmund Burke, then a young man of twenty-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>four,
+published <i>A Vindication of Natural Society</i>, in a
+<i>Letter to Lord&mdash;&mdash;. By a late noble writer</i>, in which
+Lord Bolingbroke's style is imitated, and his arguments
+against revealed religion applied to exhibit 'the miseries
+and evils arising to mankind from every species of Artificial
+Society.' So close is the imitation of Bolingbroke's style
+and mode of argument in this piece of irony, that it was
+for a time believed to be a genuine production, and Mallet
+found it necessary to disavow it publicly.</p>
+
+<p>Of Bolingbroke's Works, the <i>Dissertation on Parties</i> appeared
+in 1735. <i>Letters on Patriotism</i>, and <i>Idea of a
+Patriot King</i>, in 1749; <i>Letters on the Study of History</i>, in
+1752; <i>Letter to Sir W. Windham</i>, 1753, and the <i>Philosophical
+Writings</i>, as already stated, in 1754. Chronologically,
+therefore, he would belong to the Handbook which deals
+with the latter half of the century, were it not that his
+most important works were posthumous, and that Bolingbroke's
+intimate relations with Pope place him among
+the most conspicuous figures belonging to Pope's age.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">George Berkeley
+(1685-1753).</div>
+
+<p>Among the men of high intellect who flourished in the
+age of Pope, George Berkeley is one of the
+most distinguished. Born in 1685 of
+poor parents, in a cottage near Dysert
+Castle, in Kilkenny, he went up to Trinity College, Dublin,
+in 1700, and there, first as student, and afterwards as
+tutor, he remained for thirteen years. In the course of
+them he was ordained, and gained a fellowship. In 1709
+he published his <i>Essay on Vision</i>, and in the following
+year the <i>Principles of Human Knowledge</i>, works which
+thus early made him famous as a philosopher, and a puzzle
+to many who failed to understand his 'new principle'
+with regard to the existence of matter.</p>
+
+<p>In 1712 Berkeley visited England, probably for the first
+time, and was introduced to the London wits. Already in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>
+these youthful days there was in him much of that magic
+power which some men exercise unconsciously and irresistibly.
+Swift felt the spell, called Berkeley a great philosopher,
+and spoke of him to all the Ministers; while Atterbury,
+upon being asked what he thought of him, exclaimed:
+'So much understanding, so much knowledge, so much
+innocence, and such humility, I did not think had been
+the portion of any but angels till I saw this gentleman.'
+An incident occurred, it is conjectured during the course
+of this visit, which led to memorable results. He dined
+once with Swift at Mrs. Vanhomrigh's, and met her
+daughter Hester. Many years later, <i>Vanessa</i> destroyed
+the will she had made in Swift's favour, and left half
+of her property to Berkeley. While in London the future
+bishop was warmly welcomed by Steele, and wrote
+several essays for him in the <i>Guardian</i> against the Freethinkers,
+and especially against Anthony Collins (1676-1729),
+whose arguments in his <i>Discourse on Freethinking</i>
+(1713) are ridiculed in the <i>Scriblerus Memoirs</i>. Collins,
+it may be observed here, wrote a treatise several years
+later on the <i>Grounds of the Christian Religion</i> (1724)
+which called forth thirty-five answers. During this visit
+Berkeley also published one of his most original works,
+<i>Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous</i>, a book marked by
+that consummate beauty of style for which he is distinguished.</p>
+
+<p>In November, 1713, the Earl of Peterborough was sent
+on an embassage to the King of Sicily, and on Swift's
+recommendation took Berkeley with him as his chaplain
+and secretary. Ten months were spent on this occasion
+in France and Italy. Another continental tour followed,
+in the course of which Berkeley wrote to Arbuthnot of his
+ascent of Vesuvius, and to Pope of his life at Naples. Five
+years were spent abroad, and he returned to England to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
+learn of the failure of the South Sea Scheme. In his <i>Essay
+towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain</i> (1721), the
+main argument is the obvious one, that national salvation
+is only to be secured by individual uprightness. He deplores
+'the trifling vanity of apparel' which we have learned
+from France, advocates the revival of sumptuary laws, considers
+that we are 'doomed to be undone' by luxury, and
+by the want of public spirit, and declares that 'neither
+Venice nor Paris, nor any other town in any part of the
+world ever knew such an expensive ruinous folly as our
+masquerade.'</p>
+
+<p>In the summer of this year he was again in London,
+and Pope asked him to spend a week in his 'Tusculum.'
+One promotion followed another until Berkeley became
+Dean of Derry, with an income of from £1,500 to £2,000
+a year. He did not hold this dignified position long, having
+conceived the magnificent but Utopian idea of founding
+a Missionary College in the Bermudas&mdash;the 'Summer Isles'
+celebrated in the verse of Waller and of Marvell&mdash;for the
+conversion of America.</p>
+
+<p>And now Berkeley exhibited his amazing power of influencing
+other men. The members of the Scriblerus
+Club laughed at the Dean's project, but so powerful was
+his eloquence, that 'those who came to scoff remained
+to subscribe.' Moreover, with Sir Robert Walpole as
+Prime Minister, he actually obtained a grant from the
+State of £20,000 in order to carry out the project, the
+king gave a charter, and to crown all, Sir Robert put
+his own name down for £200 on the list of subscribers.
+'The scheme,' says Mr. Balfour, 'seems now so impracticable
+that we may well wonder how any single person, let
+alone the representatives of a whole nation, could be found
+to support it. In order that religion and learning might
+flourish in America, the seeds of them were to be cast in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>
+some rocky islets severed from America by nearly six hundred
+miles of stormy ocean. In order that the inhabitants
+of the mainland and of the West Indian colonies might
+equally benefit by the new university, it was to be placed in
+such a position that neither could conveniently reach it.'<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a>
+Berkeley, who had recently married, left England for
+Rhode Island, where he stayed for about three years and
+wrote <i>Alciphron</i> (1732), in which he attacks the freethinkers
+under the title of <i>Minute Philosophers</i>. Then on
+learning from Walpole that the promised money 'would
+most undoubtedly be paid as soon as suits public convenience'
+which would be never, he returned to England, and
+through the Queen's influence was made Bishop of Cloyne.
+In that diocese eighteen years of his life were spent. In the
+course of them he published the <i>Querist</i> (1735-1737), an
+<i>Essay on the Social State of Ireland</i> (1744), and, in the
+same year, <i>Siris</i>, which contains the bishop's famous recipe
+for the use of tar water followed by much philosophical
+disquisition. The remedy, which was afterwards praised
+by the poet Dyer in <i>The Fleece</i>, became instantly popular.
+'We are now mad about the water,' Horace Walpole wrote;
+'the book contains every subject from tar water to the
+Trinity; however, all the women read it, and understand it
+no more than if it were intelligible.' Editions of <i>Siris</i>
+followed each other in rapid succession, and it was translated
+into French and German. The work is that of an
+enthusiast, and it should be read not for its argument, but
+for its wealth of suggestiveness, and for what Mr. Balfour
+calls 'a certain quality of moral elevation and speculative
+diffidence alien both to the literature and the life of the
+eighteenth century.' Berkeley had himself the profoundest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
+faith in the panacea which he advocated. 'From my
+representing tar water,' he writes, 'as good for so many
+things, some, perhaps, many conclude it is good for nothing.
+But charity obligeth me to say what I know, and what I
+think, howsoever it may be taken. Men may conjecture and
+object as they please, but I appeal to time and experience.'</p>
+
+<p>In his latter days Berkeley, feeling his health failing,
+desired to resign his bishopric and retire to Oxford, and
+there&mdash;while still bishop of Cloyne, for the king would not
+accept his resignation&mdash;the philosopher, who was blest, to
+use Shakespeare's fine epithet, with a 'tender-hefted
+nature,' passed away in 1753, leaving behind him one of
+the most fragrant of memories.</p>
+
+<p>That Berkeley was a philosophical thinker from his
+earliest manhood is evident from his <i>Commonplace Book</i>
+published for the first time in the Clarendon Press edition
+of his works (vol. iv., pp. 419-502).</p>
+
+<p>He delighted in recondite thought as much as most
+young men delight in action, and as a philosopher he is
+said to have commenced his studies with Locke, whose
+famous <i>Essay</i> appeared in 1690. Of Plato, too, Berkeley
+was an ardent admirer, and the spirit of Plato pervades his
+works. His <i>Essay towards a New Theory of Vision</i> contains
+some intimations of the famous metaphysical theory
+which was developed a little later in the <i>Treatise on Human
+Knowledge</i>.</p>
+
+<p>A good deal of foolish ridicule was excited by this book.
+Berkeley was supposed to maintain the absurd paradox
+that sensible things do not exist at all. The reader will
+remember how Dr. Johnson undertook to refute the postulate
+by striking his foot against a stone, while James
+Beattie (1735-1803), the poet and moral philosopher,
+in a volume for which he was rewarded with a pension
+of £200 a year, denounced Berkeley's philosophy as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>
+'scandalously absurd.' 'If,' he writes, 'I were permitted
+to propose one clownish question, I would fain ask ...
+Where is the harm of my believing that if I were to
+fall down yonder precipice and break my neck, I should
+be no more a man of this world? My neck, Sir, may be
+an idea to you, but to me it is a reality, and a very
+important one too. Where is the harm of my believing
+that if in this severe weather I were to neglect to throw
+(what you call) the idea of a coat over the ideas of my
+shoulders, the idea of cold would produce the idea of such
+pain and disorder as might possibly terminate in my real
+death? What great offence shall I commit against God or
+man, church or state, philosophy or common sense if I
+continue to believe that material food will nourish me,
+though the idea of it will not, that the real sun will warm
+and enlighten me, though the liveliest idea of him will do
+neither; and that if I would obtain here peace of mind
+and self-approbation, I must not only form ideas of compassion,
+justice and generosity, but also really exert those
+virtues in external performance?'<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a></p>
+
+<p>Beattie continues in this foolish strain to throw contempt
+upon a system which he had not taken the trouble
+to understand, and upon one of the sanest and noblest of
+English philosophers, and he does so without a thought
+that the absurdity is due to his own ignorance and not to
+the theory of Berkeley. The author of the <i>Minstrel</i> was
+an honest man and a respectable poet, but he prided himself
+too much on what he called common sense, and failed
+to see that in the search after truth other and even higher
+faculties may be also needed. Moreover, Berkeley, so far
+from being an enemy to common sense, endeavours, as he
+says, to vindicate it, although in so doing, he 'may per<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>haps
+be obliged to use some <i>ambages</i> and ways of speech not
+common.' A significant passage may be quoted from the
+<i>Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous</i> (1713) in
+illustration of his method and style so far indeed as a short
+extract can illustrate an argument sustained by a long
+course of reasoning.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'<i>Phil.</i> As I am no sceptic with regard to the nature of
+things, so neither am I as to their existence. That a thing
+should be really perceived by my senses, and at the same
+time not really exist is to me a plain contradiction; since I
+cannot prescind or abstract even in thought, the existence
+of a sensible thing from its being perceived. Wood, stones,
+fire, water, flesh, iron, and the like things, which I name
+and discourse of, are things that I know. And I should
+not have known them but that I perceived them by my
+senses; and things perceived by the senses are immediately
+perceived; and things immediately perceived are ideas;
+and ideas cannot exist without the mind; their existence
+therefore consists in being perceived; when therefore they
+are actually perceived there can be no doubt of their
+existence.... I might as well doubt of my own being, as
+of the being of those things I actually see and feel.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Hyl.</i> Not so fast, <i>Philonous</i>; you say you cannot conceive
+how sensible things should exist without the mind.
+Do you not?</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Phil.</i> I do.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Hyl.</i> Supposing you were annihilated, cannot you conceive
+it possible that things perceivable by sense may still
+exist?</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Phil.</i> I can; but then it must be in another mind.
+When I deny sensible things an existence out of the
+mind, I do not mean my mind in particular, but all minds.
+Now, it is plain they have an existence exterior to my
+mind; since I find them by experience to be independent
+of it. There is therefore some other mind wherein they
+exist, during the intervals between the times of my perceiving
+them; as likewise they did before my birth, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>
+would do after my supposed annihilation. And as the
+same is true with regard to all other finite created spirits,
+it necessarily follows there is an <i>omnipresent, eternal Mind</i>,
+which knows and comprehends all things, and exhibits
+them to our view in such a manner, and according to such
+rules, as He Himself hath ordained, and are by us termed
+the <i>Laws of Nature</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'Truth is the cry of all,' says Berkeley in the final paragraph
+of <i>Siris</i>, 'but the game of a few. Certainly, where
+it is the chief passion, it doth not give way to vulgar cares
+and views, nor is it contented with a little ardour, active
+perhaps to pursue, but not so fit to weigh and revise. He
+that would make a real progress in knowledge, must dedicate
+his age as well as youth, the latter growth as well as
+firstfruits at the altar of truth.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Elsewhere in this famous treatise he writes:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'It cannot be denied that with respect to the universe of
+things we in this mortal state are like men educated in
+Plato's cave, looking on shadows with our backs turned to
+the light. But though our light be dim and our situation
+bad, yet if the best use be made of both, perhaps something
+may be seen. Proclus, in his commentary on the
+theology of Plato, observes there are two sorts of philosophers.
+The one placed body first in the order of beings,
+and made the faculty of thinking depend thereupon, supposing
+that the principles of all things are corporeal; that
+body most really or principally exists, and all other things
+in a secondary sense and by virtue of that. Others making
+all corporeal things to be dependent upon soul or mind,
+think this to exist in the first place, and primary senses and
+the being of bodies to be altogether derived from, and presuppose
+that of the mind.'</p></div>
+
+<p>This was Berkeley's creed, and his great aim throughout
+is to prove the phenomenal nature of the things of sense,
+or in other words the non-existence of independent matter.
+He makes, he says, not the least question that the things
+we see and touch really exist, but what he does question is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>
+the existence of matter apart from its perception to the
+mind. Hobbes said that the body accounted for the mind,
+and that matter was the deepest thing in the universe,
+while to Berkeley the only true reality consists in what is
+spiritual and eternal.</p>
+
+<p>'The great idealist,' says an able writer, 'certainly never
+denied the existence of matter in the sense in which Johnson
+understood it. As the touched, the seen, the heard, the
+smelled, the tasted, he admitted and maintained its existence
+as readily and completely as the most illiterate
+and unsophisticated of mankind,' and he adds that the
+peculiar endowment for which Berkeley was distinguished
+'far beyond his predecessors and contemporaries, and far
+beyond almost every philosopher who has succeeded him,
+was the eye he had <i>for facts</i>, and the singular pertinacity
+with which he refused to be dislodged from his hold upon
+them.'<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a></p>
+
+<p>Pope's age produced a few great masters of style, and
+among them Berkeley holds an undisputed place. He
+succeeded, too, in the most difficult department of intellectual
+labour, since to express abstruse thought in
+language as beautiful as it is clear is the rarest of gifts.</p>
+
+<p>'His works are beyond dispute the finest models of
+philosophic style since Cicero. Perhaps they surpass those
+of the orator, in the wonderful art by which the fullest
+light is thrown on the most minute and evanescent parts
+of the most subtle of human conceptions.'<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">William Law
+(1686-1761).</div>
+
+<p>William Law was born in 1686 at King's Cliffe in
+Northamptonshire, and entered Emmanuel
+College, Cambridge, as a Sizar in 1705. He
+obtained a Fellowship, and received holy
+orders in 1711, but having made a speech offensive to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>
+heads of houses, he was degraded. Law believed in the
+divine right of kings, and on the death of Queen Anne,
+declared his principles as a non-juror. In 1717 he published
+his first controversial work, <i>Three Letters to the
+Bishop of Bangor</i>; Hoadly, the famous bishop, having, in his
+opponent's judgment, uttered lax and latitudinarian views
+with regard to the Church of which he was one of the chief
+pastors. These <i>Letters</i> have been highly praised for wit as
+well as for argument, and Dean Hook, writing of the Bangorian
+Controversy in his <i>Church Dictionary</i>, states that
+'Law's <i>Letters</i> have never been answered and may, indeed,
+be regarded as unanswerable.' Law was also the most
+powerful assailant of Warburton's <i>Divine Legation</i>, which
+he opposed with a burning zeal that was not always wise.
+But as a controversialist he was an infinitely stronger
+man than his opponent, and unlike Warburton, he never
+debased controversy by scurrility, which the bishop generally
+found a more potent weapon than argument.</p>
+
+<p>On the publication, in 1723, of Dr. Mandeville's <i>Fable of
+the Bees</i>, it was vigorously attacked by Law. In this
+masterly pamphlet, instead of attempting to refute the
+physician by showing that virtue is more profitable to the
+State than vice, and that, therefore, private vices are not
+public benefits, Law takes a higher ground, and asserts
+that morality is not a question of profit and loss, but of
+conscience. Mandeville maintains that man is a mere
+animal governed by his passions; his opponent, on the
+other hand, argues that man is created in the image of
+God, that virtue 'is a law to which even the divine
+nature is subject,' and that human nature is fitted to rise
+to the angels, while Mandeville would lower it to the
+brutes.</p>
+
+<p>John Sterling, writing to F. D. Maurice of the first
+section of Law's remarks, says: 'I have never seen in our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>
+language the elementary grounds of a rational ideal
+philosophy, as opposed to empiricism, stated with nearly
+the same clearness, simplicity, and force,' and it was at
+Sterling's suggestion that Maurice published a new edition
+of Law's argument with an introductory essay (1844).</p>
+
+<p>The following passage from the <i>Remarks on the Fable of
+the Bees</i> will illustrate Law's method as a polemic:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Deists and freethinkers are generally considered as
+unbelievers; but upon examination they will appear to be
+men of the most resigned and implicit faith in the world;
+they would believe <i>transubstantiation</i>, but that it implies
+a believing in God; for they never resign their reason, but
+when it is to yield to something that opposes salvation.
+For the Deist's creed has as many articles as the Christian's,
+and requires a much greater suspension of our reason to
+believe them. So that if to believe things upon no authority,
+or without any reason, be an argument of credulity, the
+freethinker will appear to be the most easy, credulous
+creature alive. In the first place, he is to believe almost
+all the same articles to be false which the Christian believes
+to be true.</p>
+
+<p>'Now, it may easily be shown that it requires stronger
+acts of faith to believe these articles to be false, than to
+believe them to be true. For, taking faith to be an assent
+of the mind to some proposition, of which we have no
+certain knowledge, it will appear that the Deist's faith is
+much stronger, and has more of credulity in it, than the
+Christian's. For instance, the Christian believes the
+resurrection of the dead, because he finds it supported by
+such evidence and authority as cannot possibly be higher,
+supposing the thing was true; and he does no more
+violence to his reason in believing it, than in supposing
+that God may intend to do some things, which the reason
+of man cannot conceive how they will be effected.</p>
+
+<p>'On the contrary, the Deist believes there will be no
+resurrection. And how great is his faith, for he pretends
+to no evidence or authority to support it; it is a pure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
+naked assent of his mind to what he does not know to be
+true, and of which nobody has, or can give him, any full
+assurance. So that the difference between a Christian and
+a Deist does not consist in this, that the one assents to
+things unknown, and the other does not; but in this, that
+the Christian assents to things unknown on account of
+evidence; the other assents to things unknown without
+any evidence at all. Which shows that the Christian is
+the rational believer and the Deist the blind bigot.'</p></div>
+
+<p>It is probable that Law, like other writers on the
+orthodox side, did not sufficiently take into account the
+service rendered by the Deists in arousing a spirit of
+inquiry. Free-thinking is right thinking, and 'it was a
+result of the Deistic controversy, which went far to make
+up many evils in it, that in the end it widened and enlarged
+Christian thought.'<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a></p>
+
+<p>The author's next and weakest work, <i>On the Unlawfulness
+of Stage Entertainments</i> (1726), is mentioned elsewhere.<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a></p>
+
+<p>In the same year he published <i>Christian Perfection</i>,
+a profoundly earnest but puritanically narrow work, in
+which our earthly life is regarded simply as the road to
+another. 'There is nothing that deserves a serious thought,'
+he writes, 'but how to get out of the world and make it a
+right passage to our eternal state.' No man ever practised
+what he preached with more sincerity and persistency than
+William Law, but it can hardly be doubted that he narrowed
+the range of his influence by the views he expressed
+with regard to culture and to all human learning. He
+forgot that, without the logic, the wit, the irony, the
+singular force and lucidity of style displayed in his own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>
+writings, he would have lost the power as a religious
+teacher which he was so eager to exercise.</p>
+
+<p>Literature <i>quâ</i> literature Law regarded with contempt,
+and he is said to have looked upon the study even of
+Milton as waste of time. Yet his biographer states what
+seems likely enough, considering the fine qualities of Law's
+own writings, that 'no author was ever a favourite with
+him, unless he was a man of literary merit.'</p>
+
+<p>In 1727, and probably before that date, Law held the
+position of tutor to Edward Gibbon, whose famous son,
+the historian, in his <i>Autobiography</i>, gives to him the high
+praise of having left in the family 'the reputation of a
+worthy and pious man, who believed all that he professed,
+and practised all that he enjoined.'</p>
+
+<p>Law accompanied his pupil to Cambridge, and it is conjectured
+that during this residence at the university he
+wrote what Gibbon justly called his 'master work,' <i>A
+Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life</i> (1729), the most
+impressive book of its class produced in the eighteenth
+century. The historian's father was a man of feeble
+character. He left Cambridge without a degree, and went
+on his travels, the tutor meanwhile remaining in the family
+house at Putney, where he seems to have gathered round
+him a number of disciples.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Serious Call</i> had an immediate and strong influence
+on many thoughtful men, and Law's book stimulated in no
+common measure the religious life of the country. John
+Wesley spoke of it as a treatise hardly to be excelled in
+the English tongue 'either for beauty of expression, or for
+justness and depth of thought.' Whitefield, Venn, and
+Thomas Scott, the commentator, acknowledged their indebtedness
+to the work, and Dr. Johnson, speaking of his
+youthful days, said: 'I became a sort of lax <i>talker</i> against
+religion, for I did not much <i>think</i> against it; and this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
+lasted till I went to Oxford, when I took up Law's <i>Serious
+Call to a Holy Life</i>, expecting to find it a dull book (as
+such books generally are), but I found Law quite an over-match
+for me; and this was the first occasion of my
+thinking in earnest.' The first Lord Lyttelton, the historian
+and friend of Thomson, is said to have taken up the book
+one night at bed-time, and to have read it through before
+he went to bed; but, perhaps, the most unimpeachable
+evidence in its favour comes from the pen of Gibbon, who
+writes: 'Mr. Law's precepts are rigid, but they are founded
+on the Gospel. His satire is sharp, but it is drawn from
+the knowledge of human life, and many of his portraits are
+not unworthy of the pen of La Bruyère. If he finds a
+spark of piety in his reader's mind he will soon kindle it
+to a flame.'</p>
+
+<p>Law's art as a portrait painter will be seen in the following
+sketch of Flavia:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'<i>Flavia</i> would be a miracle of piety if she was but half
+so careful of her soul as she is of her body. The rising of
+a <i>pimple</i> on her face, the sting of a gnat, will make her keep
+her room two or three days, and she thinks they are very
+rash people that do not take care of things in time. This
+makes her so over careful of her health that she never
+thinks she is well enough, and so over indulgent that she
+never can be really well. So that it costs her a great deal
+in sleeping draughts and waking draughts, in spirits for
+the head, in drops for the nerves, in cordials for the stomach,
+and in saffron for her tea.</p>
+
+<p>'If you visit <i>Flavia</i> on the Sunday, you will always meet
+good company, you will know what is doing in the world,
+you will hear the last lampoon, be told who wrote it, and
+who is meant by every name that is in it. You will hear
+what plays were acted that week, which is the finest song
+in the opera, who was intolerable at the last assembly, and
+what games are most in fashion. <i>Flavia</i> thinks they are
+atheists who play at cards on the Sunday, but she will tell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>
+you the nicety of all the games, what cards she held, how
+she played them, and the history of all that happened at
+play, as soon as she comes from church. If you would
+know who is rude and ill-natured, who is vain and foppish,
+who lives too high and who is in debt; if you would know
+what is the quarrel at a certain house, or who and who are in
+love; if you would know how late Belinda comes home at
+night, what clothes she has bought, how she loves compliments,
+and what a long story she told at such a place; if
+you would know how cross Lucius is to his wife, what ill-natured
+things he says to her, when nobody hears him; if
+you would know how they hate one another in their hearts
+though they appear so kind in public; you must visit
+<i>Flavia</i> on the Sunday. But still she has so great a regard
+for the holiness of the Sunday, that she has turned a poor
+old widow out of her house as a <i>profane wretch</i>, for having
+been found once mending her clothes on the Sunday
+night.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Between the years 1733-37, owing to his acquaintance
+with the writings of the famous mystic, Jacob Boehme,
+Law became a mystic himself. The 'blessed Jacob' as he
+calls him exercised an influence which colours all his later
+writings and lasted till his death. In 1740 he retired
+to his native village and to solitude; but after a while two
+wealthy and devout ladies, one of them a widow, the other
+the historian's aunt, Miss Hester Gibbon, joined him in his
+retreat and devoted to charitable objects their labours and
+their fortunes. 'Out of a joint income of not less than
+three thousand pounds a year, only about three hundred
+pounds were spent upon the frugal expenses of the household
+and the simple personal wants of the three inhabitants.
+The whole of the remainder was spent upon the poor.'<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a>
+Report says, let us hope it may be scandal, that after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>
+the master's death the love of earthly vanities revived
+in two of his pupils. His favourite niece had a new dress
+every month, and Miss Gibbon 'appeared resplendent in
+yellow stockings.' This is not the place to follow Law's
+self-denying career, neither are we concerned with the
+volumes which contain his later views. Admirably written
+though they be, these works do not belong to the field of
+literature. Law lived in vigour both of mind and body to
+a good old age, and died in 1761.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Joseph Butler
+(1692-1752).</div>
+
+<p>Joseph Butler, whose <i>Sermons</i> (1726), and <i>Analogy of
+Religion Natural and Revealed to the Constitution
+and Course of Nature</i> (1736), are among
+the highest contributions to theology produced
+in the last century, called the imagination 'a forward,
+delusive faculty,' and he could have boasted that it was a
+faculty of which no trace is to be found in his works.
+Moreover, he is generally regarded as wholly destitute
+of style, and in a sense this is true, for Butler is so intent
+upon what he has to say that he cares little how he says it.
+His sense of beauty if he possessed it, was absorbed in a
+supreme allegiance to truth, and his life was that of
+a Christian philosopher intent upon one object. His
+sermons, preached at the Rolls Chapel, which contain the
+germ of his philosophy, are too closely packed with argument
+and too recondite in thought to fit them for pulpit discourses.
+The <i>Analogy</i>, which occupied seven years of
+Butler's life, is better known and more generally interesting.
+'There is,' he says, 'a much more exact correspondence
+between the natural and the moral world than we are
+apt to take notice of.' His aim is to show that the difficulties
+which meet us in Revelation are to be found also in
+nature, that as our happiness or misery in this world largely
+depends upon conduct, so it is reasonable to suppose, apart
+from what Revelation teaches, that we are also in a state of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>
+probation with regard to a future life. As youth is an
+education for mature age, so may the whole of our earthly
+life be an education for a future existence.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'And if we were not able at all to discern how or in
+what way the present life could be our preparation for
+another, this would be no objection against the credibility
+of its being so. For we do not discern how food and sleep
+contribute to the growth of the body; nor could have any
+thought that they would before we had experience. Nor
+do children at all think on the one hand that the sports and
+exercises, to which they are so much addicted, contribute to
+their health and growth; nor, on the other, of the necessity
+which there is for their being restrained in them; nor are
+they capable of understanding the use of many parts of
+discipline, which, nevertheless, they must be made to go
+through in order to qualify them for the business of mature
+age. Were we not able, then, to discover in what respects
+the present life could form us for a future one, yet nothing
+would be more supposable than that it might, in some
+respects or other, from the general analogy of Providence.
+And this, for aught I see, might reasonably be said, even
+though we should not take in the consideration of God's
+moral government over the world. But, take in this consideration,
+and consequently, that the character of virtue
+and piety is a necessary qualification for the future state,
+and then we may distinctly see how and in what respects
+the present life may be a preparation for it.</p></div>
+
+<p>Butler's style is uniform throughout, and if it have no
+other merit, may be praised for honesty. It is wholly free
+from the artifices of the rhetorician; if it is wanting in
+charm, it is never weak; if it is sometimes obscure, it must
+be remembered that the author does not write for readers
+who find it a trouble to think. The bishop's obscurity was
+not due to negligence. 'Confusion and perplexity in writing,'
+he says, 'is indeed without excuse; because anyone
+may, if he pleases, know whether he understands and sees<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
+through what he is about; and it is unpardonable for a
+man to lay his thoughts before others when he is conscious
+that he himself does not know whereabouts he is, or how
+the matter before him stands. It is coming abroad in disorder,
+which he ought to be dissatisfied to find himself in at
+home.'</p>
+
+<p>Butler weighed his thoughts rather than his words in an
+age when many distinguished writers were tempted to regard
+form as of more consequence than substance. It must be
+admitted, however, that if the ideal of fine literature be the
+expression of beautiful and richly suggestive thoughts in a
+style elevated by the imagination, and by a sense of rhythmical
+harmony, Bishop Butler's place is not among men of
+letters. His profound sense of the seriousness of life
+limited his range; but as a thinker, what he lost in versatility
+he probably gained in depth. The <i>Analogy</i> is a
+striking instance of a great work wholly without imagination,
+while full of the intellectual life which sustains the
+student's attention. There is not a dull page in the book,
+or one in which the author's meaning cannot be grasped by
+thoughtful readers. The work is full of weighty sayings
+on the power of conscience, the rule of right which a man
+has within him, the force of habit, the necessity of action in
+relation to belief, and the uselessness of passive impressions.
+It has been said that the defect of the eighteenth century
+theology 'was not in having too much good sense, but in
+having nothing besides,' and the straining after good sense,
+so prominent in Pope's age, affected alike, men of letters,
+philosophers, and theologians. The virtue was carried to
+excess and is conspicuous in Butler. He has his weaknesses
+both as a philosopher and a theologian, but the
+reader of the <i>Analogy</i> and of the three sermons on Human
+Nature, will be conscious that he is in the presence of a
+great mind.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">William Warburton
+(1698-1779).</div>
+
+<p>William Warburton, Pope's commentator, was born at
+Newark-upon-Trent in 1698, and died
+as Bishop of Gloucester in 1779. The
+main argument of his principal work,
+<i>The Divine Legation of Moses</i> (1738-41), is based upon the
+astounding paradox that the legation of Moses must have
+been divine because he never invoked the promises or
+threatenings of a future state. The book is remarkable
+for its arrogance and lack of 'sweet reasonableness.' It
+claims no attention from the student of English literature,
+neither would Warburton himself were it not for his association
+with Pope. Allusion has been already made to
+Crousaz's hostile criticism of the <i>Essay on Man</i> (1737)
+on the ground that it led to fatalism, and was destructive
+of the foundations of natural religion. Warburton, who
+had previously denounced the 'rank atheism' of the poem,
+now endeavoured to defend it, and how effectually he did
+so in Pope's judgment is seen in his grateful acknowledgment
+of the critic's labours. 'I know I meant just what
+you explain,' he wrote, 'but I did not explain my own
+meaning as well as you. You understand me as well as I
+do myself, but you express me better than I could express
+myself.'</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Conyers Middleton's estimate of what Warburton
+had done for Pope is more accurate: 'You have evinced
+the orthodoxy of Mr. Pope's principles,' he says, 'but,
+like the old commentators on his <i>Homer</i>, will be thought,
+perhaps, in some places to have provided a meaning for
+him that he himself never dreamt of.'<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a></p>
+
+<p>The poet and Warburton met for the first time in 1740,
+and the bookseller, Dodsley, who was present at the interview,
+was astonished at the compliments which Pope<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>
+lavished on his apologist. Henceforth, until the poet's
+death, Warburton, who, according to Bishop Hurd, 'found
+an image of himself in his new acquaintance,' became his
+counsellor and supporter, and among other achievements
+added, as Ricardus Aristarchus, to the confusion of the
+<i>Dunciad</i>. Ultimately, as Pope's annotator, he produced
+much laborious and comparatively worthless criticism, and
+contrived by his immense fighting qualities as a critic and
+polemic to make a considerable noise in the world. One
+incident in the friendship of the poet and of the divine is
+worth recording. In 1741 Pope and Warburton were at
+Oxford together, and while there the Vice-Chancellor
+offered to confer on the poet the degree of D.C.L., and on
+Warburton that of D.D. Some hesitation, however, on
+the part of the university having occurred with regard to
+the latter, Pope wrote to his friend saying, 'As for mine I
+will die before I receive one, in an art I am ignorant of, at
+a place where there remains any scruple of bestowing one
+on you, in a science of which you are so great a master.
+In short I will be doctored with you, or not at all.'</p>
+
+<p>Warburton's stupendous self-assertion concealed to some
+extent his heavy style and poverty of thought. His aim
+was to startle by paradoxes, since he could not convince
+by argument. No one could call an opponent names in
+the Billingsgate style more effectively, and every man who
+ventured to differ from him was either a knave or a fool.
+'Warburton's stock argument,' it has been said, 'is a
+threat to cudgel anyone who disputes his opinion.' He
+was a laborious student, and the mass of work he
+accomplished exhibits his robust energy, but he has left
+nothing which lives in literature or in theology. He was,
+however, a man of various acquisitions, and won, for that
+reason, the praise of Dr. Johnson. 'The table is always
+full, sir. He brings things from the north and the south<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>
+and from every quarter. In his <i>Divine Legation</i> you
+are always entertained. He carries you round and round
+without carrying you forward to the point, but then you
+have no wish to be carried forward.'</p>
+
+<p>Bentley's more concise description of Warburton's attainments
+deserves to be recorded. He was, he says, 'a man
+of monstrous appetite, but bad digestion.'</p>
+
+<p>Warburton's <i>Shakespeare</i> appeared in 1747, his <i>Pope</i> in
+1751. It cannot be said that either poet has cause to be
+grateful to his commentator. Of his <i>Shakespeare</i> a few
+words may be appropriately said here. In this pretentious
+and untrustworthy edition, Warburton accuses Theobald
+of plagiarism, treats him with contempt, and then uses his
+text to print from. In his Preface he declares that his
+own Notes 'take in the whole compass of Criticism,' and
+he professes to restore the poet's genuine Text. Yet, as
+the editors of the <i>Cambridge Shakespeare</i> observe, there is
+no trace, so far as they have discovered, 'of his having
+collated for himself either the earlier Folios or any of the
+Quartos.' Warburton professed to observe the severe
+canons of literal criticism, and this suggested the title to
+Thomas Edwards of a volume in which the critic's editorial
+pretensions are attacked with some humour and much
+justice.<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a></p>
+
+<p>We may add that Bishop Hurd, Warburton's most intimate
+friend, edited his works in seven volumes (1788),
+and six years later, by way of preface to a new edition,
+published an <i>Account of the Life, Writings, and Character
+of the Author</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> Readers who remember Mr. Browning's estimate of 'sage
+Mandeville' in his <i>Parleyings with Certain Persons</i> may deem this
+criticism unjust; but the De Mandeville who speaks in that poem
+is the creation of the poet's imagination, or rather he is Mr.
+Browning himself.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> <i>Bolingbroke: a Historical Study</i>, p. 133. By J. Churton Collins.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> <i>Walpole</i>, p. 79. By John Morley. Macmillan.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> <i>Works of George Berkeley.</i> Edited by George Sampson. With
+introduction by the Rt. Hon. Arthur J. Balfour, M.P. Vol. i.,
+p. xxxi (London, 1897).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> <i>An Essay on Truth</i>, 2nd edit., p. 298. 1771.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> <i>Blackwood's Magazine</i>, June, 1842.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> Sir James Macintosh, <i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> <i>The English Church and its Bishops.</i> By Charles J. Abbey.
+Vol. i., p. 236.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> See p. <a href="#Page_194">194.</a></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> <i>The Life and Opinions of the Rev. William Law, M.A.</i>
+By J. H. Overton, M.A. P. 243.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> Middleton's <i>Miscellaneous Works</i>, vol. i., p. 402.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> The first edition of Edwards's work was entitled <i>Supplement</i>
+to Mr. Warburton's edition of <i>Shakespeare</i>, 1747. The third edition
+(1750) was called <i>The Canons of Criticism and Glossary</i> by Thomas
+Edwards. Of this volume seven editions were published. Edwards,
+who was born in 1699, died in 1757.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="INDEX_OF_MINOR_POETS_AND_PROSE" id="INDEX_OF_MINOR_POETS_AND_PROSE"></a>INDEX OF MINOR POETS AND PROSE
+WRITERS.</h2>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">John Armstrong</span> (1709-1779), a Scotchman by birth,
+practised in London as a physician after some surgical
+experience in the navy. Believing any subject suitable for
+poetry, he wrote in blank verse, reminding one of Thomson,
+<i>The Art of Preserving Health</i> (1744), a poem containing
+some powerful passages, and many which are better fitted
+for a medical treatise than for poetry. An earlier and licentious
+poem <i>The Economy of Love</i>, which injured him in
+his profession, was 'revised and corrected by the author'
+in 1768.</p>
+
+<p>If bulk were a sign of merit <span class="smcap">Sir Richard Blackmore</span>
+(1650-1729) would not rank with the minor poets. He
+wrote several long and wearisome epics, his best work in
+Dr. Johnson's judgment being <i>The Creation</i> (1712), which
+was praised by Addison in the <i>Spectator</i> as 'one of the
+most useful and noble productions in our English verse,' a
+judgment the modern reader is not likely to endorse.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Henry Brooke</span> (1706-1783), an Irishman, was the
+author of a poem entitled <i>Universal Beauty</i> (1735). Four
+years later he published <i>Gustavus Vasa</i>, a tragedy, which
+was not allowed to be acted, the sentiments being too
+liberal for the government. His <i>Fool of Quality</i> (1766) a
+novel in five volumes, delighted John Wesley, and in our
+day, Charles Kingsley, who praises its 'broad and genial<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>
+humanity.' Brooke was a follower of William Law, whose
+mysticism is to be seen in the story.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">William Broome</span> (1689-1745) is chiefly known from
+his association with Pope in the translation of the <i>Odyssey</i>,
+of which enough has been said elsewhere (p. <a href="#Page_38">38</a>). His
+name suggested the following epigram to Henley:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Pope came off clean with Homer; but they say<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Broome</i> went before and kindly swept the way.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He entered holy orders, had two livings in Suffolk and one
+in Norfolk, and married a wealthy widow. His verses are
+mechanically correct, but are empty of poetry.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">John Byrom</span> (1691-1763), the friend and disciple of
+William Law, the author of the <i>Serious Call</i>, is best remembered
+for his system of shorthand. In a characteristic,
+copious, and not very attractive journal, he
+describes, for the consolation of his fellow mortals, how
+he makes resolutions and breaks them. Byrom wrote
+rhyme with ease and on subjects with which poetry has
+nothing to do. His most successful achievement was a
+pastoral, <i>Colin and Ph&oelig;be</i>, which appeared in the <i>Spectator</i>
+(Vol. viii., No. 603). It was written in honour of the
+daughter of Dr. Bentley, Master of Trinity, 'not,' it has
+been said, 'because he wished to win her affections, but
+because he desired to secure her father's interest for the
+Fellowship for which he was a candidate.' The plan was
+successful. The one verse of Byrom's that every one has
+read is the happy epigram:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'God bless the King!&mdash;I mean the faith's defender&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God bless (no harm in blessing!) the Pretender!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But who Pretender is, or who is King&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God bless us all!&mdash;that's quite another thing.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Samuel Clarke</span> (1675-1729), a man of large attainments
+in science and divinity, was the favourite theo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>logian
+of Queen Caroline, who admired his latitudinarian
+views, and delighted in his conversation. His works, edited
+by Bishop Hoadly, were published in 1738 in four folio
+volumes. In 1704 he delivered the Boyle lectures on <i>The
+Being and Attributes of God</i>, and in 1705 <i>On Natural and
+Revealed Religion</i>. His <i>Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity</i>
+(1712) was condemned by convocation. In defence of Sir
+Isaac Newton, Clarke had a controversy with Leibnitz,
+and having published the correspondence dedicated it to
+the Queen. His sermons, Mr. Leslie Stephen says, are
+'for the most part not sermons at all, but lectures upon
+metaphysics.' In Addison's judgment Clarke was one of
+the most accurate, learned, and judicious writers the age
+had produced.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Elijah Fenton</span> (1683-1730) wrote poems and <i>Mariamne</i>
+a tragedy, in which, according to his friend Broome, 'great
+Sophocles revives and reappears.' It was acted with applause,
+and brought nearly one thousand pounds to its
+author. His name is now chiefly known as having assisted
+Pope in his translation of the <i>Odyssey</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Richard Glover</span> (1712-1785), the son of a London
+merchant, was himself a merchant of high reputation in the
+city. He also 'cultivated the Muses,' and his <i>Leonidas</i>
+(1737), an elaborate poem in blank verse, preferred by
+some critics of the day to <i>Paradise Lost</i>, passed through
+several editions and was praised by Fielding and by Lord
+Chatham. Power is visible in this epic, which displays
+also a large amount of knowledge, but the salt of genius is
+wanting, and the poem, despite many estimable qualities,
+is now forgotten. <i>Leonidas</i> was followed by <i>Boadicea</i>
+(1758), and <i>The Atheniad</i>, published after his death in 1788.
+Glover was a politician as well as a verseman. His party
+feeling probably inspired <i>Admiral Hosier's Ghost</i> (1739),
+a ballad still remembered and preserved in anthologies.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Matthew Green</span> (1696-1737) is the author of <i>The Spleen</i>,
+an original and brightly written poem. <i>The Grotto</i>, printed
+but not published in 1732, is also marked by freshness
+of treatment. Green's poems, written in octosyllabic
+metre, were published after his death.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">James Hammond</span> (1710-1742) produced many forlorn
+elegies on a lady who appears to have scorned him, and
+who lived in 'maiden meditation' for nearly forty years
+after the poet's death. His love is said to have affected his
+mind for a time. 'Sure Hammond has no right,' says
+Shenstone, 'to the least inventive merit. I do not think
+that there is a single thought in his elegies of any eminence
+that is not literally translated.'</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Nathaniel Hooke</span> (1690-1763), the author of a <i>Roman
+History</i>, is better known as the editor of <i>An Account of the
+conduct of the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough, from her
+first coming to Court in the year 1710, in a letter from herself
+to Lord &mdash;&mdash; in 1742</i>. The duchess is said to have dictated
+this letter from her bed, and to have been so eager for its
+completion that she insisted on Hooke's not leaving the
+house till he had finished it. He was munificently rewarded
+for his labour by a present of £5,000. It was Hooke, a
+zealous Roman Catholic, who, when Pope was dying, asked
+him if he should not send for a priest, and received the
+poet's hearty thanks for putting him in mind of it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">John Hughes</span> (1677-1719) was the author of poems, an
+opera, a masque, several translations, and a tragedy, <i>The
+Siege of Damascus</i>, which was well received, and kept its
+place on the stage for some years. He died on the first
+night's performance of the play. Several articles in the
+<i>Tatler</i> and <i>Spectator</i> are from his pen. In 1715 he published
+an edition of Spenser in six volumes. Hughes
+received warm praise from Steele, and enjoyed also the
+friendship of Addison.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Conyers Middleton</span> (1683-1750) is now chiefly known
+for an extravagantly eulogistic life of <i>Cicero</i> (1741), in
+which, as Macaulay observes, he 'resorted to the most disingenuous
+shifts, to unpardonable distortions and suppressions
+of facts.' The book is written in a forcible and lively
+style. A man of considerable learning, Middleton was a
+violent controversialist, who liked better to attack and to
+defend than to dwell in the serene atmosphere of literature
+or of practical divinity. He assailed the famous
+Richard Bentley with such rancour that he had to apologize
+and was fined £50 by the Court of King's Bench.
+Middleton was a doctor of divinity, but his controversial
+works, while never directly attacking the chief tenets of the
+religion he professed, lean far more to the side of the Deists
+than to the orthodox creed, and, indeed, it would not be
+uncharitable to class him among them. He appears, like
+Swift, to have chiefly regarded the Christian religion as an
+institution of service to the stability of the State. Of the
+<i>Miscellaneous Works</i> which were published after his death
+in five volumes, the most elaborate and the most provocative
+of disputation is <i>A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers
+which are supposed to have subsisted in the Christian Church
+through several successive centuries</i> (1749). Middleton was
+educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1734 was
+elected librarian of the University.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Richard Savage</span> (1698-1743), whose fate is one of the
+most melancholy in the annals of versemen, lives in the
+admirable though neither impartial nor wholly accurate
+biography of Dr. Johnson. In 1719 he produced <i>Love in a
+Veil</i>, a comedy from the Spanish; and in 1723 his tragedy
+<i>Sir Thomas Overbury</i> was acted, but with little success.
+In the same year he published <i>The Bastard</i>, a poem which
+is said to have driven his mother out of society. <i>The
+Wanderer</i>, in five cantos, appeared in 1729, and was regarded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
+by the author as his masterpiece. It has some vigorous
+lines and several descriptive passages that are not conventional.
+Savage died in prison at Bristol, a city which
+recalls the equally painful story of Chatterton.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Lewis Theobald</span> (1688-1744), the original hero of the
+<i>Dunciad</i>, was a dramatist and translator, but is chiefly
+known as the author of <i>Shakespeare Restored; or specimens
+of blunders committed or unamended in Pope's edition of the
+poet</i> (1726). This was followed two years later by <i>Proposals
+for Publishing Emendations and Remarks on Shakespeare</i>,
+and in 1733 by his edition of the dramatist in seven
+volumes. 'Theobald as an editor,' say the editors of the
+<i>Cambridge Shakespeare</i>, 'is incomparably superior to his
+predecessors and to his immediate successor Warburton,
+although the latter had the advantage of working on his
+materials. He was the first to recall a multitude of readings
+of the first Folio unquestionably right, but unnoticed
+by previous editors. Many most brilliant emendations
+... are due to him.'</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">William Walsh</span> (1663-1708) has chronologically little
+claim to be noticed here, for his poems were published before
+the beginning of the century, but he is to be remembered
+as the early friend and wise counsellor of Pope, and also
+as the author, I believe, of the only English sonnet between
+Milton's in 1658, and Gray's, on Richard West, in
+1742.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Anne Finch</span>, Countess of Winchelsea (1660-1720), published
+a volume of verse in 1713 under the title of <i>Miscellany
+Poems on Several Occasions, Written by a Lady</i>.
+The book contains a <i>Nocturnal Reverie</i>, which has some
+lines showing a close and faithful observation of rural
+sounds and sights, as for example:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'When the loosed horse, now as his pasture leads,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Comes slowly grazing through the adjoining meads,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose stealing pace and lengthened shade we fear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till torn-up forage in his teeth we hear;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When nibbling sheep at large pursue their food,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And unmolested kine rechew the cud;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When curlews cry beneath the village walls,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And to her straggling brood the partridge calls.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The <i>Nocturnal Reverie</i>, however, is an exception to the
+general character of Lady Winchelsea's poems, which consist
+chiefly of odes (including the inevitable Pindaric),
+fables, songs, affectionate addresses to her husband,
+poetical epistles, and a tragedy, <i>Aristomenes; or the Royal
+Shepherd</i>. The <i>Petition for an Absolute Retreat</i> is one of
+the best pieces in the volume. It displays great facility in
+versification, and a love of country delights.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Thomas Yalden</span> (1670-1736), born in Exeter, and
+educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, entered into holy
+orders (1711), and was appointed lecturer of moral philosophy.
+'Of his poems,' writes Dr. Johnson, 'many are of
+that irregular kind which, when he formed his poetical
+character, was supposed to be Pindaric.' Pindarics were
+indeed the bane of the age. Every minor poet, no matter
+however feeble his poetical wings might be, endeavoured
+to fly with Pindar. Like Gay, Yalden tried his skill as a
+writer of fables.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot gap3"><p class="center"><span class="smcap">Note.</span></p>
+
+<p><i>Mrs. Veal's Ghost</i> (see pp. 186-187). A curious discovery,
+made by Mr. G. A. Aitken (see <i>Nineteenth Century</i>, January,
+1895), makes it certain, he thinks, that 'the whole narrative is
+literally true.' He even hopes that the receipt for scouring Mrs.
+Veal's gown may some day be found. Mr. Aitken seems to infer
+that Defoe's other tales will also turn out to be true histories, but
+Defoe avers, with all the seriousness he expends on Mrs. Veal,
+that he witnessed the great Plague of London, which it is needless
+to say he did not.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="CHRONOLOGICAL_TABLE" id="CHRONOLOGICAL_TABLE"></a>CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.</h2>
+
+<table summary="Chronology">
+<tr>
+<td><b>1667.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Swift born.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1672.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Steele born.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1672.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Addison born.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1674.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Milton died.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1688.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Gay born.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1688.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Pope born.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1688.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Bunyan died.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1690.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Locke's <i>Essay Concerning Human Understanding</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1694.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Voltaire born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1699.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Racine died.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1700.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Thomson born.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1700.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Dryden died.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1700.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Fénelon's <i>Télémaque</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1703.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>John Wesley born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1704.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Locke died.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1704.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Addison's</b> <i>Campaign</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1704.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Swift's</b> <i>Tale of a Tub</i> and <i>Battle of the Books</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1707.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Fielding born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1709.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Johnson born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1709.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Pope's</b> <i>Pastorals</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1709-1711.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><i>The Tatler.</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1710.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Berkeley's</b> <i>Principles of Human Knowledge</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1711.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Pope's</b> <i>Essay on Criticism</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1711-1712,</td>
+<td rowspan="2" style="font-size:200%">}</td>
+<td rowspan="2"><i>The Spectator.</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>and 1714.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1711.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Hume born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1712.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Pope's</b> <i>Rape of the Lock</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>1712.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Rousseau born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1713.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Addison's</b> <i>Cato</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1713.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Sterne born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1714.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Mandeville's</b> <i>Fable of the Bees</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1715.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Gay's</b> <i>Trivia</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1715-1720.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Pope's</b> <i>Translation of Homer's Iliad</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1715.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Wycherley died.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1718.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Prior's</b> <i>Poems on Several Occasions</i> <b>(folio)</b>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1719-1720.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Defoe's</b> <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> <b>(first part)</b>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1719.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Addison died.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1721.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Prior died.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1721.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Smollett born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1723-1725.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Pope's</b> <i>Translation of Homer's Odyssey</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1724.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Swift's</b> <i>Drapier's Letters</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1724.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Kant born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1724.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Klopstock born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1725-1730.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Thomson's</b> <i>Seasons</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1725.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Ramsay's</b> <i>Gentle Shepherd</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1725.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Young's</b> <i>Universal Passion</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1726.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Swift's</b> <i>Gulliver's Travels</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1727.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Gay's</b> <i>Fables</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1728.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Pope's</b> <i>Dunciad</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1728.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Gay's</b> <i>Beggar's Opera</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1728.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Goldsmith born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1729.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Law's</b> <i>Serious Call</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1729.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Burke born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1729.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Lessing born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1729.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Steele died.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1731.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Defoe died.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1731.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Cowper born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1732-1735.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Pope's</b> <i>Moral Essays</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1732-1734.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Pope's</b> <i>Essay on Man</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1732.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Gay died.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1733-1737.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Pope's</b> <i>Imitations of Horace</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1735.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Pope's</b> <i>Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1736.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Butler's</b> <i>Analogy of Religion</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1737.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Gibbon born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1738.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Hume's</b> <i>Treatise of Human Nature</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span><b>1740.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Cibber's</b> <i>Apology for his Life</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1740.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Richardson's <i>Pamela</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1742.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Fielding's <i>Joseph Andrews</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1742.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Pope's</b> <i>Dunciad</i> <b>(fourth book added)</b>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1742.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Young's</b> <i>Night Thoughts</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1743.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Blair's</b> <i>Grave</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1744.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Akenside's</b> <i>Pleasures of Imagination</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1744.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Pope died.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1745.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Swift died.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1748.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Thomson died.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1748.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Hume's <i>Inquiry concerning Human Understanding</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1748.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Richardson's <i>Clarissa Harlowe</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1748.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Smollett's <i>Roderick Random</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1749.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Goethe born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1749.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Fielding's <i>Tom Jones</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2 class="gap3">ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WRITERS</h2>
+
+<table summary="Writers">
+<tr>
+<td>ADDISON, JOSEPH</td>
+<td class="ralign">1672-1719</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>AKENSIDE, MARK</td>
+<td class="ralign">1721-1770</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>ARBUTHNOT, JOHN</td>
+<td class="ralign">1667-1735</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>ARMSTRONG, JOHN</td>
+<td class="ralign">1709-1779</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>ATTERBURY, FRANCIS</td>
+<td class="ralign">1662-1732</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>BENTLEY, RICHARD</td>
+<td class="ralign">1662-1742</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>BERKELEY, GEORGE</td>
+<td class="ralign">1685-1753</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>BINNING, LORD</td>
+<td class="ralign">1696-1732</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>BLACKMORE, SIR RICHARD</td>
+<td class="ralign">1650-1729</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>BLAIR, ROBERT</td>
+<td class="ralign">1699-1746</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>BOLINGBROKE, LORD</td>
+<td class="ralign">1678-1751</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>BOYLE, CHARLES</td>
+<td class="ralign">1676-1731</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>BROOKE, HENRY</td>
+<td class="ralign">1706-1783</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>BROOME, WILLIAM</td>
+<td class="ralign">1689-1745</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>BUTLER, JOSEPH</td>
+<td class="ralign">1692-1752</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>BYROM, JOHN</td>
+<td class="ralign">1691-1763</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>CHESTERFIELD, LORD</td>
+<td class="ralign">1694-1773</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>CIBBER, COLLEY</td>
+<td class="ralign">1671-1757</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>CLARKE, SAMUEL</td>
+<td class="ralign">1675-1729</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>COLLINS, ANTHONY</td>
+<td class="ralign">1676-1729</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>CRAWFORD, ROBERT</td>
+<td class="ralign">1695?-1732</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>DEFOE, DANIEL</td>
+<td class="ralign">1661-1731</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>DENNIS, JOHN</td>
+<td class="ralign">1657-1733-4</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>DORSET, EARL OF</td>
+<td class="ralign">1637-1705-6</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>DYER, JOHN</td>
+<td class="ralign">1698?-1758</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>EDWARDS, THOMAS</td>
+<td class="ralign">1699-1757</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>FENTON, ELIJAH</td>
+<td class="ralign">1683-1730</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>GARTH, SIR SAMUEL</td>
+<td class="ralign">1660-1717-18</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>GAY, JOHN</td>
+<td class="ralign">1685-1732</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>GLOVER, RICHARD</td>
+<td class="ralign">1712-1785</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>GREEN, MATTHEW</td>
+<td class="ralign">1696-1737</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>HALIFAX, CHARLES MONTAGUE, EARL OF</td>
+<td class="ralign">1661-1715</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>HAMILTON, WILLIAM (OF BANGOUR)</td>
+<td class="ralign">1704-1754</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>HAMMOND, JAMES</td>
+<td class="ralign">1710-1742</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>HILL, AARON</td>
+<td class="ralign">1684-1749</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>HOOKE, NATHANIEL</td>
+<td class="ralign">1690-1763</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>HUGHES, JOHN</td>
+<td class="ralign">1677-1719</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>KING, ARCHBISHOP</td>
+<td class="ralign">1650-1729</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>LAW, WILLIAM</td>
+<td class="ralign">1686-1761</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>LILLO, GEORGE</td>
+<td class="ralign">1693-1739</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>LYTTELTON, GEORGE, LORD</td>
+<td class="ralign">1708-1773</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>MALLET, DAVID</td>
+<td class="ralign">1700-1765</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>MANDEVILLE, BERNARD DE</td>
+<td class="ralign">1670?-1733</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>MIDDLETON, CONYERS</td>
+<td class="ralign">1683-1750</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>MONTAGU, LADY MARY WORTLEY</td>
+<td class="ralign">1689-1762</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>PARNELL, THOMAS</td>
+<td class="ralign">1679-1718</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>PHILIPS, AMBROSE</td>
+<td class="ralign">1671-1749</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>PHILIPS, JOHN</td>
+<td class="ralign">1676-1708</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>POPE, ALEXANDER</td>
+<td class="ralign">1688-1744</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>PRIOR, MATTHEW</td>
+<td class="ralign">1664-1721</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>RAMSAY, ALLAN</td>
+<td class="ralign">1686-1758</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>ROWE, NICHOLAS</td>
+<td class="ralign">1673-1718</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>SAVAGE, RICHARD</td>
+<td class="ralign">1698-1743</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>SHAFTESBURY, LORD</td>
+<td class="ralign">1671-1713</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>SHENSTONE, WILLIAM</td>
+<td class="ralign">1714-1764</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>SOMERVILLE, WILLIAM</td>
+<td class="ralign">1692-1742</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>SPENCE, JOSEPH</td>
+<td class="ralign">1698-1768</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>STEELE, SIR RICHARD</td>
+<td class="ralign">1672-1729</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>SWIFT, JONATHAN</td>
+<td class="ralign">1667-1745</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>THEOBALD, LEWIS</td>
+<td class="ralign">1688-1744</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>THOMSON, JAMES</td>
+<td class="ralign">1700-1748</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>TICKELL, THOMAS</td>
+<td class="ralign">1686-1740</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>WALSH, WILLIAM</td>
+<td class="ralign">1663-1708</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>WARBURTON, WILLIAM</td>
+<td class="ralign">1698-1779</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>WARDLAW, LADY</td>
+<td class="ralign">1677-1727</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>WATTS, ISAAC</td>
+<td class="ralign">1674-1748</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>WESLEY, CHARLES</td>
+<td class="ralign">1708-1788</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>WINCHELSEA, COUNTESS OF</td>
+<td class="ralign">1660-1720</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>YALDEN, THOMAS</td>
+<td class="ralign">1670-1736</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>YOUNG, EDWARD</td>
+<td class="ralign">1684-1765</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX.</h2>
+
+
+<p class="indfirst">Addison, Joseph, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>-<a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Addison, Address to Mr.</i>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Admiral Hosier's Ghost</i>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Agamemnon</i>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Akenside, Mark, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Alciphron</i>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Alfred, Masque of</i>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Alma</i>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Ambitious Step-mother, the</i>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Amyntor and Theodora</i>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Analogy of Religion</i>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Appius and Virginia</i>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Arbuthnot, John, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>-<a href="#Page_179">179</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Arbuthnot, Epistle to Dr.</i>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Armstrong, John, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Art of Political Lying, the</i>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Art of Preserving Health, the</i>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Atheniad, the</i>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Atterbury, Bishop, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>-<a href="#Page_212">212</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Atticus, character of, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Augustan Age, origin of the term, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Baucis and Philemon</i>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Bangor, three Letters to the Bishop of</i>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Bangorian Controversy, the, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Bathos, treatise on the</i>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Bathurst, Lord, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Battle of Blenheim, the</i>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Battle of the Books, the</i>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Beggar's Opera, the</i>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Bentley, Richard, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Bentley's Dissertations, Examination of</i>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Berkeley, Bishop, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>-<a href="#Page_229">229</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Bickerstaff, Isaac, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub"><i>Lucubrations of</i>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Binning, Lord, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Black-eyed Susan</i>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Blackmore, Sir Richard, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Blair, Robert, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Blenheim</i>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Blount, Martha and Teresa, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Boadicea</i>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Boehme, Jacob, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Boileau and Pope compared, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub">his <i>Art Poétique</i>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Bolingbroke, Lord, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>-<a href="#Page_221">221</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Boyle, Charles, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Braes of Yarrow, the</i>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Bribery, prevalence of, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Britannia</i> (Thomson's), <a href="#Page_87">87</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub">(Mallet's), <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Brooke, Henry, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>Broome, William, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Brothers, the</i>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Buckingham, Duke of, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Busiris</i>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Butler, Bishop, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Byrom, John, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Cadenus and Vanessa</i>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Campaign, the</i>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Captain Singleton</i>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Careless Husband, the</i>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Caroline, Queen, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Castle of Indolence, the</i>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Cato</i>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <i>et seq.</i></p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Chandos, Duke of, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Characteristics of Men, Manners, etc.</i>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Charke, Mrs., <i>Narrative of her Life</i>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Chase, the</i>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Chesterfield, Lord, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>-<a href="#Page_204">204</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Chit-Chat</i>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Christian Hero, the</i>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Christianity, argument against abolishing</i>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Christian Perfection</i>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Christian Religion, Grounds of the</i>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Cibber, Colley, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>-<a href="#Page_198">198</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub"><i>Apology for the Life of</i>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Cider</i>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Clarke, Dr. Samuel, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Colin and Lucy</i>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Colin and Ph&oelig;be</i>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Collier, Jeremy, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Collins, Anthony, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Colonel Jack</i>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Conscious Lovers, the</i>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Contentment, Hymn to</i>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Conversion of St. Paul, Dissertation on the</i>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Coriolanus</i>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Country Mouse and City Mouse, the</i>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Country Walk, the</i>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Craggs, James, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Crawford, Robert, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Creation, the</i>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Crisis, the</i>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Criticism, the Essay on</i>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Criticism in Poetry, grounds of</i>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Crousaz, M., <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Cruelty of the age, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Curll, Edmund, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst">Defoe, Daniel, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>-<a href="#Page_191">191</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Delany, Mrs., <i>Life and Correspondence of</i>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Dennis, John, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>-<a href="#Page_196">196</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Dialogues of the Dead</i>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Dispensary, the</i>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Distrest Mother, the</i>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Divine Legation of Moses, the</i>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Dorset, Earl of, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Drapier's Letters</i>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Drelincourt's <i>Christian's Defence, etc.</i>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Dryden, John, death of, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub">and Pope, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Dryden, Ode to</i>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Drummer, the</i>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Drunkenness, prevalence of, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Duelling, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Dunciad, the</i>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Dyer, John, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Edward and Eleanora</i>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Edwards, Thomas, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Edwin and Emma</i>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span><i>Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady</i>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Eloisa to Abelard</i>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Elvira</i>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>English Convocation, Rights, Powers and Privileges of</i>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Englishman, the</i>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>English Poets, Account of the greatest</i>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Epistle to a Friend in Town</i>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Epistles of Phalaris, Dissertations on the</i>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Essay on Man, the</i>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Eurydice</i>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Eusden, Lawrence, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Evergreen, the</i>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Examiner, the</i>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Excursion, the</i>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Fable of the Bees, the</i>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub"><i>Remarks on the</i>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Fables</i> (Gay's), <a href="#Page_73">73</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Fair Penitent, the</i>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Fatal Curiosity, the</i>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Fenton, Elijah, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Fleece, the</i>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Fool of Quality, the</i>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Force of Religion, the</i>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Freedom of Wit and Humour, the</i>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Freeholder, the</i>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Freethinking, Discourse on</i>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">French Literature, influence of, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">French Customs, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Funeral, the</i>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst">Gambling, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Garth, Sir Samuel, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Gay, John, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>-<a href="#Page_76">76</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Gentle Shepherd, the</i>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>George Barnwell</i>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Gideon</i>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Glover, Richard, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>God, the Being and Attributes of</i>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Granville, George, Lord Lansdowne, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Grave, the</i>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Green, Matthew, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Grongar Hill</i>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Grotto, the</i>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Grub Street Journal, the</i>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Grumbling Hive, the</i>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Guardian, the</i>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Gulliver's Travels</i>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Gustavus Vasa</i>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst">Halifax, Montague, Earl of, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Hamilton, William, of Bangour, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Hammond, James, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Health, an Eclogue</i>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Henry and Emma</i>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Hermit, the</i>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Hervey, Lord, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Hill, Aaron, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>-<a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Hoadly, Bishop, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Homer, Pope's Translation of, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</p>
+<p class="indsub">Tickell's translation, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Hooke, Nathaniel, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Horace, <i>Ars Poetica</i>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Horace, Imitations from</i>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Hughes, John, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Human Knowledge, Treatise on</i>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Hylas and Philonous, Dialogue between</i>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Hymn to Contentment</i>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span><i>Hymn to the Naiads</i>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Imperium Pelagi</i>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Instalment, the</i>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Iphigenia</i>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Italy, Letter from</i>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Italy, Remarks on Several Parts of</i>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Jane Shore</i>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>John Bull, History of</i>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Johnson, Esther, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Judgment Day, the</i>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Judgment of Hercules, the</i>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Kensington Gardens</i>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">King, <i>on the Origin of Evil</i>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Lady Jane Grey</i>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Lansdowne, Epistle to Lord</i>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Last Day, the</i>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Law, William, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>-<a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Law, Elegy in Memory of William</i>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Leibnitz, <i>Essais de Théodicée</i>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Leonidas</i>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Liberty Asserted</i>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Lillo, George, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Love in a Veil</i>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Lover, the</i>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Love's Last Shift</i>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Lying Lover, the</i>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Lyttelton, George, Lord, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst">Mallet, David, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Man, Allegory on</i>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Mandeville, Bernard de, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Mariamne</i>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Marlborough, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Marlborough, Duchess of, Account of the Conduct of</i>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Marriages in the Fleet, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Mathematical Learning, Essay on the Usefulness of</i>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Memoirs of a Cavalier</i>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Merope</i>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Middleton, Conyers, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Modest Proposal, etc.</i>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Mohocks, the, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Moll Flanders</i>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Montagu, Lady M. W., <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>-<a href="#Page_202">202</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Montague, Charles, Earl of Halifax, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Monument, the</i>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Moral Essays, the</i>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <i>et seq.</i></p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Moralties or Essays, Letters, etc.</i>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Mrs. Veal, Apparition of</i>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Namur, Taking of</i>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Night Piece on Death</i>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Night Thoughts</i>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Northern Star, the</i>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Ocean</i>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Ode on St. Cecilia's day</i>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Opera, Italian, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Oxford, Harley, Earl of, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Parallel in the Manner of Plutarch</i>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Parnell, Thomas, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Parties, Dissertation on</i>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Partridge, John, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Party feeling, excess of, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Pastoral Ballad</i>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Pastorals</i> (Pope's), <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub">(Philips'), <a href="#Page_98">98</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Patriotism, Letters on</i>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Patriot King, the</i>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Patronage of Literature, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span><i>Peace of Ryswick, the</i>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Persian Tales, the</i>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Peterborough, Earl of, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Phalaris, Dissertation on the Epistle of</i>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Philips, Ambrose, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Philips, John, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Plague, History of the</i>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Pleasures of Imagination, the</i>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Plot and No Plot, a</i>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Poetry, Rhapsody on</i>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Polly</i>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Polymetis</i>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Pope, Alexander, a representative poet, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub">his life, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>-<a href="#Page_64">64</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub">and Dennis, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub">and Cibber, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub">and Lady M. W. Montagu, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub">and Spence, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub">and Arbuthnot, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Pope, Epistle to</i>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Pope's Translation of Homer</i>, Spence's Essay on, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Pope, Mrs., <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Prior, Matthew, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>-<a href="#Page_72">72</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Progress of Wit, the</i>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Projects, Essay on</i>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Prospect of Peace, the</i>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Public Spirit of the Whigs, the</i>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Querist, the</i>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst">Ramsay, Allan, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Rape of the Lock, the</i>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Reader, the</i>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Religion, Condition of, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Religion, Natural and Revealed</i>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Religious Courtship, the</i>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Remarks on Several Parts of Italy</i>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Revenge, the</i>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Review, the</i> (Defoe's), <a href="#Page_185">185</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Rise of Women, the</i>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Robinson Crusoe</i>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Rosamond</i>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Roscommon's <i>Essay on Translated Verse</i>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Rowe, Nicholas, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Roxana</i>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Royal Convert, the</i>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Ruin of Great Britain, Essay towards Preventing the</i>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Ruins of Rome, the</i>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Rule Britannia</i>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst">Savage, Richard, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Schoolmistress, the</i>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Scriblerus, Martin, Memoirs of</i>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, the</i>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Seasons, the</i>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>-<a href="#Page_92">92</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Sentiments of a Church of England Man</i>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Serious Call</i>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Shaftesbury, Lord, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>-<a href="#Page_215">215</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Shakespeare, Pope and Theobald's Editions of, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub">Rowe's Edition, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub">Warburton's Edition, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Sheffield, John, Earl of, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Shenstone, William, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Shepherd's Week, the</i>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Shortest Way with Dissenters, the</i>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Siege of Damascus, the</i>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Siris</i>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Sir Thomas Overbury</i>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Social Condition of the time, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span><i>Social State of Ireland, Essay on the</i>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Solomon</i>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Somerville, William, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Sophonisba</i>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">South Sea Company, the, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Spectator, the</i>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Spence, Joseph, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Spleen, the</i>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Splendid Shilling, the</i>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Stage defended from Scripture, etc., the</i>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Stage Entertainments, Absolute Unlawfulness of</i>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Steele, Sir Richard, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>-<a href="#Page_150">150</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Stella, Journal to</i>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Study of History, Letters on the</i>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Swift, Jonathan, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>-<a href="#Page_175">175</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Swift, on the Death of Dr.</i>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Tale of a Tub, the</i>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Tales of the Genii</i>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Tamerlane</i>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Tancred and Sigismunda</i>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Tatler, the</i>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Tea Table, the</i>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Tea Table Miscellany, the</i>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Temple, Sir William, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Temple of Fame, the</i>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Tender Husband, the</i>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Theatre, the</i>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Theobald, Lewis, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Theory of Vision, Essay towards a new</i>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Thomson, James, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>-<a href="#Page_95">95</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Tickell, Thomas, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>-<a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Tour through Great Britain</i>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Town Talk</i>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Trivia</i>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>True Born Englishman, the</i>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Trumbull, Sir William, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Ulysses</i>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Ungrateful Nanny</i>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Universal Passion</i>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst">Vanhomrigh, Hester, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Verbal Criticism</i>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Vida's <i>Scacchia Ludus</i>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Vision of Mirza, the</i>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Voltaire</i>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst">Walpole, Sir Robert, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Walsh, William, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Wanderer, the</i>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Warburton, Bishop, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>-<a href="#Page_241">241</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Wardlaw, Lady, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Warton, Joseph, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Watts, Isaac, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Welcome from Greece, a</i>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Welsted, Leonard, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Wesley, Charles, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Wesley, John, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Whig Examiner, the</i>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>William and Margaret</i>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Winchelsea, Countess of, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Windham, Sir W., Letter to</i>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Windsor Forest</i>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Women, position of, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Wood's Halfpence, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>World, the</i>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Wycherley, William, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst">Yalden, Thomas, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Young, Edward, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>-<a href="#Page_83">83</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Zara</i>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2 class="gap3">HANDBOOKS OF
+ENGLISH LITERATURE</h2>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Edited by Professor Hales</span></h4>
+
+<p>"The admirable series of handbooks edited by Professor Hales is rapidly
+taking shape as one of the best histories of our literature that are at the disposal
+of the student.... [When complete] there is little doubt that we shall
+have a history of English literature which, holding a middle course between
+the rapid general survey and the minute examination of particular periods,
+will long remain a standard work."&mdash;<i>Manchester Guardian.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Crown 8vo, 5s. net each.</i></p>
+
+<div class="hangindent"><p>THE AGE OF ALFRED (664-1154). By <span class="smcap">F. J. Snell</span>, M.A.</p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF CHAUCER (1346-1400). By <span class="smcap">F. J. Snell</span>, M.A., with
+an Introduction by <span class="smcap">Professor Hales</span>. 3rd edition.</p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF TRANSITION (1400-1580). By <span class="smcap">F. J. Snell</span>, M.A. In
+2 vols. Vol. I.: The Poets. Vol. II.: The Dramatists and Prose
+Writers. With an Introduction by <span class="smcap">Professor Hales</span>. 3rd edition.</p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE (1579-1631). By <span class="smcap">Thomas Seccombe</span>
+and <span class="smcap">J. W. Allen</span>. In 2 vols. Vol. I.: Poetry and Prose, with an
+Introduction by <span class="smcap">Professor Hales</span>. Vol. II: Drama. 7th edition.</p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF MILTON (1632-1660). By the <span class="smcap">Rev. J. H. B. Masterman</span>,
+M.A., with an Introduction, etc., by <span class="smcap">J. Bass Mullinger</span>,
+M.A. 8th edition.</p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF DRYDEN (1660-1700). By <span class="smcap">Richard Garnett</span>, C.B.,
+LL.D. 8th edition.</p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF POPE (1700-1744). By <span class="smcap">John Dennis</span>. 11th edition.</p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF JOHNSON (1744-1798). By <span class="smcap">Thomas Seccombe</span>.
+7th edition.</p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH (1798-1832). By <span class="smcap">Professor C. H.
+Herford</span>, Litt.D. 12th edition.</p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF TENNYSON (1830-1870). By <span class="smcap">Professor Hugh
+Walker</span>, M.A. 9th edition.</p></div>
+
+
+<h3>OPINIONS OF THE PRESS</h3>
+
+
+<h4>THE AGE OF CHAUCER</h4>
+
+<p>"This little monograph may lay fair claim to be regarded as complete, acute,
+stimulating, and scholarly."&mdash;<i>School World.</i></p>
+
+<p>"The book is thoroughly up-to-date, an important consideration in dealing
+with Middle English literature, and does not lose itself in too minute a consideration
+of those works which are only of philological and not of literary
+value. The accounts of the W. Midland alliterative poetry, of the development
+of prose, and the work of the poet Gower, are specially good. The treatment
+of Chaucer is thorough and scholarly."&mdash;<i>University Correspondent.</i></p>
+
+<p>"An admirable handbook, dealing in a lucid style and in a highly critical
+spirit with one of the most important periods in the history of English literature."&mdash;<i>Westminster
+Review.</i></p>
+
+
+<h4>THE AGE OF DRYDEN</h4>
+
+<p>"This scholarly little volume from the learned pen of Dr. Garnett....
+Within the limits of his space Dr. Garnett surveys the several departments
+of literature in this period with singular comprehensiveness, broad sympathy,
+and fine critical sagacity."&mdash;<i>Times.</i></p>
+
+<p>"The series which Professor Hales is editing aims at being that very difficult
+and important something between the text-book for schools and the
+gracefully allusive literary essay. Dr. Garnett has done his part of the work
+admirably. Most readable is his book, written with a fine sense of proportion,
+and containing many independent judgements, yet even, so far as minor
+names and dates and facts are concerned, complete enough for all save a
+searcher after minutiae."&mdash;<i>Bookman.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Though planned on the scale of the manual, this book is actually the first
+attempt worth naming to grasp in one separate review the literature of the last
+forty years of the seventeenth century, a time which, as Dr. Garnett well says,
+'with all its defects, had a faculty for producing masterpieces.' Dr. Garnett's
+name is a warrant for his acquaintance not only with the masterpieces but with
+much besides, and with more than all that need be named in the kind of survey
+he undertakes."&mdash;<i>Manchester Guardian.</i></p>
+
+
+<h4>THE AGE OF POPE</h4>
+
+<p>"A 'handbook' is scarcely a fair description of so readable and companionable
+a volume, which aims not only at giving accurate information, but at
+directing the reader's steps 'through a country exhaustless in variety and
+interest.'"&mdash;<i>Spectator.</i></p>
+
+<p>"The biographical portion of Mr. Dennis's book is really admirable. The
+accuracy of the details and the knowledge exhibited by the author of the
+social and political life of the period show how thoroughly he has mastered
+his subject."&mdash;<i>Westminster Review.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Dennis writes freely and simply, and with a thorough knowledge of
+the period with which he deals, and goes straight to the point without revelling
+in circumambient fancies. The result of this is that in 250 pages of good print
+we have as concise a history of Queen Anne literature as we could wish."&mdash;<i>Cambridge
+Review.</i></p>
+
+<p>"An excellent little volume."&mdash;<i>Athenæum.</i></p>
+
+
+<h4>THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE</h4>
+
+<p>"Both volumes are excellently done, with knowledge, judgement, and a
+pleasant touch of vivacity. It is no easy matter to make a text-book both informing
+and readable; but here the feat is accomplished. I have read 'The
+Age of Shakespeare' with unflagging interest and pleasure.... Everywhere
+one has the restful sensation of dealing with men of competent scholarship and
+sound critical instinct. Especially valuable, to my thinking, is the chronological
+table of the chief publications of each year from 1579 to 1630."&mdash;Mr. William
+Archer in the <i>Morning Leader</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"These two volumes are, in short, a notable accession to the useful series to
+which they belong, and they constitute a luminous aid to the interpretation
+alike of the scope and quality of the literary activity which has rendered the
+'Age of Shakespeare' classic in the annals of English literature."&mdash;<i>Standard.</i></p>
+
+<p>"The book is a well-informed and well-connected and intelligent exposition
+of its subject. It is more than a mere handbook. It is a <i>history</i>, though on a
+small scale."&mdash;<i>Journal of Education.</i></p>
+
+
+<h4>THE AGE OF MILTON</h4>
+
+<p>"A very readable and serviceable manual of English literature during the
+central years of the seventeenth century."&mdash;<i>Glasgow Herald.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Masterman has written a book which combines the preciseness of a
+text-book with the fullness of thought of a monograph. Indeed, this compact
+little work will be studied with as much earnestness by the student as it will be
+read with pleasure by the lover of <i>belles lettres</i>.... We lay down the book
+delighted with what we have read."&mdash;<i>Birmingham Daily Gazette.</i></p>
+
+<p>"A work which reflects the utmost credit on its author ... luminous and
+at the same time impartial."&mdash;<i>Westminster Review.</i></p>
+
+<p>"This excellent epitome ... very happily indicates the golden afterglow
+of the Elizabethan sun."&mdash;<i>Daily Chronicle.</i></p>
+
+
+<h4>THE AGE OF JOHNSON</h4>
+
+<p>"The uniform excellence of Mr. Seccombe's manual of English literary
+history from 1748 to 1798 affords scarcely any opening for detailed criticism.
+Little can be said, except that everything is just as it ought to be: the arrangement
+perfect, the length of the notices justly proportioned, the literary
+judgements sound and illuminating; while the main purpose of conveying information
+is kept so steadily in view that, while the book is worthy of a place
+in the library, the student could desire no better guide for an examination."&mdash;<i>Bookman.</i></p>
+
+<p>"He has knowledge, he is eminently careful, and, best of all in a handbook-maker
+of this kind, he is judicial. We like Mr. Seccombe's arrangement.
+There is a capital introduction, solid and grave rather than brilliant, on which
+the student may stand in confidence before he dives off into the stream of his
+tutor's survey. Briefly, we have here a thorough, almost encyclopaedic, review
+of a great literary period&mdash;stimulating to the younger student, and to his elder
+refreshing by its perception."&mdash;<i>Outlook.</i></p>
+
+<p>"This book is one of the best of its kind, and we heartily recommend it to
+our readers."&mdash;<i>Journal of Education.</i></p>
+
+<p>"The young student could not read a better book to get a comprehensive
+and yet detailed account of the literary history of the latter half of the
+eighteenth century."&mdash;<i>Morning Post.</i></p>
+
+
+<h4>THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH</h4>
+
+<p>"It is an admirable little work all the way through and one which the ripest
+students of the period may read with interest and profit."&mdash;<i>Guardian.</i></p>
+
+<p>"The desiderated text-book of the period 1798 to 1830 <span class="small">A.D.</span> is no longer to
+seek. More than that, it has been written by the one Englishman most competent
+to deal with it. Whatever Professor Herford does he does well; but he
+has given us nothing at once so good and so helpful as this book."&mdash;<i>University
+Correspondent.</i></p>
+
+<p>"The introductory essay on Romanticism in our literature is an admirable
+piece of work, full of suggestive thought, but Professor Herford is at his best&mdash;and
+a very fine best it is&mdash;in his brief summaries of the lives and works of
+individual writers. His Cobbett, his Lamb, and others that might be instanced,
+are veritable gems of biographical and critical compression presented
+with true literary finish."&mdash;<i>Literary World.</i></p>
+
+<p>"A book which is remarkable for freshness and distinction of style, philosophic
+grasp of first principles, and critical insight.... When we add that
+the book is also conspicuous for delicacy of literary appreciation and ripe
+judgement, both of men and movements, we have said enough to show that
+we consider its claims are unusual."&mdash;<i>Speaker.</i></p>
+
+
+<h4>THE AGE OF TENNYSON</h4>
+
+<p>"A capital little handbook of modern English literature."&mdash;<i>Times.</i></p>
+
+<p>"An instructive and readable manual ... an admirable first text-book on
+the subject."&mdash;<i>Scotsman.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Professor Walker has done his allotted task with singular skill, wonderful
+judiciousness, critical insight, adequate knowledge and mastery of facts, keen
+discernment of qualities and effectiveness of grouping.... We have read no
+review of the whole of the Tennysonian age so genuinely fresh in matter,
+method, style, critical canons, and selectedness of phrase. As a small book
+on a great subject, it is a special treasure."&mdash;<i>Educational News.</i></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Uniform with the Handbooks of English
+Literature.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Fourth Edition Enlarged. 725 pages. Small Crown 8vo. 6s. net.</i></p>
+
+<h2>INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH
+LITERATURE</h2>
+
+<h4>BY</h4>
+
+<h3>HENRY S. PANCOAST</h3>
+
+<p>"Seems to me to fulfil better, on the whole, than any other 'Introduction'
+known to me, the real requirements of such a book as distinguished from a
+'Sketch' or a 'Summary.' It rightly does not attempt to be cyclopaedic, but
+isolates a number of figures of first-rate importance, and deals with these in a
+very attractive way. The directions for reading are also excellent."&mdash;Professor
+<span class="smcap">C. H. Herford</span>, Litt.D.</p>
+
+<p class="center">LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.</p>
+<p class="smcap center">York House, Portugal Street, W.C.</p>
+
+
+<h2 class="gap3">LITERATURE OF THE AGE OF POPE.</h2>
+
+<h4>PUBLISHED BY</h4>
+
+<h3>G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.</h3>
+
+<p class="hangindent" style="margin-bottom:0em;"><b>ADDISON'S</b> WORKS. With the Notes of Bishop Hurd, a
+short Memoir, and a Portrait of Addison after G. Kneller, and
+8 Plates of Medals and Coins. Edited by H. G. Bohn. 6 vols.
+Small post 8vo. 3<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> each.</p>
+
+<p class="ralign" style="margin-top:0em;">[<i>Bohn's Standard Library.</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot" style="margin-right:0em;"><p>This is the most complete edition of Addison's Works ever
+issued. It contains much new matter, and upwards of 100
+Letters not before published. A very full Index (108 pages)
+is appended to the 6th vol.</p></div>
+
+<table summary="Addisons Works">
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;width:3em;">Vol. I.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;" colspan="2">&mdash;Plays&mdash;Poems&mdash;Poemata&mdash;Dialogues on Medals&mdash;Remarks on Italy.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">II.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;" colspan="2">&mdash;Tatler and Spectator.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">III.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;Spectator.</td>
+<td class="ralign">[<i>Out of print.</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">IV.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;" colspan="2">&mdash;Spectator&mdash;Guardian&mdash;Lover&mdash;State of the War&mdash;Trial of Count Tariff&mdash;Whig Examiner&mdash;Freeholder.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">V.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;" colspan="2">&mdash;Freeholder&mdash;Christian Religion&mdash;Drummer, or Haunted House&mdash;Various short Pieces hitherto unpublished&mdash;Letters.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">VI.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;" colspan="2">&mdash;Letters&mdash;Poems&mdash;Translations&mdash;Official Documents&mdash;Addisoniana.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class="hangindent"><p>THE MISCELLANEOUS WORKS OF ADDISON. Edited by
+the late A. Guthkelch, M.A. 2 vols. Vol. I, Poems and Plays.
+Vol. II, Prose. Large Post 8vo, 10<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> net each.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-bottom:0em;"><b>BERKELEY'S</b> WORKS. Edited by George Sampson. With
+a Biographical Introduction by the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour,
+M.P. 3 vols. Small post 8vo. 6<i>s.</i> each.</p>
+
+<p class="ralign" style="margin-top:0em;">[<i>Bohn's Philosophical Library.</i></p>
+
+<p style="margin-bottom:0em;"><b>BUTLER'S</b> ANALOGY OF RELIGION, Natural and
+Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature; together
+with Two Dissertations on Personal Identity and on the
+Nature of Virtue, and Fifteen Sermons. Edited, with
+Analytical Introductions, Explanatory Notes, a short Memoir,
+and a Portrait. Small post 8vo. 6<i>s.</i></p>
+
+<p class="ralign" style="margin-top:0em;">[<i>Bohn's Standard Library.</i></p>
+
+<p style="margin-bottom:0em;"><b>DEFOE'S</b> NOVELS and MISCELLANEOUS WORKS. With
+Prefaces and Notes, including those attributed to Sir W. Scott.
+7 vols. Small post 8vo. 6<i>s.</i> each.</p>
+
+<p class="ralign" style="margin-top:0em;">[<i>Bohn's Standard Library.</i></p></div>
+
+<table summary="Defoes Works">
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;width:3em;">Vol. I.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;Life, Adventures and Piracies of Capt. Singleton, and Life of Colonel Jack. With Portrait of Defoe.</td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom" style="width:6em;">[<i>Out of print.</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">II.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;" colspan="2">&mdash;Memoirs of a Cavalier, Memoirs of Captain Carleton, Dickory Cronke, &amp;c.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">III.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;Life of Moll Flanders, and the History of the Devil.</td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom">[<i>Out of print.</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">IV.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;Roxana, or the Fortunate Mistress; and Life of Mrs. Christian Davies.</td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom">[<i>Out of print.</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">V.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;History of the Great Plague of London, 1665 (to which is added the Fire of London, 1666, by an anonymous writer)&mdash;The Storm (1703)&mdash;and the True-born Englishman.</td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom">[<i>Out of print.</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">VI.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;" colspan="2">&mdash;Life and Adventures of Duncan Campbell&mdash;New Voyage round the World, and Tracts relating to the Hanoverian Accession.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">VII.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;" colspan="2">&mdash;Robinson Crusoe. With a Short Biographical Account of Defoe.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class="hangindent"><p style="margin-bottom:0em;"><b>MONTAGU</b>, THE LETTERS AND WORKS OF LADY
+MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. Edited by her great-grandson,
+Lord Wharncliffe, with Additions and Corrections
+derived from Original Manuscripts, Illustrative Notes, and a
+Memoir by W. Moy Thomas. New edition, revised, with 5
+Portraits. 2 vols. Small post 8vo. 6<i>s.</i> each.</p>
+
+<p class="ralign" style="margin-top:0em;margin-bottom:0em;">[<i>Vol. I out of print.</i></p>
+
+<p class="ralign" style="margin-top:0em;">[<i>Bohn's Standard Library.</i></p>
+
+<p style="margin-bottom:0em;"><b>PARNELL'S</b> POETICAL WORKS. Edited, with Memoir,
+by G. A. Aitken. Fcap. 8vo. 3<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> net.</p>
+
+<p class="ralign" style="margin-top:0em;">[<i>Aldine Edition.</i></p>
+
+<p style="margin-bottom:0em;"><b>POPE'S</b> POETICAL WORKS. Edited by G. R. Dennis, with
+Memoir by John Dennis. 3 vols. Fcap. 8vo. 3<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> net each.</p>
+
+<p class="ralign" style="margin-top:0em;">[<i>Aldine Edition.</i></p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; HOMER'S ILIAD. With Introduction and Notes by the
+Rev. J. S. Watson, M.A. Illustrated by the entire Series of
+Flaxman's Designs. Small post 8vo. 6<i>s.</i></p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; HOMER'S ODYSSEY. With Introduction and Notes by
+the Rev. J. S. Watson, M.A. With the entire Series of Flaxman's
+Designs. Small post 8vo. 6<i>s.</i></p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; LIFE OF POPE, including many of his Letters. By Robert
+Carruthers. With numerous Illustrations. Small post 8vo.
+6<i>s.</i></p>
+
+<p style="margin-bottom:0em;"><b>PRIOR'S</b> POETICAL WORKS. Edited, with Memoir, by
+Reginald Brimley Johnson. 2 vols. Fcap. 8vo. 3<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> net
+each.</p>
+
+<p class="ralign" style="margin-top:0em;">[<i>Aldine Edition.</i></p>
+
+<p style="margin-bottom:0em;"><b>SWIFT'S</b> PROSE WORKS. Edited by Temple Scott. With
+a Biographical Introduction by the Right Hon. W. E. H.
+Lecky, M.P., and a Bibliography by the Editor. With Portraits
+and other Illustrations. 12 vols. Small post 8vo. 6<i>s.</i>
+each.</p>
+
+<p class="ralign" style="margin-top:0em;">[<i>Bohn's Standard Library.</i></p></div>
+
+<table summary="Swifts Works">
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;width:5em;">Vol. I.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;Edited by Temple Scott. With a Biographical Introduction by the Right Hon. W. E. H. Lecky, M.P. Containing:&mdash;A Tale of a Tub, The Battle of the Books, and other early works. With <i>Portrait</i> and Facsimiles.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">II.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;The Journal to Stella. Edited by Frederick Ryland, M.A. With <i>2 Portraits of Stella</i>, and a Facsimile of one of the Letters.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">III. &amp; IV.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;Writings on Religion and the Church. Edited by Temple Scott. With Portraits and Facsimiles of title-pages.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">V.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;Historical and Political Tracts (English). Edited by Temple Scott. With Portrait and Facsimiles of title-pages.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">VI.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;The Drapier's Letters. Edited by Temple Scott. With Portrait, reproduction of Wood's Coinage, and Facsimiles of title-pages.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">VII.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;Historical and Political Tracts (Irish). Edited by Temple Scott. With Portrait and Facsimiles of title-pages.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">VIII.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;Gulliver's Travels. Edited by G. Ravenscroft Dennis. With the original Portrait and Maps.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">IX.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;Contributions to the 'Examiner,' 'Tatler,' 'Spectator,' etc. Edited by Temple Scott.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">X.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;Historical Writings. Edited by Temple Scott. With Portrait.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">XI.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;Literary Essays. Edited by Temple Scott. With Portrait.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">XII.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;Index and Bibliography.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class="hangindent"><p>POEMS. Edited by W. Ernst Browning. 2 vols. 6<i>s.</i></p>
+
+<p style="margin-bottom:0em;"><b>SWIFT'S</b> POETICAL WORKS. Edited, with Memoir, by the
+Rev. John Mitford, M.A. Fcap. 8vo. 3 vols. 3<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> net
+each.</p>
+
+<p class="ralign" style="margin-top:0em;">[<i>Aldine Edition. Vol. I out of print.</i></p></div>
+
+<p class="center gap3">LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.</p>
+<p class="center">YORK HOUSE, PORTUGAL STREET, KINGSWAY, W.C.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center gap3">PRINTED BY</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS, LIMITED</p>
+
+<p class="center">LONDON AND NORWICH</p>
+
+<div class="bbox">
+<h3>TRANSCRIBERS' NOTES</h3>
+
+<p style="padding-left:1em;padding-right:1em;">General: Corrections to punctuation have not been individually noted.</p>
+
+<p style="padding-left:1em;padding-right:1em;">Pages 57, 159: Variable hyphenation of death(-)bed as in the original.</p>
+
+<p style="padding-left:1em;padding-right:1em;">Pages 222, 232, 257: Variable hyphenation of Free(-)thinking as in the
+original.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30421 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Age of Pope, by John Dennis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Age of Pope
+       (1700-1744)
+
+Author: John Dennis
+
+Release Date: November 7, 2009 [EBook #30421]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AGE OF POPE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Brownfox and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HANDBOOKS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
+
+EDITED BY PROFESSOR HALES.
+
+_Crown 8vo, 5s. net each._
+
+
+THE AGE OF ALFRED (664-1154). By F. J. SNELL, M.A.
+
+THE AGE OF CHAUCER (1346-1400). By F. J. SNELL, M.A. With an
+    Introduction by Professor HALES. _3rd Edition, revised._
+
+THE AGE OF TRANSITION (1400-1580). By F. J. SNELL, M.A. 2 vols. Vol. I.
+    The Poets. Vol. II. The Dramatists and Prose Writers. With an
+    Introduction by Professor HALES. _3rd Edition._
+
+THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE (1579-1631). By THOMAS SECCOMBE and J. W. ALLEN.
+    With an Introduction by Professor HALES. 2 vols. Vol. I. Poetry and
+    Prose. Vol. II. The Drama. _8th Edition, revised._
+
+THE AGE OF MILTON (1632-1660). By the Rev. J. H. B. MASTERMAN, M.A. With
+    Introduction, etc., by J. BASS MULLINGER, M.A. _8th Edition,
+    revised._
+
+THE AGE OF DRYDEN (1660-1700). By R. GARNETT, C.B., LL.D. _8th Edition._
+
+THE AGE OF POPE (1700-1748). By JOHN DENNIS. _11th Edition._
+
+THE AGE OF JOHNSON (1748-1798). By THOMAS SECCOMBE. _7th Edition,
+    revised._
+
+THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH (1698-1832) By Professor C. H. HERFORD, Litt.D.
+    _12th Edition._
+
+THE AGE OF TENNYSON (1830-1870). By Professor HUGH WALKER. _9th
+    Edition._
+
+LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
+
+
+
+
+HANDBOOKS
+
+OF
+
+ENGLISH LITERATURE
+
+EDITED BY PROFESSOR HALES
+
+THE AGE OF POPE
+
+
+
+
+LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS LTD.
+
+PORTUGAL STREET, KINGSWAY, W.C.
+
+CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL & CO.
+
+NEW YORK: HARCOURT BRACE & CO.
+
+BOMBAY: A. H. WHEELER & CO.
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+AGE OF POPE
+
+(1700-1744)
+
+BY
+
+JOHN DENNIS
+
+AUTHOR OF "STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE" ETC.
+
+_ELEVENTH EDITION_
+
+[Illustration]
+
+LONDON
+G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
+1921
+
+
+
+
+First Published, 1894.
+
+Reprinted, 1896, 1899, 1901, 1906, 1908, 1909,
+           1913, 1917, 1918, 1921.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The _Age of Pope_ is designed to form one of a series of Handbooks,
+edited by Professor Hales, which it is hoped will be of service to
+students who love literature for its own sake, instead of regarding it
+merely as a branch of knowledge required by examiners. The period
+covered by this volume, which has had the great advantage of Professor
+Hales's personal care and revision, may be described roughly as lying
+between 1700, the year in which Dryden died, and 1744, the date of
+Pope's death.
+
+I believe that no work of the class will be of real value which gives
+what may be called literary statistics, and has nothing more to offer.
+Historical facts and figures have their uses, and are, indeed,
+indispensable; but it is possible to gain the most accurate knowledge of
+a literary period and to be totally unimpressed by the influences which
+a love of literature inspires. The first object of a guide is to give
+accurate information; his second and larger object is to direct the
+reader's steps through a country exhaustless in variety and interest. If
+once a passion be awakened for the study of our noble literature the
+student will learn to reject what is meretricious, and will turn
+instinctively to what is worthiest. In the pursuit he may leave his
+guide far behind him; but none the less will he be grateful to the
+pioneer who started him on his travels.
+
+If the _Age of Pope_ proves of help in this way the wishes of the writer
+will be satisfied. It has been my endeavour in all cases to acknowledge
+the debt I owe to the authors who have made this period their study; but
+it is possible that a familiar acquaintance with their writings may have
+led me occasionally to mistake the matter thus assimilated for original
+criticism. If, therefore--to quote the phrase of Pope's enemy and my
+namesake--I have sometimes borrowed another man's 'thunder,' the fault
+of having 'made a sinner of my memory' may prove the reader's gain, and
+will, I hope, be forgiven.
+
+J. D.
+
+HAMPSTEAD,
+_August, 1894_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+INTRODUCTION                                                          1
+
+
+                          PART I. THE POETS.
+
+CHAP.
+
+  I. ALEXANDER POPE                                                  27
+
+ II. MATTHEW PRIOR--JOHN GAY--EDWARD YOUNG--ROBERT BLAIR--JAMES
+     THOMSON                                                         65
+
+III. SIR SAMUEL GARTH--AMBROSE PHILIPS--JOHN PHILIPS--NICHOLAS
+     ROWE--AARON HILL--THOMAS PARNELL--THOMAS TICKELL--WILLIAM
+     SOMERVILLE--JOHN DYER--WILLIAM SHENSTONE--MARK AKENSIDE--DAVID
+     MALLET--SCOTTISH SONG-WRITERS                                   96
+
+
+                      PART II. THE PROSE WRITERS.
+
+ IV. JOSEPH ADDISON--SIR RICHARD STEELE                             125
+
+  V. JONATHAN SWIFT--JOHN ARBUTHNOT                                 151
+
+ VI. DANIEL DEFOE--JOHN DENNIS--COLLEY CIBBER--LADY MARY WORTLEY
+     MONTAGU--EARL OF CHESTERFIELD--LORD LYTTELTON--JOSEPH SPENCE   180
+
+VII. FRANCIS ATTERBURY--LORD SHAFTESBURY--BERNARD DE
+     MANDEVILLE--LORD BOLINGBROKE--GEORGE BERKELEY--WILLIAM
+     LAW--JOSEPH BUTLER--WILLIAM WARBURTON                          207
+
+INDEX OF MINOR POETS AND PROSE WRITERS                              242
+
+CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE                                                 249
+
+ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WRITERS                                        253
+
+INDEX                                                               255
+
+
+
+
+THE AGE OF POPE.
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+I.
+
+The death of John Dryden, on the first of May, 1700, closed a period of
+no small significance in the history of English literature. His faults
+were many, both as a man and as a poet, but he belongs to the race of
+the giants, and the impress of greatness is stamped upon his works. No
+student of Dryden can fail to mark the force and sweep of an intellect
+impatient of restraint. His 'long-resounding march' reminds us of a
+turbulent river that overflows its banks, and if order and perfection of
+art are sometimes wanting in his verse, there is never the lack of
+power. Unfortunately many of the best years of his life were devoted to
+a craft in which he was working against the grain. His dramas, with one
+or two noble exceptions, are comparative failures, and in them he too
+often
+
+    'Profaned the God-given strength, and marred the lofty line.'
+
+In two prominent respects his influence on his successors is of no
+slight significance. As a satirist Pope acknowledged the master he was
+unable to excel, and so did many of the eighteenth century versemen, who
+appear to have looked upon satire as the beginning and the end of
+poetry. Moreover Dryden may be regarded, without much exaggeration, as
+the father of modern prose. Nothing can be more lucid than his style,
+which is at once bright and strong, idiomatic and direct. He knows
+precisely what he has to say, and says it in the simplest words. It is
+the form and not the substance of Dryden's prose to which attention is
+drawn here. There is a splendour of imagery, a largeness of thought, and
+a grasp of language in the prose of Hooker, of Jeremy Taylor, and of
+Milton which is beyond the reach of Dryden, but he has the merit of
+using a simple form of English free from prolonged periods and classical
+constructions, and fitted therefore for common use. The wealthy baggage
+of the prose Elizabethans and their immediate successors was too
+cumbersome for ordinary travel; Dryden's riches are less massive, but
+they can be easily carried, and are always ready for service.
+
+In these respects he is the literary herald of a century which, in the
+earlier half at least, is remarkable in the use it makes of our mother
+tongue for the exercise of common sense. The Revolution of 1688 produced
+a change in English politics scarcely more remarkable than the change
+that took place a little later in English literature and is to be seen
+in the poets and wits who are known familiarly as the Queen Anne men. It
+will be obvious to the most superficial student that the gulf which
+separates the literary period, closing with the death of Milton in 1674,
+from the first half of the eighteenth century, is infinitely wider than
+that which divides us from the splendid band of poets and prose writers
+who made the first twenty years of the present century so famous. There
+is, for example, scarcely more than fifty years between the publication
+of Herrick's _Hesperides_ and of Addison's _Campaign_, between the _Holy
+Living_ of Taylor and the _Tatler_ of Steele, and less than fifty years
+between _Samson Agonistes_, which Bishop Atterbury asked Pope to polish,
+and the poems of Prior. Yet in that short space not only is the form of
+verse changed but also the spirit.
+
+Speaking broadly, and allowing for exceptions, the literary merits of
+the Queen Anne time are due to invention, fancy, and wit, to a genius
+for satire exhibited in verse and prose, to a regard for correctness of
+form and to the sensitive avoidance of extremes. The poets of the period
+are for the most part without enthusiasm, without passion, and without
+the 'fine madness' which, as Drayton says, should possess a poet's
+brain. Wit takes precedence of imagination, nature is concealed by
+artifice, and the delight afforded by these writers is not due to
+imaginative sensibility. Not even in the consummate genius of Pope is
+there aught of the magical charm which fascinates us in a Wordsworth and
+a Keats, in a Coleridge and a Shelley. The prose of the age, masterly
+though it be, stands also on a comparatively low level. There is much in
+it to attract, but little to inspire.
+
+The difference between the Elizabethan and Jacobean authors, and the
+authors of the Queen Anne period cannot be accounted for by any single
+cause. The student will observe that while the inspiration is less, the
+technical skill is greater. There are passages in Addison which no
+seventeenth century author could have written; there are couplets in
+Pope beyond the reach of Cowley, and that even Dryden could not rival.
+In these respects the eighteenth century was indebted to the growing
+influence of French literature, to which the taste of Charles II. had in
+some degree contributed. One notable expression of this taste may be
+seen in the tragedies in rhyme that were for a time in vogue, of which
+the plots were borrowed from French romances. These colossal fictions,
+stupendous in length and heroic in style, delighted the young English
+ladies of the seventeenth century, and were not out of favour in the
+eighteenth, for Pope gave a copy of the _Grand Cyrus_ to Martha Blount.
+
+The return, as in Addison's _Cato_, to the classical unities, so
+faithfully preserved in the French drama, was another indication of an
+influence from which our literature has never been wholly free. That
+importations so alien to the spirit of English poetry should tend to the
+degeneration of the national drama was inevitable. For a time, however,
+the study of French models, both in the drama and in other departments
+of literature, may have been productive of benefit. Frenchmen knew
+before we did, how to say what they wanted to say in a lucid style.
+Dryden, who was open to every kind of influence, bad as well as good,
+caught a little of their fine tact and consummate workmanship without
+lessening his own originality; so also did Pope, who, if he was
+considerably indebted to Boileau, infinitely excelled him. That, in M.
+Taine's judgment, would have been no great difficulty. 'In Boileau,' he
+writes, 'there are, as a rule, two kinds of verse, as was said by a man
+of wit (M. Guillaume Guizot); most of which seem to be those of a sharp
+school-boy in the third class; the rest those of a good school-boy in
+the upper division.' And Mr. Swinburne, who holds a similar opinion of
+the famous French critic's merit, observes, that while Pope is the
+finest, Boileau is 'the dullest craftsman of their age and school.'[1]
+
+With the author of the _Lutrin_ Addison, unlike Pope, was personally
+acquainted. Boileau praised his Latin verses, and although his range was
+limited, like that of all critics lacking imagination, Addison, then a
+comparatively youthful scholar, was no doubt flattered by his
+compliments and learnt some lessons in his school. Prior, who acquired a
+mastery of the language, was also sensitive to French influence, and
+shows how it affected him by irony and satire. It would be difficult to
+estimate with any measure of accuracy the effect of French literature on
+the Queen Anne authors. There is no question that they were considerably
+attracted by it, but its sway was, I think, never strong enough to
+produce mere imitative art. While the most illustrious of these men
+acknowledged some measure of fealty to our 'sweet enemy France,' they
+were not enslaved by her, and French literature was but one of several
+influences which affected the literary character of the age. If
+Englishmen owed a debt to France the obligation was reciprocal. Voltaire
+affords a prominent illustration of the power wielded by our literature.
+He imitated Addison, he imitated, or caught suggestions from Swift, he
+borrowed largely from Vanbrugh, and although, in his judgment of English
+authors, he made many critical blunders, they were due to a want of
+taste rather than to a want of knowledge.
+
+A striking contrast will be seen between the position of literary men in
+the reign of Queen Anne and under her Hanoverian successors. Literature
+was not thriving in the healthiest of ways in the earlier period, but
+from the commercial point of view it was singularly prosperous. Through
+its means men like Addison and Prior rose to some of the highest offices
+in the service of their country. Tickell became Under-Secretary of
+State. Steele held three or four official posts, and if he did not
+prosper like some men of less mark, had no one but himself to blame.
+Rowe, the author of the _Fair Penitent_, was for three years of Anne's
+reign Under-Secretary, and John Hughes, the friend of Addison, who is
+poet enough to have had his story told by Johnson, had 'a situation of
+great profit' as Secretary to the Commissions of the Peace. Prizes of
+greater or less value fell to some men whose abilities were not more
+than respectable, but under Walpole and the monarch whom he served
+literature was disregarded, and the Minister was content to make use of
+hireling writers for whatever dirty work he required; spending in this
+way, it is said, L50,000 in ten years.
+
+It was far better in the long run for men of letters to be free from the
+servility of patronage, but there was a wearisome time, as Johnson and
+Goldsmith knew to their cost, during which authors lost their freedom in
+another way, and became the slaves of the booksellers. It is pleasant to
+observe that the last noteworthy act of patronage in the century was one
+that did honour to the patron without lessening the dignity and
+independence of the recipient. Literature owes much to the noblest of
+political philosophers for discovering and fostering the genius of one
+of the most original of English poets, and every reader of Crabbe will
+do honour to the generous friendship of Edmund Burke.
+
+
+II.
+
+The lowest stage in our national history was reached in the Restoration
+period. The idealists, who had aimed at marks it was not given to man to
+reach, were superseded by men with no ideal, whether in politics or
+religion. The extreme rigidity in morals enjoined by State authority in
+Cromwell's days, when theological pedantry discovered sin in what had
+hitherto been regarded as innocent, led, among the unsaintly mass of
+the people, to a hypocrisy even more corrupting than open vice, and the
+advent of the most publicly dissolute of English kings opened the
+floodgates of iniquity. The unbridled vice of the time is displayed in
+the Restoration dramatists, in the Grammont memoirs, in the diary of
+Pepys, and also in that of the admirable John Evelyn, 'faithful among
+the faithless.' Charles II. was considered good-natured because his
+manners, unlike those of his father, were sociable, and unrestrained by
+Court etiquette. Londoners liked a monarch who fed ducks in St. James's
+Park before breakfast; but an easy temper did not prevent the king from
+sanctioning the most unjust and cruel laws, and it allowed him to sell
+Dunkirk and basely to accept a pension from France. The corruption of
+the age pervaded politics as well as society, and the self-sacrificing
+spirit which is the salt of a nation's life seemed for the time extinct
+among public men.
+
+When Dutch men-of-war appeared at the Nore the confusion was great, but
+there were few resources and few signs of energy in the men to whom the
+people looked for guidance. A man conversant with affairs expressed to
+Pepys his opinion that nothing could be done with 'a lazy Prince, no
+Council, no money, no reputation at home or abroad,' and Pepys also
+gives the damning statement which is in harmony with all we know of the
+king, that he 'took ten times more care and pains in making friends
+between my Lady Castlemaine and Mrs. Stewart, when they have fallen out,
+than ever he did to save his kingdom.'
+
+There was nothing in the brief reign of James, a reign for ever made
+infamous by the atrocious cruelty of Jeffreys, that calls for comment
+here, but the Revolution, despite the undoubted advantages it brought
+with it, among which must be mentioned the abolition of the censorship
+of the press, brought also an element of discord and of political
+degradation. The change was a good one for the country, but it caused a
+large number of influential men to renounce on oath opinions which they
+secretly held, and it led, as every reader of history knows, to an
+unparalleled amount of double-dealing on the part of statesmen, which
+began with the accession of William and Mary and did not end until the
+last hopes of the Jacobites were defeated in 1746. The loss of principle
+among statesmen, and the bitterness of faction, which seemed to increase
+in proportion as the patriotic spirit declined, had a baleful influence
+on the latter days of the seventeenth century and on the entire period
+covered by the age of Pope. The low tone of the age is to be seen in the
+almost universal corruption which prevailed, in the scandalous
+tergiversation of Bolingbroke, and in the contempt for political
+principle openly avowed by Walpole, who, as Mr. Lecky observes, 'was
+altogether incapable of appreciating as an element of political
+calculation the force which moral sentiments exercise upon mankind.'[2]
+
+The enthusiasm and strong passions of the first half of the seventeenth
+century, which had been crushed by the Restoration, were exchanged for a
+state of apathy that led to self-seeking in politics and to scepticism
+in religion. There was a strong profession of morality in words, but in
+conduct the most open immorality prevailed. Virtue was commended in the
+bulk of the churches, while Christianity, which gives a new life and aim
+to virtue, was practically ignored, and the principles of the Deists,
+whose opinions occupied much attention at the time, were scarcely more
+alien to the Christian revelation than the views often advocated in the
+national pulpits. The religion of Christ seems to have been regarded as
+little more than a useful kind of cement which held society together.
+The good sense advocated so constantly by Pope in poetry was also
+considered the principal requisite in the pulpit, and the careful
+avoidance of religious emotion in the earlier years of the century led
+to the fervid and too often ill-regulated enthusiasm that prevailed in
+the days of Whitefield and Wesley. At the same time there appears to
+have been no lack of religious controversy. 'The Church in danger' was a
+strong cry then, as it is still. The enormous excitement caused in 1709
+by Sacheverell's sermon in St. Paul's Cathedral advocating passive
+obedience, denouncing toleration, and aspersing the Revolution
+settlement, forms a striking chapter in the reign of Queen Anne.
+Extraordinary interest was also felt in the Bangorian controversy raised
+by Bishop Hoadly, who, in a sermon preached before the king (1717), took
+a latitudinarian view of episcopal authority, and objected to the entire
+system of the High Church party.
+
+Queen Caroline, whose keen intellect was allied to a coarseness which
+makes her a representative of the age, was considerably attracted by
+theological discussion. She obtained a bishopric for Berkeley,
+recommended Walpole to read Butler's _Analogy_, which was at one time
+her daily companion at the breakfast-table, and made the preferment of
+its author one of her last requests to the king. She liked well to
+reason with Dr. Samuel Clarke, 'of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and
+Fate,' and wished to make him Archbishop of Canterbury, but was told
+that he was not sufficiently orthodox. Theology was not disregarded
+under the first and second Georges; it was only religion that had fallen
+into disrepute. The law itself was calculated to excite contempt for the
+most solemn of religious services. 'I was early,' Swift writes to
+Stella, 'with the Secretary (Bolingbroke), but he was gone to his
+devotions and to receive the sacrament. Several rakes did the same. It
+was not for piety, but for employment, according to Act of Parliament.'
+
+A glance at some additional features in the social condition of the age
+will enable us to understand better the character of its literature.
+
+
+III.
+
+It is a platitude to say that authors are as much affected as other men
+by the atmosphere which they breathe. Now and then a consummate man of
+genius seems to stand so much above his age as for all high purposes of
+art to be untouched by it. Like Milton as a poet, though not as a prose
+writer, his 'soul is like a star and dwells apart;' but in general,
+imaginative writers, are intensely affected by the society from which
+they draw many of their intellectual resources. In the so-called
+'Augustan age'[3] this influence would have been felt more strongly than
+in ours, since the range of men of letters was generally restricted to
+what was called the Town. They wrote for the critics in the
+coffee-houses, for the noblemen from whom they expected patronage, and
+for the political party they were pledged to support.
+
+England during the first half of the eighteenth century was in many
+respects uncivilized. London was at that time separated from the country
+by roads that were often impassable and always dangerous. Travellers had
+to protect themselves as they best could from the attacks of highwaymen,
+who infested every thoroughfare leading from the metropolis, while the
+narrow area of the city was guarded by watchmen scarcely better fitted
+for its protection than Dogberry and Verges. Readers of the _Spectator_
+will remember how when Sir Roger de Coverley went to the play, his
+servants 'provided themselves with good oaken plants' to protect their
+master from the Mohocks, a set of dissolute young men, who, for sheer
+amusement, inflicted the most terrible punishments on their victims.
+Swift tells Stella how he came home early from his walk in the Park to
+avoid 'a race of rakes that play the devil about this town every night,
+and slit people's noses,' and he adds, as if party were at the root of
+every mischief in the country, that they were all Whigs. 'Who has not
+trembled at the Mohock's name?' is Gay's exclamation in his _Trivia_;
+and in that curious poem he also warns the citizens not to venture
+across Lincoln's Inn Fields in the evening. Colley Cibber's brazen-faced
+daughter, Mrs. Charke, in the _Narrative_ of her life, describes also
+with sufficient precision the dangers of London after dark.
+
+The infliction of personal injury was not confined to the desperadoes of
+the streets. Men of letters were in danger of chastisement from the
+poets or politicians whom they criticised or vilified. De Foe often
+mentions attempts upon his person. Pope, too, was threatened with a rod
+by Ambrose Philips, which was hung up for his chastisement in Button's
+Coffee-house; and at a later period, when his satires had stirred up a
+nest of hornets, the poet was in the habit of carrying pistols, and
+taking a large dog for his companion when walking out at Twickenham.
+
+Weddings within the liberties of the Fleet by sham clergymen, or
+clergymen confined for debt, were the source of numberless evils. Every
+kind of deception was practised, and the victims once in the clutches of
+their reverend captors had to pay heavily for the illegal ceremony.
+Ladies were trepanned into matrimony, and Smollett in his _History_
+observes, that the Fleet parsons encouraged every kind of villainy. It
+is astonishing that so great an evil in the heart of London should have
+been allowed to exist so long, and it was not until the Marriage Act of
+Lord Hardwicke in 1753, which required the publication of banns, that
+the Fleet marriages ceased. On the day before the Act came into
+operation three hundred marriages are said to have taken place.[4]
+
+Marriages of a more lawful kind were generally conducted on business
+principles. Young women were expected to accept the husband selected for
+them by their parents or guardians, and the main object considered was
+to gain a good settlement. It was for this that Mary Granville, who is
+better known as Mrs. Delany, was sacrificed at seventeen to a gouty old
+man of sixty, and when he died she was expected to marry again with the
+same object in view. Mrs. Delany detested, with good cause, the
+commercial estimate of matrimony. Writing, in 1739, to Lady
+Throckmorton, she says, 'Miss Campbell is to be married to-morrow to my
+Lord Bruce. Her father can give her no fortune; she is very pretty,
+modest, well-behaved, and just eighteen, has two thousand a year
+jointure, and four hundred pin-money; _they say_ he is cross, covetous,
+and threescore years old, and this unsuitable match is the _admiration
+of the old and the envy of the young_! For my part I _pity her_, for if
+she has any notion of social pleasures that arise from true esteem and
+sensible conversation, how miserable must she be.'[5]
+
+Girls dowered with beauty or with fortune were not always suffered to
+marry in this humdrum fashion. Abduction was by no means an imaginary
+peril. Mrs. Delany tells the story of a lady in Ireland, from whom she
+received the relation, who was entrapped in her uncle's house, carried
+off by four men in masks, and treated in the most brutal manner. And in
+1711 the Duke of Newcastle, having become acquainted with a design for
+carrying off his daughter by force, was compelled to ask for a guard of
+dragoons.
+
+Duelling, against which Steele, De Foe, and Fielding inveighed with
+courage and good sense, was a danger to which every gentleman was liable
+who wore a sword. Bullies were ready to provoke a quarrel, the slightest
+cause of offence was magnified into an affair of honour, and the lives
+of several of the most distinguished men of the century were imperilled
+in this way. 'A gentleman,' Lord Chesterfield writes, 'is every man who,
+with a tolerable suit of clothes, a sword by his side, and a watch and
+snuffbox in his pockets, asserts himself to be a gentleman, swears with
+energy that he will be treated as such, and that he will cut the throat
+of any man who presumes to say the contrary.'
+
+The foolish and evil custom died out slowly in this kingdom. Even a
+great moralist like Dr. Johnson had something to say in its defence, and
+Sir Walter Scott, who might well have laughed to scorn any imputation of
+cowardice, was prepared to accept a challenge in his old age for a
+statement he had made in his _Life of Napoleon_.
+
+Ladies had a different but equally doubtful mode of asserting their
+gentility. On one occasion the Duchess of Marlborough called on a lawyer
+without leaving her name. 'I could not make out who she was,' said the
+clerk afterwards, 'but she swore so dreadfully that she must be a lady
+of quality.'
+
+There was a fashion which our wits followed at this time that was not
+of English growth, namely, the tone of gallantry in which they addressed
+ladies, no matter whether single or married. Their compliments seemed
+like downright love-making, and that frequently of a coarse kind, but
+such expressions meant nothing, and were understood to be a mere
+exercise of skill. Pope used them in writing to Judith Cowper, whom he
+professes to worship as much as any female saint in heaven; and in much
+ampler measure when addressing Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, but neither
+lady would have taken this amatory politeness seriously. Thus he writes
+after an evening spent in Lady Mary's society: 'Books have lost their
+effect upon me; and I was convinced since I saw you, that there is
+something more powerful than philosophy, and since I heard you, that
+there is one alive wiser than all the sages.' He tells her that he hates
+all other women for her sake; that none but her guardian angels can have
+her more constantly in mind; and that the sun has more reason to be
+proud of raising her spirits 'than of raising all the plants and
+ripening all the minerals in the earth.' He will fly to her in Italy at
+the least notice and 'from thence,' he adds, 'how far you might draw me
+and I might run after you, I no more know than the spouse in the song of
+Solomon.'
+
+This was the foible of an age in which women were addressed as though
+they were totally devoid of understanding; and Pope, as might have been
+expected, carried the folly to excess.
+
+Against another French custom Addison protests in the _Spectator_,
+namely, that of women of rank receiving gentlemen visitors in their
+bedrooms. He objects also to other foreign habits introduced by
+'travelled ladies,' and fears that the peace, however much to be
+desired, may cause the importation of a number of French fopperies. But
+the proneness to follow the lead of France in matters of fashion is a
+folly not confined to the belles and beaux of the last century.
+
+If a chivalric regard for women be an indication of high civilization,
+that sign is but faintly visible in the reigns of Anne and of the first
+Georges. Sir Richard Steele paid a noble tribute to Lady Elizabeth
+Hastings when he said that to know her was a liberal education, but his
+contemporaries usually treat women as pretty triflers, better fitted to
+amuse men than to elevate them. Young takes this view in his _Satires_:
+
+    'Ladies supreme among amusements reign;
+    By nature born to soothe and entertain.
+    Their prudence in a share of folly lies;
+    Why will they be so weak as to be wise?'
+
+and Chesterfield, writing to his son, treats women with similar
+contempt.... 'A man of sense,' he says, 'only trifles with them, plays
+with them, humours and flatters them as he does with a sprightly,
+forward child; but he neither consults them about, nor trusts them with,
+serious matters, though he often makes them believe that he does both,
+which is the thing in the world that they are proud of.... No flattery
+is either too high or too low for them. They will greedily swallow the
+highest and gratefully accept of the lowest.'
+
+Nearly twenty years passed, and then Chesterfield wrote in the same
+contemptuous way of women in a letter to his godson, a 'dear little boy'
+of ten.
+
+'In company every woman is every man's superior, and must be addressed
+with respect, nay, more, with flattery, and you need not fear making it
+too strong ... it will be greedily swallowed.'
+
+Even Addison, while trying to instruct the 'Fair Sex' as he likes to
+call them, apparently regarded its members as an inferior order of
+beings. He delights to dwell upon their foibles, on their dress, and on
+the thousand little artifices practised by the flirt and the coquette.
+Here is the view the Queen Anne moralist takes of the 'female world' he
+was so eager to improve:
+
+'I have often thought there has not been sufficient pains in finding out
+proper employments and diversions for the fair ones. Their amusements
+seem contrived for them, rather as they are women, than as they are
+reasonable creatures; and are more adapted to the sex than to the
+species. The toilet is their great scene of business, and the right
+adjustment of their hair the principal employment of their lives. The
+sorting of a suit of ribands is considered a very good morning's work;
+and if they make an excursion to a mercer's or a toy-shop, so great a
+fatigue makes them unfit for anything else all the day after. Their more
+serious occupations are sewing and embroidery, and their greatest
+drudgery the preparations of jellies and sweetmeats. This I say is the
+state of ordinary women; though I know there are multitudes of those
+that move in an exalted sphere of knowledge and virtue, that join all
+the beauties of the mind to the ornaments of dress, and inspire a kind
+of awe and respect as well as of love into their male beholders.'
+
+The qualification made at the end of this description does not greatly
+lessen the significance of the earlier portion, which is Addison's
+picture, as he is careful to tell us of 'ordinary women.' Much must be
+allowed for the exaggeration of a humourist, but the frivolity of women
+is a theme upon which Addison harps continually. Indeed, were it not for
+this weakness in the 'feminine world' half his vocation as a moralist in
+the _Spectator_ would be gone, and if the general estimate in his Essays
+of the women with whom he was acquainted be to any extent a correct one,
+the derogatory language used by men of letters, and especially by
+Swift, Prior, Pope, and Chesterfield may be almost forgiven.
+
+It was the aim of Addison and Steele to represent, and in some degree to
+caricature, the follies of fashionable life in the Town. That life had
+also its vices, which, if less unblushingly displayed than under the
+'merry Monarch,' were visible enough. 'In the eighteenth century,' says
+Victor Hugo, in his epigrammatic way, 'the wife bolts out her husband.
+She shuts herself up in Eden with Satan. Adam is left outside.'
+
+Drunkenness was a habit familiar to the fine gentlemen of the town and
+to men occupying the highest position in the State. Harley went more
+than once into the queen's presence in a half-intoxicated condition;
+Carteret when Secretary of State, if Horace Walpole may be credited, was
+never sober; Bolingbroke, who practised every vice, is said to have been
+a 'four-bottle man;' and Swift found it perilous to dine with Ministers
+on account of the wine which circulated at their tables. 'Prince
+Eugene,' he writes, 'dines with the Secretary to-day with about seven or
+eight general officers or foreign Ministers. They will be all drunk I am
+sure.' Pope's frail body could not tolerate excess, and he is said to
+have hastened his end by good living. His friend Fenton 'died of a great
+chair and two bottles of port a day.' Parnell, who seems to have been in
+many respects a man of high character, is said to have shortened his
+life by intemperance; and Gay, who was cossetted like a favourite lapdog
+by the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, died from indolence and good
+living.
+
+It may be questioned whether there is a single Wit of the age who did
+not love port too well, like Addison and Fenton, or suffer from
+'carnivoracity' like Arbuthnot. Every section of English society was
+infected with the 'devil drunkenness,' and the passion for gin created
+by the encouragement of home distilleries produced a state of crime,
+misery, and disease in London and in the country which excited public
+attention. 'Small as is the place,' writes Mr. Lecky, 'which this fact
+occupies in English history, it was probably, if we consider all the
+consequences that have flowed from it, the most momentous in that of the
+eighteenth century--incomparably more so than any event in the purely
+political or military annals of the country.'[6]
+
+The cruelty of the age is seen in a contempt for the feelings of others,
+in the brutal punishments inflicted, in the amusements then popular, and
+in a general contempt for human suffering. Public executions were so
+frequent that they were disregarded; and criminals of any note, like Dr.
+Dodd, were exhibited in their cells for the gaolers' benefit prior to
+execution; mad people in Bedlam, chained in their cells, also formed one
+of the sights of London. As late as 1735 men were pressed to death who
+refused to plead on a capital charge; and women were publicly flogged,
+and were also burnt at the stake by a law that was not repealed until
+1794. Of the heads on Temple Bar, daily exposed to Johnson's eyes in his
+beloved Fleet Street, we are reminded by an apposite quotation of
+Goldsmith; and Samuel Rogers, the banker-poet, who died as recently as
+1855, remembered having seen one there in his childhood. The public
+exhibition of offenders in the pillory was not calculated to refine the
+manners of the people. It afforded a cruel entertainment to the mob, who
+may be said to have baited these poor victims as they were accustomed to
+bait bulls and bears. Every kind of offensive missile was thrown at
+them, and sometimes the strokes proved deadly.
+
+Men who could thus torture a human being were not likely to abstain
+from cruelty to the lower animals. The poets indeed protested then, as
+poets had done before, and always have done since, against the unmanly
+treatment of the dumb fellow-creatures committed to our care, but their
+voices were little heeded, and even the Prince of Wales visited
+Hockley-in-the-Hole, in disguise, to witness the torturing of bulls.
+'The gladiatorian and other sanguinary sports,' says the author of the
+_Characteristics_, 'which we allow our people, discover sufficiently our
+national taste. And the baitings and slaughters of so many sorts of
+creatures, tame as well as wild, for diversion merely, may witness the
+extraordinary inclination we have for amphitheatrical spectacles.'[7]
+
+The majesty of the law was maintained by disembowelling traitors, by
+cutting off the ears, or branding the cheeks of political offenders, and
+by the penalties inflicted on Roman Catholics, and on Protestant
+dissenters. Men who deemed themselves honourable gained power through
+bribery and intrigue. It was through a king's mistress and a heavy bribe
+that Bolingbroke was enabled to return from exile; Chesterfield
+intrigued against Newcastle with the Duchess of Yarmouth; and clergymen
+eager for promotion had no scruple in paying court to women who had lost
+their virtue.
+
+Never, unless perhaps during the Civil War, was the spirit of party more
+rampant in the country. Patriotism was a virtue more talked about than
+felt, and in the cause of faction private characters were assailed and
+libels circulated through the press. Addison, who did more than any
+other writer to humanize his age, saw the evil of the time and struck a
+blow at it with his inimitable humour. The _Spectator_ discovers, on his
+journey to Sir Roger de Coverley's house, that the knight's Toryism
+grew with the miles that separated him from London:
+
+'In all our journey from London to his house we did not so much as bait
+at a Whig inn; or if by chance the coachman stopped at a wrong place,
+one of Sir Roger's servants would ride up to his master full speed, and
+whisper to him that the master of the house was against such an one in
+the last election. This often betrayed us into hard beds and bad cheer;
+for we were not so inquisitive about the inn as the innkeeper; and
+provided our landlord's principles were sound did not take any notice of
+the staleness of his provisions. This I found still the more
+inconvenient, because the better the host was, the worse generally were
+his accommodations; the fellow knowing very well that those who were his
+friends would take up with coarse diet and hard lodging. For these
+reasons, all the while I was upon the road, I dreaded entering into an
+house of anyone that Sir Roger had applauded for an honest man.'[8]
+
+Against the party zeal of female politicians Addison indulges frequently
+in humorous sallies. He assures them that it gives an ill-natured cast
+to the eye, and flushes the cheeks worse than brandy. Party rage, he
+says, is a male vice, and is altogether repugnant 'to the softness, the
+modesty, and those other endearing qualities which are natural to the
+fair sex.'
+
+'When I have seen a pretty mouth uttering calumnies and invectives, what
+would I not have given to have stopt it? how have I been troubled to see
+some of the finest features in the world grow pale and tremble with
+party rage. Camilla is one of the greatest beauties in the British
+nation, and yet values herself more upon being the virago of one party
+than upon being the toast of both. The dear creature about a week ago
+encountered the fierce and beautiful Penthesilea across a tea-table; but
+in the height of her anger, as her hand chanced to shake with the
+earnestness of the dispute, she scalded her fingers, and spilt a dish of
+tea upon her petticoat. Had not this accident broke off the debate,
+nobody knows where it would have ended.'
+
+The coffee-houses in which men aired their wit and discussed the news of
+the day were wholly dominated by party. 'A Whig,' says De Foe, 'will no
+more go to the Cocoa Tree or Ozinda's than a Tory will be seen at the
+coffee-house of St. James's.' Swift declared that the Whig and Tory
+animosity infected even the dogs and cats. It was inevitable that it
+should also infect literature. Books were seldom judged on their merits,
+the praise or blame being generally awarded according to the political
+principles of their authors. An impartial literary journal did not exist
+in the days when Addison 'gave his little senate laws' at Button's, and
+perhaps it does not exist now, but if critical injustice be done in our
+day it is rarely owing to political causes.
+
+One of the most prominent vices of the time was gambling, which was
+largely encouraged by the public lotteries, and practised by all classes
+of the people. This evil was exhibited on a national scale by the
+establishment of the South Sea Company, which exploded in 1720, after
+creating a madness for speculation never known before or since. Even men
+who like Sir Robert Walpole kept their heads, and saw that the bubble
+would soon burst, invested in stock. Pope had his share in the
+speculation, and might, had he 'realized' in time, have been the 'lord
+of thousands;' in the end, however, he was a gainer, though not to a
+large extent. His friend Gay was less fortunate. He won L20,000, kept
+the stock too long and was reduced to beggary. The South Sea Bubble and
+the Mississippi scheme of Law which burst in the same year and ruined
+tens of thousands of French families, afford illustrations on a gigantic
+scale of the prevailing passion for speculation and for gambling.
+
+'The Duke of Devonshire lost an estate at a game of basset. The fine
+intellect of Chesterfield was thoroughly enslaved by the vice. At Bath,
+which was then the centre of English fashion, it reigned supreme; and
+the physicians even recommended it to their patients as a form of
+distraction. In the green-rooms of the theatres, as Mrs. Bellamy assures
+us, thousands were often lost and won in a single night. Among
+fashionable ladies the passion was quite as strong as among men, and the
+professor of whist and quadrille became a regular attendant at their
+levees. Miss Pelham, the daughter of the prime minister, was one of the
+most notorious gamblers of her time, and Lady Cowper speaks in her
+_Diary_ of sittings at Court, of which the lowest stake was 200 guineas.
+The public lotteries contributed very powerfully to diffuse the taste
+for gambling among all classes.'[9]
+
+One of the most powerful exponents of the dark side of the century is
+Hogarth, who makes some of its worst features live before our eyes. So
+also do the novels of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett. Differing as
+their works do in character, they have the common merit of presenting in
+indelible lines a picture of the time in its social aspects. It may have
+been, as Stuart Mill asserts, an age of strong men, but it was an age of
+coarse vices, an age wanting in the refinements and graces of life; an
+age of cruel punishments, cruel sports, and of a political corruption
+extending through all the departments of the State.
+
+But it would be a narrow view of the age to dwell wholly on its gloomier
+features, which are always the easiest to detect. If the period under
+consideration had prominent vices, it had also distinguished merits.
+Under Queen Anne and her immediate successors, home-keeping Englishmen
+had more space to breathe in than they have now, and trade was not
+demoralized by excessive competition. No attempt was made to separate
+class from class, and population was not large enough to make the battle
+of life almost hopeless in the lowest section of the community. If there
+was less refinement than among ourselves, there was far less of nervous
+susceptibility, and the country was free from the half-educated class of
+men and women who know enough to make them dissatisfied, without
+attaining to the larger knowledge which yields wisdom and content. To
+say that the age was better than our own would be to deny a thousand
+signs of material and intellectual progress, but it had fewer dangers to
+contend with, and if there was far less of wealth in the country the
+people were probably more satisfied with their lot.[10]
+
+To glance at the century as a whole does not fall within my province,
+but I may be permitted to observe that in the course of it science and
+invention made rapid strides; that under the inspiring sway of Handel
+the power of music was felt as it was never felt before; that in the
+latter half of the period the Novel, destined to be one of the noblest
+fruits of our imaginative literature, attained a robust life in the
+hands of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett; and that, with Reynolds and
+Gainsborough, with Romney and Wilson, a glorious school of landscape and
+portrait painters arose, which is still the pride of England. It will
+be remembered, too, that many of the great charitable institutions which
+make our own age illustrious, had their birth in the last. The military
+genius of England was displayed in Marlborough and in Clive, her mercy
+in John Howard, her spirit of enterprise in Cook, her self-sacrifice in
+Wesley and Whitefield, her statesmanship in Walpole, in Chatham, and in
+William Pitt. In oratory as everyone knows, the eighteenth century was
+surpassingly great, and never before or since has the country produced a
+political philosopher of the calibre of Burke. What England reaped in
+literature during the period of which Pope has been selected as the most
+striking figure, it will be my endeavour to show in the course of these
+pages.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] M. Sainte-Beuve, the greatest of French critics, frankly
+acknowledges his indebtedness to Boileau, whom he styles Louis the
+Fourteenth's 'Controleur General du Parnasse.' 'S'il m'est permis de
+parler pour moi-meme,' he writes, 'Boileau est un des hommes qui m'ont
+le plus occupe depuis que je fais de la critique, et avec qui j'ai le
+plus vecu en idee.'--_Causeries du Lundi_, tome sixieme, p. 495.
+
+[2] Lecky's _England_, vol. i. p. 373.
+
+[3] The epithet is used in the Preface to the First Edition of Waller's
+_Posthumous Poems_, which Mr. Gosse believes was written by Atterbury,
+and he considers that this is the original occurrence of the
+phrase.--_From Shakespeare to Pope_, p. 248.
+
+[4] Messrs. Besant and Rice's novel, _The Chaplain of the Fleet_, gives
+a vivid picture of the life led in the Fleet, and also of the period.
+
+[5] _Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Delany_, vol. ii. p. 55.
+
+[6] Lecky's _England_, vol. i. p. 479.
+
+[7] Shaftesbury's _Characteristics_, vol. i. p. 270.
+
+[8] _Spectator_, No. 126.
+
+[9] Lecky's _England_, vol. i. p. 522.
+
+[10] According to Hallam the thirty years which followed the Treaty of
+Utrecht 'was the most prosperous season that England had ever
+experienced.'--_Const. Hist._ ii. 464.
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+THE POETS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ALEXANDER POPE.
+
+
+It is not unreasonable to call the period we are considering 'the Age of
+Pope.' He is the representative poet of his century. Its literary merits
+and defects are alike conspicuous in his verse, and he stands
+immeasurably above the numerous versifiers who may be said to belong to
+his school. Savage Landor has observed that there is no such thing as a
+school of poetry, and this is true in the sense that the essence of this
+divine art cannot be transmitted, but the form of the art may be, and
+Pope's style of workmanship made it readily imitable by accomplished
+craftsmen. Although he affected to call poetry an idle trade he devoted
+his whole life to its pursuit, and there are few instances in literature
+in which genius and unwearied labour have been so successfully united.
+It is to Pope's credit, that, with everything against him in the race of
+life, he attained the goal for which he started in his youth. The means
+he employed to reach it were frequently perverse and discreditable, but
+the courage with which he overcame the obstacles in his path commands
+our admiration.
+
+[Sidenote: Alexander Pope (1688-1744).]
+
+Alexander Pope was born in London on May 21st, 1688. He was the only son
+of his father, a merchant or tradesman, and a Roman Catholic at a time
+when the members of that church were proscribed by law. The boy was a
+cripple from his birth, and suffered from great bodily weakness both in
+youth and manhood. Looking back upon his life in after years he called
+it a 'long disease.' The elder Pope seems to have retired from business
+soon after his son's birth, and at Binfield, nine miles from Windsor,
+twenty-seven years of the poet's life were spent. As a 'papist' Pope was
+excluded from the Universities and from every public career, but even
+under happier circumstances his health would have condemned him to a
+secluded life. He gained some instruction from the family priest, and
+also went for a short time to school, but for the most part he was
+self-educated, and studied so severely that at seventeen his life was
+probably saved by the sound advice of Dr. Radcliffe to read less and to
+ride on horseback every day. The rhyming faculty was very early
+developed, and to use his own phrase he 'lisped in numbers.' As a boy he
+felt the magic of Spenser, whose enchanting sweetness and boundless
+wealth of imagination have been now for three hundred years a joy to
+every lover of poetry. Something, too, he learned from Waller and from
+Sandys, both of whom, but especially the former, had been of service in
+giving smoothness to the iambic distich, in which all of Pope's best
+poems are written. Dryden, however, whom when a little boy he saw at
+Will's coffee-house--'_Virgilium tantum vidi_' records the memorable
+day--was the poet whose influence he felt most powerfully. Like Gray
+several years later, he declared that he learnt versification wholly
+from his works. From 'knowing Walsh,' the best critic in the nation in
+Dryden's opinion, the youthful Pope received much friendly counsel; and
+he had another wise friend in Sir William Trumbull, formerly Secretary
+of State, who recognized his genius, and gave him as warm a friendship
+as an old man can offer to a young one. The dissolute Restoration
+dramatist, Wycherley, was also his temporary companion. The old man, if
+Pope's story be true, asked him to correct his poems, which are indeed
+beyond correction, as the youthful critic appears to have hinted, and
+the two parted company.
+
+The _Pastorals_, written, according to Pope's assertion, at the age of
+sixteen, were published in 1709, and won an amount of praise
+incomprehensible in the present day. Mr. Leslie Stephen has happily
+appraised their value in calling them 'mere school-boy exercises.' Not
+thus, however, were they regarded by the poet, or by the critics of his
+age, yet neither he nor they could have divined the rapid progress of
+his fame, and that in about six years' time he would be regarded as the
+greatest of living poets. The _Essay on Criticism_, written, it appears,
+in 1709, was published two years later, and received the highest honour
+a poem could then have. It was praised by Addison in the _Spectator_ as
+'a very fine poem,' and 'a masterpiece in its kind.' The 'kind,'
+suggested by the _Ars Poetica_ of Horace, and the _Art Poetique_ of
+Boileau--translated with Dryden's help by Sir William Soame--suited the
+current taste for criticism and argument in rhyme, which had led
+Roscommon to write an _Essay on Translated Verse_, and Sheffield an
+_Essay on Poetry_. The _Essay on Criticism_ is a marvellous production
+for a young man who had scarcely passed his maturity when it was
+published. To have written lines and couplets that live still in the
+language and are on everyone's lips is an achievement of which any poet
+might be proud, and there are at least twenty such lines or couplets in
+the poem.
+
+In 1713 _Windsor Forest_ appeared. Through the most susceptible years of
+life the poet had lived in the country, but Nature and Pope were not
+destined to become friends; he looked at her 'through the spectacles of
+books' and his description of natural objects is invariably of the
+conventional type. Although never a resident in London he was unable in
+the exercise of his art to breathe any atmosphere save that of the town,
+and might have said, in the words of Lessing to his friend Kleist, 'When
+you go to the country I go to the coffee-house.'[11]
+
+The use, or as it would be more correct to say the abuse, of classical
+mythology in the description of rural scenes had the sanction of great
+names, and Pope was not likely to reject what Spenser and Milton had
+sanctioned. Gods and goddesses therefore play a conspicuous part in his
+description of the Forest. The following lines afford a fair
+illustration of the style throughout, and the sole merit of the poem is
+the smoothness of versification in which Pope excelled.
+
+    'Not proud Olympus yields a nobler sight,
+    Though gods assembled grace his towering height,
+    Than what more humble mountains offer here,
+    When in their blessings all those gods appear.
+    See Pan with flocks, with fruits Pomona crowned,
+    Here blushing Flora paints th' enamelled ground,
+    Here Ceres' gifts in waving prospect stand,
+    And nodding tempt the joyful reaper's hand;
+    Rich Industry sits smiling on the plains,
+    And peace and plenty tell a Stuart reigns.
+
+Pope, who was never known to laugh, was a great wit, but his sense of
+humour was small, and the descent from these deities to Queen Anne
+savours not a little of bathos.
+
+In 1712 Pope had published _The Rape of the Lock_, which Addison justly
+praised as 'a delicious little thing.' At the same time he advised the
+poet not to attempt improving it, which he proposed to do, and Pope most
+unreasonably attributed this advice to jealousy. In 1714 the delightful
+poem appeared in its present form with the machinery of sylphs and
+gnomes adopted from the mysteries of the Rosicrucians. Pope styles it an
+heroi-comical poem, and judged in the light of a burlesque it is
+conceived and executed with an art that is beyond praise. Lord Petre, a
+Roman Catholic peer, had cut off a lock of Miss Arabella Fermor's hair,
+much to the indignation of her family and possibly of the young lady
+also. Pope wrote the poem to remove the discord caused by the fatal
+shears, but its publication, and two or three offensive allusions it
+contained, only served to add to Miss Fermor's annoyance. 'The
+celebrated lady herself,' the poet wrote, 'is offended, and which is
+stranger, not at herself but me. Is not this enough to make a writer
+never be tender of another's character or fame?' But Pope, whose praise
+of women is too often a libel upon them, was not as tender as he ought
+to have been of the lady's reputation.
+
+The offence felt by the heroine of the poem is now unheeded; the dainty
+art exhibited is a permanent delight, and our language can boast no more
+perfect specimen of the poetical burlesque than the _Rape of the Lock_.
+The machinery of the sylphs is managed with perfect skill, and nothing
+can be more admirable than the charge delivered by Ariel to the sylphs
+to guard Belinda from an apprehended but unknown danger. The concluding
+lines shall be quoted:
+
+    'Whatever spirit, careless of his charge,
+    His post neglects, or leaves the fair at large,
+    Shall feel sharp vengeance soon o'ertake his sins,
+    Be stopped in vials, or transfixed with pins;
+    Or plunged in lakes of bitter washes lie,
+    Or wedged, whole ages, in a bodkin's eye;
+    Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain,
+    While clogged he beats his silken wings in vain;
+    Or alum styptics, with contracting power,
+    Shrink his thin essence like a rivelled flower;
+    Or, as Ixion fixed, the wretch shall feel
+    The giddy motion of the whirling mill,
+    In fumes of burning chocolate shall glow,
+    And tremble at the sea that froths below!'
+
+Another striking portion of the poem is the description of the Spanish
+game of Ombre, imitated from Vida's _Scacchia Ludus_. 'Vida's poem,'
+says Mr. Elwin, 'is a triumph of ingenuity, when the intricacy of chess
+is considered, and the difficulty of expressing the moves in a dead
+language. Yet the original is eclipsed by Pope's more consummate
+copy.'[12]
+
+Many famous passages illustrative of Pope's art might be extracted from
+this poem, but it will suffice to give the portrait of Belinda:
+
+    'On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,
+    Which Jews might kiss and infidels adore;
+    Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose,
+    Quick as her eyes and as unfixed as those;
+    Favours to none, to all she smiles extends,
+    Oft she rejects, but never once offends.
+    Bright as the sun her eyes the gazers strike,
+    And, like the sun, they shine on all alike.
+    Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride,
+    Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide:
+    If to her share some female errors fall,
+    Look on her face and you'll forget them all.'
+
+The _Temple of Fame_, a liberal paraphrase of Chaucer's _House of Fame_,
+followed in 1715, and despite the praise of Steele, who declared that it
+had a thousand beauties, and of Dr. Johnson, who observes that every
+part is splendid, must be pronounced one of Pope's least attractive
+pieces. Two poems of the emotional and sentimental class, _Eloisa to
+Abelard_ and the _Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady_ (1717),
+are more worthy of attention. Nowhere, probably, in the language are
+finer specimens to be met with of rhetorical pathos, but poets like
+Burns, Cowper, Wordsworth, and Tennyson can touch the heart more deeply
+by a phrase or couplet than Pope is able to do by his elaborate
+representations of passion. The reader is not likely to be affected by
+the following response of Eloisa to an invitation from the spirit world:
+
+    'I come, I come! prepare your roseate bowers,
+    Celestial palms and ever-blooming flowers.
+    Thither, where sinners may have rest, I go,
+    Where flames refined in breasts seraphic glow;
+    Thou, Abelard! the last sad office pay,
+    And smooth my passage to the realms of day;
+    See my lips tremble and my eye-balls roll,
+    Suck my last breath and catch my flying soul!
+    Ah no--in sacred vestments may'st thou stand,
+    The hallowed taper trembling in thy hand,
+    Present the Cross before my lifted eye,
+    Teach me at once and learn of me to die.'
+
+The music or the fervour of the poem delighted Porson, famous for his
+Greek and his potations, and whether drunk or sober he would recite, or
+rather sing it, from the beginning to the end. The felicity of the
+versification is incontestable, but at the same time artifice is more
+visible than nature throughout the Epistle, and this is true also of
+_The Elegy_, a composition in which Pope's method of treating mournful
+topics is excellently displayed. The opening lines are suggested by Ben
+Jonson's _Elegy on the Marchioness of Winchester_, a lady whose death
+was also lamented by Milton. These we shall not quote, but take in
+preference a passage which is perhaps as graceful an expression of
+poetical rhetoric as can be found in Pope's verse.
+
+    'By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,
+    By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed,
+    By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned,
+    By strangers honoured, and by strangers mourned!
+    What though no friends in sable weeds appear,
+    Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year,
+    And bear about the mockery of woe,
+    To midnight dances and the public show?
+    What though no weeping Loves thy ashes grace,
+    Nor polished marble emulate thy face?
+    What though no sacred earth allow thee room,
+    Nor hallowed dirge be muttered o'er thy tomb?
+    Yet shall thy grave with rising flowers be drest,
+    And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast;
+    There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow,
+    There the first roses of the year shall blow;
+    While angels with their silver wings o'ershade
+    The ground, now sacred by thy reliques made.'
+
+For some years Pope had been brooding over and slowly labouring at a
+task which was destined to add greatly to his fame and also to his
+fortune.
+
+In 1708 his early friend, Sir William Trumbull, had advised him to
+translate the _Iliad_, and five years later the poet, following the
+custom of the age, invited subscriptions to the work, which was to
+appear in six volumes at the price of six guineas. About this time
+Swift, who by the aid of his powerful pen was assisting Harley and St.
+John to rule the country, made Pope's acquaintance, and ultimately
+became perhaps the most faithful of his friends. Swift, who was able to
+help everybody but himself, zealously promoted the poet's scheme, and
+was heard to say at the coffee-houses that 'the best poet in England Mr.
+Pope a Papist' had begun a translation of Homer which he should not
+print till he had a thousand guineas for him.
+
+He was not satisfied with this service, but introduced the poet to St.
+John, Atterbury, and Harley. The first volume of Pope's _Homer_ appeared
+in 1715, and in the same year Addison's friend Tickell published his
+version of the first book of the _Iliad_. Pope affected to believe that
+this was done at Addison's instigation.
+
+Already, as we have said, there had been a misunderstanding between the
+two famous wits, and Pope, whose irritable temperament led him into many
+quarrels and created a host of enemies, ceased from this time to regard
+Addison as a friend. Probably neither of them can be exempted from
+blame, and we can well believe that Addison, whose supremacy had
+formerly been uncontested, could not without some jealousy 'bear a
+brother near the throne,' but the chief interest of the estrangement to
+the literary student is the famous satire written at a later date, in
+which Addison appears under the character of Atticus.[13] It is
+necessary to add here that the whole story of the quarrel comes to us
+from Pope, who is never to be trusted, either in prose or verse, when he
+wishes to excuse himself at the expense of a rival.
+
+Pope had no cause for discontent at his position; not even the strife of
+parties stood in the way of his _Homer_, which was praised alike by Whig
+and Tory, and brought the translator a fortune. It has been calculated
+that the entire version of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, the payments for
+which covered eleven years, yielded Pope a clear profit of about L9,000,
+and it is said to have made at the same time the fortune of his
+publisher. Pope, I believe, was the first poet who, without the aid of
+patronage or of the stage, was able to live in comfort from the sale of
+his works.
+
+He knew how to value money, but fame was dearer to him than wealth, and
+of both he had now enough to satisfy his ambition. Posterity has not
+endorsed the general verdict of his contemporaries on his famous
+translation. He had to encounter indeed some severe comments, and
+Richard Bentley, the greatest classical scholar then living, must have
+vexed the sensitive poet when he told him that his version was a pretty
+poem but he must not call it Homer. By this criticism, however, as
+Matthew Arnold has observed, the work is judged in spite of all its
+power and attractiveness. Pope wants Homer's simplicity and directness,
+and his artifices of style are utterly alien to the Homeric spirit. Dr.
+Johnson quotes the judgment of critics who say that Pope's _Homer_
+'exhibits no resemblance of the original and characteristic manner of
+the Father of Poetry, as it wants his awful simplicity, his artless
+grandeur, his unaffected majesty,' and observes that this cannot be
+totally denied. He argues, however, that even in Virgil's time the
+demand for elegance had been so much increased that mere nature could be
+endured no longer, that every age improves in elegance, that if some
+Ovidian graces are, alas! not to be found in the English _Iliad_ 'to
+have added can be no great crime if nothing be taken away.' Johnson was
+not aware that to add 'poetical elegances' to the words and thoughts of
+a great poet is to destroy much of the beauty of his verse and many of
+its most striking characteristics. As well might he say that the beauty
+of a lovely woman can be enhanced by a profusion of trinkets, or that a
+Greek statue would be more worthy of admiration if it were elegantly
+dressed. Dr. Johnson says, with perfect truth, that Pope wrote for his
+own age, and it may be added that he exhibits extraordinary art in
+ministering to the taste of the age; yet it is hardly too much to affirm
+that in the exercise of his craft as a translator he is continually
+false to nature and therefore false to Homer.
+
+On the other hand his _Iliad_ if read as a story runs so smoothly, that
+the reader, and especially the young reader, is carried through the
+narrative without any sense of fatigue. It is not a little praise to say
+that it is a poem which every school-boy will read with pleasure, and in
+which every critical reader who is content to surrender his judgment for
+awhile, will find pleasure also. Mr. Courthope in his elaborate and
+masterly _Life of Pope_, which gives the coping stone to an exhaustive
+edition of the poet's works, praises a fine passage from the _Iliad_,
+which in his judgment attains perhaps the highest level of which the
+heroic couplet is capable, and 'I do not believe,' he adds, 'that any
+Englishman of taste and imagination can read the lines without feeling
+that if Pope had produced nothing but his translation of Homer, he would
+be entitled to the praise of a great original poet.'
+
+Pope's editor could not perhaps have selected a better illustration of
+his best manner than this speech of Sarpedon to Glaucus, which is
+parodied in the _Rape of the Lock_. The concluding lines shall be
+quoted.
+
+    'Could all our care elude the gloomy grave,
+    Which claims no less the fearful than the brave,
+    For lust of fame I should not vainly dare
+    In fighting fields, nor urge the soul to war,
+    But since, alas! ignoble age must come,
+    Disease, and death's inexorable doom;
+    The life which others pay let us bestow,
+    And give to fame what we to nature owe;
+    Brave though we fall, and honoured if we live,
+    Or let us glory gain, or glory give.'
+
+We may add that neither its false glitter nor Pope's inability--shared
+in great measure with every translator--to catch the spirit of the
+original, can conceal the sustained power of this brilliant work. Its
+merit is the more wonderful since the poet's knowledge of Greek was
+extremely meagre, and he is said to have been constantly indebted to
+earlier translations. Gibbon said that his _Homer_ had every merit
+except that of faithfulness to the original; and Pope, could he have
+heard it, might well have been satisfied with the verdict of Gray, a
+great scholar as well as a great poet, that no other version would ever
+equal his.
+
+All that has been hitherto said with regard to Pope and Homer relates to
+his version of the _Iliad_. On that he expended his best powers, and on
+that it is evident he bestowed infinite pains. The _Odyssey_, one of the
+most beautiful stories in the world, appears to have been taken up with
+a weary pen, and in putting it into English he sought the assistance of
+Broome and Fenton, two minor poets and Cambridge scholars. They
+translated twelve books out of the twenty-four, and so skilfully did
+they catch Pope's style that it is almost impossible to discern any
+difference between his work and theirs. The literary partnership led to
+one of Pope's discreditable manoeuvres, in which, strange to say, he
+was assisted by Broome, whom he induced to set his name to a falsehood.
+Pope as we have said, translated twelve books, while eight were allotted
+to Broome and four to Fenton. Yet he led Broome, unknown to his
+colleague, to ascribe only three books to himself and two to Fenton, and
+at the same time the poet, who confessed that he could 'equivocate
+pretty genteely,' stated the amount he had paid for Broome's eight books
+as if it had been paid for three. The story is disgraceful both to Pope
+and Broome, and why the latter should have practised such a deception is
+unaccountable. He was a beneficed clergyman and a man of wealth, so that
+he could not have lied for money even if Pope had been willing to bribe
+him. Fenton was indignant, as he well might be, but he was too lazy or
+too good-natured to expose the fraud. Broome had his deserts later on,
+but Pope, who ridiculed him in the _Dunciad_, and in his _Treatise on
+the Bathos_, was the last man in the world entitled to render them.
+
+The partnership in poetry which produced the _Odyssey_ was not a great
+literary success, and most readers will prefer the version of Cowper,
+whose blank verse, though out of harmony with the rapid movement of the
+_Iliad_ is not unfitted for the quieter beauties of the _Odyssey_.
+
+In 1721, prior to the publication of his version, the poet had agreed to
+edit an edition of Shakespeare, a task as difficult as any which a man
+of letters can undertake. Pope was not qualified to achieve it. He was
+comparatively ignorant of Elizabethan literature, the dry labours of an
+editor were not to his taste, and he lacked true sympathy with the
+genius of the poet. Failure was therefore inevitable, and Theobald, who
+has some solid merits as a commentator, found it easy to discern and to
+expose the errors of Pope. For doing so he was afterwards 'hitched' into
+the _Dunciad_, and made in the first instance its hero. The
+"Shakespeare" was published in 1725 in six volumes quarto. 'Its chief
+claim,' Mr. Courthope writes, 'to interest at the present day, is that
+it forms the immediate starting-point for the long succession of Pope's
+satires.... The vexation caused to the poet by the undoubted justice of
+many of Theobald's strictures procured for the latter the unwelcome
+honour of being recognized as the King of the Dunces, and coupled with
+Bentley's disparaging mention of the Translation of the _Iliad_ provoked
+the many contemptuous allusions to verbal criticism in Pope's later
+satires.'[14]
+
+A striking peculiarity of Pope's art may be mentioned here. He was able
+only to play on one instrument, the heroic couplet. When he attempted
+any other form of verse the result, if not total failure, was
+mediocrity. It was a daring act of Pope to suggest by his _Ode on St.
+Cecilia's Day_, a comparison with the _Alexander's Feast_ of Dryden. The
+performance is perfunctory rather than spontaneous, and the few lyrical
+efforts he attempted in addition, show no ear for music. The voice of
+song with which even the minor poets of the Elizabethan age were gifted
+was silent in England, though not in Scotland, during the first half of
+the eighteenth century, or if a faint note is occasionally heard, as in
+the lyrics of Gay, it is without the grace and joyous freedom of the
+earlier singers. Not that the lyrical form was wanting; many minor
+versifiers, like Hughes, Sheffield, Granville, and Somerville, wrote
+what they called songs, but unfortunately without an ear for singing.
+
+In this short summary and criticism of a poet's literary life it would
+be out of place to insert many biographical details, were it not that,
+in the case of Pope, the student who knows little or nothing of the man
+will fail to understand his poetry. A distinguished critic has said that
+the more we know of Pope's age the better shall we understand Pope. With
+equal truth it may be said that a familiarity with the poet's personal
+character is essential to an adequate appreciation of his genius. His
+friendships, his enmities, his mode of life at Twickenham, the entangled
+tale of his correspondence, his intrigues in the pursuit of fame, his
+constitutional infirmities, the personal character of his satires, these
+are a few of the prominent topics with which a student of the poet must
+make himself conversant. It may be well, therefore, to give the history
+in brief outline, and we have now reached the crisis in his fortunes
+which will conveniently enable us to do so.
+
+In 1716 Pope's family had removed from Binfield to Chiswick. A year
+later he lost his father, to whose memory he has left a filial tribute,
+and shortly afterwards he bought the small estate of five acres at
+Twickenham with which his name is so intimately associated. Before
+reaching the age of thirty Pope was regarded as the first of living
+poets. His income more than sufficed for all his wants. At Twickenham
+the great in intellect, and the great by birth, met around his table; he
+was welcomed by the highest society in the land, and although proud of
+his intimacy with the nobility, 'unplaced, unpensioned,' he was 'no
+man's heir or slave,' and jealously preserved his independence. 'Pope,'
+says Johnson, 'never set genius to sale, he never flattered those whom
+he did not love, or praised those whom he did not esteem,' and he was,
+we may add, in this respect a striking contrast to Dryden, who lavished
+his flatteries wholesale.
+
+With a mother to whom he was tenderly attached, with troops of friends,
+with an undisputed supremacy in the world of letters, and with a
+vocation that was the joy of his heart,--if possessions like these can
+confer happiness, Pope should have been a happy man.
+
+But his 'crazy carcass,' as the painter Jervas called it, was united to
+the most suspicious and irritable of temperaments, and the fine wine of
+his poetry was rarely free from bitterness in the cup. Pope could be a
+warm friend, but was not always a faithful one, and even women whose
+friendship he had enjoyed suffered from the venom of his satire. He was
+not a man to rise above his age, and it would be charitable to ascribe a
+portion of his grossness to it. Voltaire is said by his loose talk to
+have driven Pope's good old mother from the table at Twickenham;
+Walpole's language not only in his home at Houghton, but at Court, was
+insufferably coarse; and Pope wrote to ladies in language that must
+have disgusted modest women even in his free-speaking day. His foul
+lines on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, to whom he had formerly written in a
+most ridiculous strain of gallantry, and to whom he is said to have made
+love,[15] cannot easily be characterized in moderate language. Lady Mary
+had little delicacy herself, but the poet, who thought himself a
+gentleman, had no excuse for abusing her. Excuses indeed are not easily
+to be offered for Pope's moral defalcations. His life was a series of
+petty intrigues, trickeries, and deceptions. He could not, it has been
+said,--the conceit is borrowed from Young's _Satires_--'take his tea
+without a stratagem,' and knew how to utter the loftiest sentiments
+while acting the most contemptible of parts.
+
+The long and intricate deceptions which he practised to secure the
+publication of his letters, while so manipulating them as to enhance his
+credit, were suspected to some extent in his own age, and have been
+painfully laid bare in ours. It is an amazing story, which may be read
+at large in Mr. Dilke's _Papers of a Critic_, or in the elaborate
+narrative of Mr. Elwin in the first volume of his edition of _Pope_. It
+will be there seen how the poet compiled fictitious letters, suppressed
+passages, altered dates, manufactured letters out of other letters, and
+secretly enabled the infamous bookseller Curll to publish his
+correspondence surreptitiously in order that he might have the excuse
+for printing it himself in a more carefully prepared form. The worst
+feature of the miserable story is the poet's conduct with regard to
+Swift, his oldest and most faithful friend. On this subject the writer
+may be allowed to quote what he has said elsewhere.
+
+'Years before, Swift, who cared little for literary reputation, and
+never resorted to any artifice to promote it, had suspected Pope of a
+desire to make literary capital out of their correspondence, and the
+poet had excused himself according to his wonted fashion. After the
+publication by Curll, he begged Swift to return him his letters lest
+they should fall into the bookseller's hands. The Dean replied, no doubt
+to Pope's infinite chagrin, that they were safe in his keeping, as he
+had given strict orders in his will that his executors should burn every
+letter he might leave behind him. Afterwards he promised that Pope
+should eventually have them but declined giving them up during his
+lifetime. Hereupon Pope changed his tactics and begged that he might
+have the letters to print. The publication by Curll of two letters
+(probably another _ruse_ of Pope's) formed an additional ground for
+urging his request. All his efforts were unavailing until he obtained
+the assistance of Lord Orrery, to whom Swift was at length induced to
+deliver up the letters. There was a hiatus in the correspondence and
+Pope took advantage of this and of a blunder made by Swift, whose memory
+at the time was not to be trusted, to hint, what he dared not directly
+assert, that the bulk of the collection remained with the Dean, and that
+Swift's own letters had been returned to him. We have now irresistible
+proof that the Dublin edition of the letters was taken from an
+impression sent from England and sent by Pope. Nor was this all. The
+poet acted with still greater meanness, for he had the audacity to
+deplore the sad vanity of Swift in permitting the publication of his
+correspondence, and to declare that "no decay of body is half so
+miserable."'[16]
+
+That he had many fine qualities in spite of the littlenesses which mar
+his character one would be loath to doubt. Among his nobler traits was
+an ardent passion for literature, a courage which enabled him to face
+innumerable obstacles--'Pope,' says Mr. Swinburne, 'was as bold as a
+lion'--and a constant devotion to his parents, especially to his mother,
+who lived to a great age. There are no sincerer words in his letters
+than those which relate to Mrs. Pope. 'It is my mother only,' he once
+wrote, regretting his inability to leave home, 'that robs me of half the
+pleasure of my life, and that gives me the greatest at the same time,'
+and the lines expressing his affection for her are familiar to most
+readers. Truly does Johnson say that 'life has among its soothing and
+quiet comforts few things better to give than such a son.'
+
+Among his lady friends the dearest was Martha Blount, the younger of two
+beautiful sisters, of whom Gay sang as 'the fair-haired Martha and
+Teresa brown.' They came of an old Roman Catholic family residing at
+Mapledurham, and were little more than girls when Pope first knew them.
+With the elder sister he quarrelled, but Martha was faithful to him for
+life, and when he was dying it is said that her coming in 'gave a new
+turn of spirits or a temporary strength to him.' Swift, as we have said,
+was one of the warmest of Pope's friends, and his letters to the poet
+are by far the most attractive portion of the published correspondence.
+He visited him at Twickenham more than once, and on one occasion spent
+some months under his roof. Bolingbroke, his 'guide, philosopher, and
+friend,' who for a time lived near to him at Dawley, was a frequent
+guest, so also, in the days of their intimacy, was Lady Mary, who had a
+house at Twickenham. Thomson the poet, too, lived not far off, and was
+visited by his brother bard, whom Thomson's barber describes as 'a
+strange, ill-formed, little figure of a man,' but he adds, 'I have
+heard him and Quin and Patterson[17] talk so together that I could have
+listened to them for ever.' Arbuthnot, one of the finest wits and best
+men of his time, who, as Swift said, could do everything but walk, was
+also a faithful friend of Pope; so was Gay, and so was Bishop Atterbury,
+who, as the poet said, first taught him to think "as becomes a
+reasonable creature."
+
+James Craggs, who had been formerly Secretary of State, and was on the
+warmest terms of intimacy with the poet, resided for some time near his
+friend in order to enjoy the pleasure of his society. When in office he
+proposed to pay him a pension of L300 a year out of the secret service
+money, but Pope declined the offer. Statesmen and men of active pursuits
+cultivated the society of the poetical recluse, and Pope, whose
+compliments are monuments more enduring than marble, has recorded their
+visits to Twickenham:
+
+    'There, my retreat the best companions grace,
+    Chiefs out of war, and statesmen out of place,
+    There St. John mingles with my friendly bowl,
+    The feast of reason and the flow of soul,
+    And he whose lightning pierced the Iberian lines[18]
+    Now forms my quincunx and now ranks my vines.'
+
+Among Pope's associates was the 'blameless Bethel,'
+
+           '---- who always speaks his thought,
+    And always thinks the very thing he ought,'
+
+and Berkeley who had 'every virtue under heaven,' and Lord Bathurst who
+was unspoiled by wealth and joined
+
+    'With splendour, charity; with plenty, health;'
+
+and 'humble Allen' who
+
+    'Did good by stealth and blushed to find it fame;'
+
+and many another friend who lives in his verse and is secure of the
+immortality a poet can confer.
+
+The five volumes which contain the letters between Pope and his friends
+exhibit an interesting picture of the times and of the writers. The
+poet's own letters, as may be supposed from the thought he bestowed on
+them, are full of artifice, and composed with the most elaborate care.
+Every sentence is elaborately turned, and the ease and naturalness which
+give a charm to the letters of Cowper and of Southey are not to be found
+in Pope. His epistles are weighted with compliments and with professions
+of the most exalted morality. 'He laboured them,' says Horace Walpole,
+'as much as the _Essay on Man_, and as they were written to everybody
+they do not look as if they had been written to anybody.' Pope said
+once, what he did not mean, that he could not write agreeable letters.
+This was true; his letters are, as Charles Fox said, 'very bad,' but
+some of Pope's friends write admirably, and if there is much that can be
+skipped without loss in the correspondence, there is much which no
+student of the period can afford to neglect. 'There has accumulated,'
+says Mark Pattison, 'round Pope's poems a mass of biographical anecdote
+such as surrounds the writings of no other English author,' and not a
+little knowledge of this kind is to be gleaned from his correspondence.
+
+In the years spent at Twickenham Pope produced his most characteristic
+work. It is as a satirist that he, with one exception, excels all
+English poets, and Pope's careful workmanship often makes his satirical
+touches more attractive than Dryden's.
+
+'To attack vices in the abstract,' he said to Arbuthnot, 'without
+touching persons, may be safe fighting indeed, but it is fighting with
+shadows;' and Pope, under the plea of a detestation of vice, generally
+betrayed his contempt or hatred of the men whom he assailed. No doubt
+the critics and Grub Street hacks of the day gave him provocation. Pope,
+however, was frequently the first to take the field, and so eager was he
+to meet his foes that it would seem as if he enjoyed the conflict. Yet
+there were times when he felt acutely the assaults made upon him. 'These
+things are my diversion,' he once said, with a ghastly smile, and it was
+observed that he writhed in agony like a man undergoing an operation.
+The attacks made with these paper bullets, not only on the side of Grub
+Street but on his own, show very vividly the coarseness of London
+society. Courtesy was disregarded by men who claimed to be wits and
+scholars. Pope held, perhaps, a higher place in literature in his own
+day than Lord Tennyson has held in ours, for the best beloved of
+Laureates had noble rivals and friends who came near to him in fame,
+while Pope, until the publication of Thomson's _Seasons_, in 1730, stood
+alone in poetical reputation. Yet he was reviled in the language of
+Billingsgate, and had no scruple in using that language himself. Late in
+life Pope collected the libels made upon him and bound them in four
+volumes, but he omitted to mention the provocation which gave rise to
+many of them. Eusden, Colley Cibber, Dennis, Theobald, Blackmore, Smyth,
+and Lord Hervey are among the prominent criminals placed in Pope's
+pillory, and the student of the age may find an idle entertainment in
+tracking the poet's thorny course, while he gives an unenviable
+notoriety to names of which the larger number were 'born to be forgot.'
+
+In 1725 Swift had written to Pope advising him not to immortalize the
+names of bad poets by putting them in his verse, and Pope replied to
+this advice by saying, 'I am much the happier for finding (a better
+thing than our wits) our judgments jump in the notion that all
+scribblers should be passed by in silence.' How entirely his inclination
+got the better of his judgment was seen three years later in the
+_Dunciad_. The first three books of this famous satire were published in
+1728. It is generally regarded as Pope's masterpiece, but the accuracy
+of such an estimate is doubtful. So heavily weighted is the poem with
+notes, prefaces, and introductions that the text appears to be smothered
+by them. It was Pope's aim to mystify his readers, and in this he has
+succeeded, for the mystifications of the poem even confound the
+commentators. The personalities of the satire excited a keen interest,
+and much amusement to readers who were not included in Pope's black list
+of dunces. At the same time it roused a number of authors to fury, as it
+well might. His satire is often unjust, and he includes among the dunces
+men wholly undeserving of the name, who had had the misfortune to offend
+him. To place a great scholar like Bentley, an eloquent and earnest
+preacher like Whitefield, and a man of genius like Defoe among the
+dunces was to stultify himself, and if Pope in his spite against
+Theobald found some justification for giving the commentator
+pre-eminence for dulness in three books of the _Dunciad_, his anger got
+the better of his wit when in Book IV. he dethroned Theobald to exalt
+Colley Cibber. For Cibber, with a thousand faults, so far from being
+dull had a buoyancy of heart and a sprightliness of intellect wholly out
+of harmony with the character he is made to assume.
+
+That he might have some excuse for his dashing assaults in the
+_Dunciad_, Pope had published in the third volume of the _Miscellanies_,
+of which he and Swift, Arbuthnot and Gay were the joint authors, an
+_Essay on Bathos_ in which several writers of the day were sneered at.
+The assault provoked the counter-attack for which Pope was looking, and
+he then produced the satire which was already prepared for the press. In
+its publication the poet, as usual, made use of trickery and deception.
+At first he issued an imperfect edition with initial letters instead of
+names, but on seeing his way to act more openly, the poem appeared in a
+large edition with names and notes.
+
+'In order to lessen the danger of prosecution for libel,' Mr. Courthope
+writes, 'he prevailed on three peers, with whom he was on the most
+intimate terms, the good-natured Lord Bathurst, the easy-going Earl of
+Oxford, and the magnificent Earl of Burlington, to act as his nominal
+publishers; and it was through them that copies of the enlarged edition
+were at first distributed, the booksellers not being allowed to sell any
+in their shops. The King and Queen were each presented with a copy by
+the hands of Sir R. Walpole. In this manner, as the report quickly
+spread that the poem was the property of rich and powerful noblemen,
+there was a natural disinclination on the part of the dunces to take
+legal proceedings, and the prestige of the _Dunciad_ being thus fairly
+established, the booksellers were allowed to proceed with the sale in
+regular course.'[19]
+
+The _Dunciad_ owes its merit to the literary felicities with which its
+pages abound. The theme is a mean one. Pope, from his social eminence at
+Twickenham, looks with scorn on the authors who write for bread, and
+with malignity on the authors whom he regarded as his enemies. There
+is, for the most part, little elevation in his method of treatment, and
+we can almost fancy that we see a cruel joy in the poet's face as he
+impales the victims of his wrath. Some portions of the _Dunciad_ are
+tainted with the imagery which, to quote the strong phrase of Mr.
+Churton Collins, often makes Swift as offensive as a polecat,[20] and
+there is no part of it which can be read with unmixed pleasure, if we
+except the noble lines which conclude the satire. Those lines may be
+almost said to redeem the faults of the poem, and they prove
+incontestably, if such proof be needed, Pope's claim to a place among
+the poets.
+
+    'In vain, in vain,--the all-composing Hour
+    Resistless falls; the Muse obeys the Power.
+    She comes! she comes! the sable Throne behold,
+    Of Night primaeval and of Chaos old!
+    Before her Fancy's gilded clouds decay,
+    And all its varying rainbows die away.
+    Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,
+    The meteor drops, and in a flash expires,
+    As one by one at dread Medea's strain,
+    The sickening stars fade off the etherial plain;
+    As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand opprest,
+    Closed one by one to everlasting rest;
+    Thus at her felt approach and secret might,
+    Art after Art goes out, and all is Night.
+    See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,
+    Mountains of Casuistry heaped o'er her head!
+    Philosophy that leaned on Heaven before,
+    Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more;
+    Physic of Metaphysic begs defence,
+    And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense!
+    See Mystery to Mathematics fly!
+    In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.
+    Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,
+    And unawares Morality expires.
+    Nor public Flame, nor private, dares to shine;
+    Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!
+    Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos! is restored;
+    Light dies before thy uncreating word;
+    Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
+    And universal Darkness buries All.'
+
+The publication of the _Dunciad_ showed Pope where his main strength as
+a poet lay. That the writers he had attacked, in many instances without
+provocation, should resent the ungrateful notoriety conferred upon them
+was inevitable. In self-defence, and to add to the provocation already
+given, he started a paper called the _Grub Street Journal_, which
+existed for eight years--Pope, who had no scruple in 'hazarding a lie,'
+denying all the time that he had any connection with it.
+
+His next work of significance, _The Essay on Man_, a professedly
+philosophical poem by an author who knew little of philosophy, was
+published in four epistles, in 1733-4. Bolingbroke's brilliant,
+versatile, and shallow intellect had strongly impressed Swift, and had
+also fascinated Pope. It has been commonly supposed that the _Essay_
+owes its existence to his suggestion and guidance. The poet believed in
+his philosophy, and had the loftiest estimate of his genius. In the last
+and perhaps finest passage of the poem he calls Bolingbroke the 'master
+of the poet and the song,' and draws a picture of the ambitious
+statesman as beautiful as it is false. In Mark Pattison's Introduction
+to _The Essay on Man_,[21] which every student of Pope will read, he
+objects to the notion that the poet took the scheme of his work from
+Bolingbroke, observing that both derived their views from a common
+source.
+
+'Everywhere, in the pulpit, in the coffee-houses, in every pamphlet,
+argument on the origin of evil, on the goodness of God, and the
+constitution of the world was rife. Into the prevailing topic of polite
+conversation Bolingbroke, who returned from exile in 1723, was drawn by
+the bent of his native genius. Pope followed the example and impulse of
+his friend's more powerful mind. Thus much there was of special
+suggestion. But the arguments or topics of the poem are to be traced to
+books in much vogue at the time; to Shaftesbury's _Characteristics_
+(1711), King on the _Origin of Evil_ (1702), and particularly to
+Leibnitz, _Essais de Theodicee_ (1710).'
+
+In admitting that Pope followed the impulse of a more powerful mind, Mr.
+Pattison asserts as much perhaps as can be known with certainty as to
+Bolingbroke's influence, but it is reasonable to believe that the close
+intercourse of the two men did immensely sway the more impressionable,
+and, so far as philosophy is concerned, the more ignorant of the two.
+Mr. Pattison also overlooks the fact that Pope confessed to Warburton
+that he had never read a line of Leibnitz in his life. That the poet
+acknowledges his large debt to Bolingbroke, and that Bolingbroke
+confesses it was due, is all that can be declared with certainty. That
+which makes the _Essay_ worthy the reading is the fruit, not of the
+argument but of the poetry, and for that Pope trusted to his own genius.
+
+His attempt to 'vindicate the ways of God to man' is confused and
+contradictory, and no modern reader, perplexed with the mystery of
+existence, is likely to gain aid from Pope. Nominally a Roman Catholic,
+and in reality a deist, apart from poetry he does not seem to have had
+strong convictions on any subject, and was content to be swayed by the
+opinions current in society. In undertaking to write an ethical work
+like the _Essay_ his ambition was greater than his strength, yet if
+Pope's philosophy does not 'find' us, to use Coleridge's phrase, it did
+appeal to a large number of minds in his own day, and had not lost its
+popularity at a later period. The poem has been frequently translated
+into French, into Italian, and into German; it was pronounced by
+Voltaire to be the most useful and sublime didactic poem ever written in
+any language; it was admired by Kant and quoted in his lectures; and it
+received high praise from the Scotch philosopher, Dugald Stewart. The
+charm of poetical expression is lost or nearly lost in translations, and
+while the sense may be retained the aroma of the verse is gone. The
+popularity of the _Essay_ abroad is therefore not easily to be accounted
+for, unless we accept the theory that the shallow creed on which it is
+based suited an age less earnest than our own.[22]
+
+Pope has no strong convictions in this poem, but he has many moods. On
+one page he is a pantheist, on another he says what he probably did not
+mean, that God inspires men to do evil, and on a third that 'all our
+knowledge is ourselves to know.' Nowhere in the argument does Pope seem
+to have a firm standing, and De Quincey is not far wrong in saying that
+it is 'the realization of anarchy.'
+
+Read the poem for its poetical merits and you will forget its defects.
+Pope was a superficial teacher, but direct teaching is not the end of
+poetry. _The Essay on Man_ is not a poem which can be read and re-read
+with ever-growing delight, but there are passages in it of as fine an
+order as any that he has composed on more familiar subjects. Pope was,
+as Sir William Hamilton said, a curious reader, and the ideas versified
+in the poem may be traced to a variety of sources. Students who wish to
+follow this track will find all the help they need in Mr. Pattison's
+instructive notes, and in the comments attached to the poem in Elwin and
+Courthope's edition. In his Introduction Mr. Pattison observes that 'the
+subject of the _Essay on Man_ is not, considered in itself, one unfit
+for poetry. Had Pope had a genius for philosophy there was no reason why
+he should not have selected a philosophical subject. Didactic poetry is
+a mistake if not a contradiction in terms. But poetry is not necessarily
+didactic because its subject is philosophical.'
+
+It is always difficult to define the themes suitable for poetry. Many
+theories have been formed as to the scope of the art, and poets have
+been amply instructed by critics as to what they ought to do, and what
+they should avoid doing. The theories may appear sound, the arguments
+convincing, until a great poet arises and knocks them on the head. In a
+sense every poet of the highest order is also a philosopher and a
+prophet who sees into 'the life of things.' Whether a philosophical
+subject can be fitly represented in the imaginative light of poetry is a
+matter for discussion rather than for decision. In the case of Pope,
+however, it will be evident to all studious readers that he was
+incapable of the continuous thought needed for the argument of the
+_Essay_.
+
+'Anything like sustained reasoning,' says Mr. Leslie Stephen,' was
+beyond his reach. Pope felt and thought by shocks and electric
+flashes.... The defect was aggravated or caused by the physical
+infirmities which put sustained intellectual labour out of the
+question.'[23]
+
+Crousaz, a Swiss pastor and professor, who appears to have competed with
+Berkeley for a prize and won it, attacked Pope's _Essay_ for its want of
+orthodoxy, and his work was translated into English. The poet became
+alarmed, but had the good fortune to find a champion in Warburton, who
+for the rest of his life did Pope much service, not always of a
+reputable kind. We shall have more to say of him later on, and it will
+suffice to observe here that Warburton, who through Pope's friendship
+obtained a good wife, a fortune, and a bishopric, was not a man of high
+character. His sole object was to advance in life, and he succeeded.
+
+The _Moral Essays_ as they are called, and the _Imitations from Horace_
+are the final and crowning efforts of the poet's genius. They contain
+his finest workmanship as a satirist, and will be read, I think, with
+more pleasure than the _Dunciad_, despite Mr. Ruskin's judgment of that
+poem as 'the most absolutely chiselled and monumental work "exacted" in
+our country.'[24] It is impossible to concur in this estimate. The
+imagery of the poem serves only to disgust, and the spiteful attacks
+made in it on forgotten men want the largeness of purpose that lifts
+satire above what is of temporary interest, making it a lesson for all
+time.
+
+Pope's venom, and the personal animosities which give the sharpest
+sting, and in some instances a zest, to his verse, are also amply
+displayed in the _Moral Essays_ and in the _Imitations_, but the scope
+is wider in these poems, and the subjects allow of more versatile
+treatment. They should be read with the help of notes, a help generally
+needed for satirical poetry, but it should be remembered always that
+editorial judgments are to be received with discretion and not servilely
+followed. There is perhaps no danger more carefully to be shunned by the
+student of literature than the habit of resting satisfied with opinions
+at second-hand. Better a wrong estimate formed after due reading and
+thought, than a right estimate gleaned from critics, without any thought
+at all.
+
+According to Warburton, who is as tricky as Pope himself when it suits
+his purpose to be so, the _Essay on Man_ was intended to form four
+books, in which, as part of the general design, the _Moral Essays_ would
+have been included, as well as Book IV. of the _Dunciad_, but to have
+welded these _Essays_, which were published separately, into one
+continuous poem would neither have suited Pope's genius nor the
+character of the poems; and how the last book of the _Dunciad_ could
+have been included in such an _olla podrida_ it is difficult to
+conceive. The poet was fond of projects, and this, happily for his
+readers, remained one. The dates of the four _Essays_, which are really
+Epistles, and appeared in folio pamphlets, run over several years, but
+were afterwards re-arranged by Pope. That to Lord Burlington, _Of the
+Use of Riches_ (Epistle IV.), was published in 1731, under the title,
+_Of False Taste_; that to Lord Bathurst, _Of the Use of Riches_ (Epistle
+III), in 1732; the epistle to Lord Cobham (Epistle I.), _Of the
+Knowledge and Characters of Men_, bears the date of 1733; and that To a
+Lady (Epistle II.), _Of the Characters of Women_, in 1735. Pope wrote
+other Epistles, some at a much earlier period of his career, which
+follow the _Moral Essays_ but are not connected with them. Of these one
+is addressed to Addison, two are to Martha Blount, for whom the second
+of the _Moral Essays_ was written; one to the painter Jervas, originally
+printed in 1717; while another, a few lines only in length, was
+addressed to Craggs when Secretary of State. Space will not allow of
+examining each of the _Essays_ minutely, but there are portions of them
+which call for comment.
+
+The first _Moral Essay_, _Of the Knowledge and Characters of Men_, in
+which Pope enlarges on his theory of a ruling passion, affords a
+significant example of his incapacity for sustaining an argument, since
+Warburton, to use his own words, entirely changed and reversed the order
+and disposition of the several parts to make the composition more
+coherent. That he has succeeded is doubtful, that he should have
+ventured upon such a task shows where Pope's weakness lay as a
+philosophical poet. It is the least interesting of the _Essays_, but is
+not without lines that none but Pope could have written. _The Characters
+of Women_, the subject of the second _Essay_, was not one which the
+satirist could treat with justice. He saw little in the sex save their
+foibles, and the lines with which it opens show the spirit that animates
+the poem:
+
+    'Nothing so true as what you once let fall;
+    "Most women have no character at all,"
+    Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,
+    And best distinguished by black, brown, or fair.'
+
+The satire contains one of Pope's offensive allusions to Lady Mary, and
+the celebrated portrait drawn from two notable women, the Duchess of
+Buckingham and Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, from the latter of whom
+the poet, at one time, despite his unquestionable love of independence,
+received L1,000. The story, like many another in the career of Pope, is
+wrapt in mystery.
+
+Pope took great pains with the Epistle _Of the Use of Riches_. It was
+altered from the original conception by the advice of Warburton, who
+cared more for the argument of a poem than for its poetry. The thought
+and purpose of the _Essay_ are defective, notwithstanding Warburton's
+effort to clear them, but these defects are of slight moment when
+compared with the brilliant passages with which the poem is studded.
+Among them is the famous description of the Duke of Buckingham's
+death-bed which should be compared with Dryden's equally famous lines
+on the same nobleman's character.
+
+    'In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung,
+    The floors of plaster, and the walls of dung,
+    On once a flock-heel, but repaired with straw,
+    With tape-tied curtains never meant to draw,
+    The George and Garter dangling from that bed
+    Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,
+    Great Villiers lies--alas! how changed from him,
+    That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim!
+    Gallant and gay, in Cliveden's proud alcove,
+    The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love;
+    Or just as gay at council, in a ring
+    Of mimic statesmen and their merry King.
+    No wit to flatter left of all his store!
+    No fool to laugh at, which he valued more.
+    There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends,
+    And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends.'
+
+There is also a covert attack in this Epistle upon the moneyed interest
+represented by Walpole, and on the political corruption which he
+sanctioned and promoted. Yet Pope knew how to praise the great Whig
+statesman for his social qualities:
+
+    'Seen him I have, but in his happier hour
+    Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power;
+    Seen him uncumbered with the venal tribe,
+    Smile without art and win without a bribe.'
+
+Epistle IV. pursues the same subject as the third, and deals mainly with
+false taste in the expenditure of wealth, and with the necessity of
+following 'sense, of every art the soul.' In this poem there is the
+far-famed description of Timon's Villa, and by Timon Pope was accused of
+representing the Duke of Chandos, whose estate at Canons he is supposed
+to have held in scorn after having been, as he acknowledges,
+'distinguished' by its master. That would not have deterred Pope from
+producing a brilliant picture, and his equivocations did but serve to
+increase suspicion. Probably he found it convenient to use some features
+of what he may have seen at Canons while composing a general sketch with
+no special application. The _Moral Essays_, it may be added, are not
+especially moral, but they are full of fine things, and form a portion
+of Pope's verse second only to the _Imitations from Horace_.
+
+These _Imitations_ are introduced by the Prologue addressed to Dr.
+Arbuthnot, a poem of more than common brilliancy, and also more than
+commonly venomous. Nowhere, perhaps, is there in Pope's works so
+powerful and bitter an attack as the twenty-five lines in the Prologue
+devoted to the vivisection of Lord Hervey, which we are forced to admire
+while feeling their malevolence; nowhere is there a more consummate
+piece of satire than the twenty-two lines that contain the poet's
+masterpiece, the character of Atticus; and nowhere, I may add, are there
+lines more personally interesting. Portions of the poem were written
+long before the date of publication, and this is Pope's excuse, a rather
+lame one perhaps, for printing the character of Atticus and the lines on
+his mother after the death of Addison and of Mrs. Pope.
+
+'When I had a fever one winter in town,' Pope said to his friend Spence,
+'that confined me to my room for some days, Lord Bolingbroke came to see
+me, happened to take up a Horace that lay on the table, and in turning
+it over dipt on the first satire of the second book. He observed how
+well that would hit my case if I were to imitate it in English. After he
+was gone I read it over, translated it in a morning or two, and sent it
+to press in a week or fortnight after. And this was the occasion of my
+imitating some other of the satires and epistles afterwards.'
+
+Bolingbroke did his friend a better service in giving this advice than
+he had done with regard to the _Essay on Man_; and the six _Imitations_,
+with the Prologue and Epilogue, which are among the latest fruits of
+Pope's genius as a satirist, are also the ripest.
+
+Warburton, writing of the _Imitations of Horace_, says: 'Whoever expects
+a paraphrase of Horace or a faithful copy of his genius or his manner of
+writing in these _Imitations_ will be much disappointed. Our author uses
+the Roman poet for little more than his canvas; and if the old design or
+colouring chance to suit his purpose, it is well; if not, he employs his
+own without scruple or ceremony.'
+
+This is true. Pope makes use of Horace when it suits his convenience,
+but never follows him servilely, and quits him altogether when his
+design carries him another way.
+
+It was inevitable that he should exercise this freedom, since, as
+Johnson has pointed out, there will always be an irreconcilable
+dissimilitude between Roman images and English manners. Moreover, the
+aim of the two poets was different, Pope's main object being to express
+personal enmities and to give an exalted notion of his own virtue.
+
+In the opening lines of his First Satire Pope follows Horace pretty
+closely. Both poets complain that some persons think them too severe,
+and others too complaisant; both take the advice of a lawyer, Horace of
+C. Trebatius Testa, who gives him the pithiest replies; and Pope of
+Fortescue. Both complain that they cannot sleep, the prescription of a
+wife and cowslip wine being given by the English adviser, while Testa
+advises Horace to swim thrice across the Tiber and moisten his lips with
+wine. Throughout the rest of the satire Pope takes only casual glances
+at the Roman original, and if in the Second Satire the English poet
+follows Horace in the first few verses in recommending frugality, and in
+the advice to keep the middle state, and neither to lean on this side or
+on that, the resemblance between the poets is seldom striking, and the
+spirit which animates them is different,--Horace being classical, and
+therefore open to the apprehension of all educated readers, while Pope
+is in a sense provincial, and, as I have already said with reference to
+the _Dunciad_, cannot be fully enjoyed or even understood without some
+knowledge of the time and of the men whom he lashes in his satire. The
+Sixth Epistle of the First Book of Horace, which Pope attempts to
+imitate, is, as Mr. Courthope observes, 'incapable of imitation. Its
+humour, no less than its philosophy, belongs entirely to the Pagan
+World.' In a general sense it is also true that Horace's style, whether
+of language or of thought, will not bear transplanting. Indeed, whatever
+is most characteristic and most exquisite in a poet's work is precisely
+the portion which cannot be clothed in a foreign dress.
+
+'Life,' said Pope, 'when the first heats are over is all down hill,' and
+with him the downward progress began at a time when most men are still
+standing on the summit. Never was there a more fiery spirit in so weak a
+body. He suffered frequently from headaches, which he relieved by
+inhaling the steam of coffee. Unfortunately he pampered his appetite and
+paid a heavy penalty for doing so. Every change of weather affected him;
+and at the time when most people indulge in company, he tells Swift that
+he hid himself in bed. Although he sneers at Lord Hervey for taking
+asses' milk he tried that remedy himself, and he frequently needed
+medical aid. In his early days he was strong enough to ride on
+horseback, but in later life his weakness was so great that he was in
+constant need of help. M. Taine, whose criticism of Pope needs to be
+read with caution, indulges in an exaggerated description of his bodily
+condition, observing that when arrived at maturity he appeared no longer
+capable of existing, and styling him 'a nervous abortion.' The poet's
+condition was sad enough as told by Dr. Johnson, without amplifying it
+as M. Taine has done. 'One side was contracted. His legs were so slender
+that he enlarged their bulk with three pairs of stockings, which were
+drawn on and off by the maid; for he was not able to dress or undress
+himself, and neither went to bed nor rose without help. His weakness
+made it very difficult for him to be clean.' After this forlorn
+description of the poet's state it is a little grotesque to read that
+his dress of ceremony was black, with a tie-wig and a little sword. A
+distorted body often holds a generous and untainted soul. This was not
+the case with Pope, and the sympathy he stood in so large a need of
+himself, was seldom given to others.
+
+In the spring of 1744 it became evident that the end was approaching.
+Three weeks before his death he distributed the _Moral Epistles_ among
+his friends, saying: 'Here I am, like Socrates, dispensing my morality
+amongst my friends just as I am dying.' He died peacefully on May 30th,
+1744, and was buried in Twickenham Church near the monument erected to
+his parents.
+
+Pope's standing among his country's poets has been the source of much
+controversy. There have been critics who deny to him the name of a poet,
+while others place him in the first rank. In his own century there was
+comparatively little difference of opinion with regard to his merits.
+Chesterfield gave him the warmest praise; Swift, Addison, and Warburton
+ranked him with the peers of song; Johnson, whose discriminative
+criticism reaches perhaps its highest level in his _Life of Pope_, in
+reply to the question which had been asked, even in his day, whether
+Pope was a poet? asks in return, 'If Pope be not a poet, where is poetry
+to be found?' and adds that 'to circumscribe poetry by a definition will
+only show the narrowness of the definer, though a definition which shall
+exclude Pope will not readily be made.' Joseph Warton, too, Johnson's
+contemporary and friend, while preferring the Romantic School to the
+Classical, allows that in that species of poetry wherein Pope excelled
+he is superior to all mankind.
+
+In our century Bowles, whose edition of his works provoked prolonged
+discussion, in which Campbell, Byron, and the _Quarterly Review_ took
+part, places Pope above Dryden. Byron, with more enthusiasm than
+judgment, regarded him as the greatest name in our poetry; Scott, with
+generous appreciation of a genius so alien to his own, called him a
+'true Deacon of the craft,' and at one time proposed editing his works,
+a task projected also by Mr. Ruskin, who, putting Shakespeare aside as
+rather the world's than ours, holds Pope 'to be the most perfect
+representative we have since Chaucer of the true English mind.' 'Matched
+on his own ground,' says Mr. Swinburne, 'he never has been nor can be.'
+And Mr. Lowell in the same strain observes that 'in his own province he
+still stands unapproachably alone.'
+
+What then is Pope's ground? What is this province of which he is the
+sole ruler? To a considerable extent the question has been answered in
+these pages, but it may be well to sum up with more definiteness what
+has been already stated.
+
+In poetry Pope takes a first place in the second order of poets. The
+deficiencies which forbid his entrance into the first rank are obvious.
+He cannot sing, he has no ear for the subtlest melodies of verse, he is
+not a creative poet, and has few of the spirit-stirring thoughts which
+the noblest poets scatter through their pages with apparent
+unconsciousness. There are no depths in Pope and there are no heights;
+he has neither eye for the beauties of Nature, nor ear for her
+harmonies, and a primrose was no more to him than it was to Peter Bell.
+
+These are defects indeed, but nothing is more unfair says a great French
+critic than to judge notable minds solely by their defects, and in spite
+of them Pope's position is so unassailable that the critic must take a
+contracted view of the poet's art who questions his right to the title.
+
+His merits are of a kind not likely to be affected by time; a lively
+fancy, a power of satire almost unrivalled, and a skill in using words
+so consummate that there is no poet, excepting Shakespeare, who has left
+his mark upon the language so strongly. The loss to us if Pope's verse
+were to become extinct cannot readily be measured. He has said in the
+best words what we all know and feel, but cannot express, and has made
+that classical which in weaker hands would be commonplace. His
+sensibility to the claims of his art is exquisite, the adaptation of his
+style to his subject shows the hand of a master, and if these are not
+the highest gifts of a poet, they are gifts to which none but a poet can
+lay claim.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[11] Some qualification may be made to these statements. Pope took
+pleasure in landscape gardening on the English plan, as opposed to the
+formality of the French and Dutch systems, and the design of the Prince
+of Wales's garden is said to have been copied from the poet's at
+Twickenham.
+
+[12] Elwin and Courthope's _Pope_, vol. ii. p. 160.
+
+[13] See the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.
+
+[14] Elwin and Courthope's _Pope_, vol. v., p. 195.
+
+[15] 'Lady Mary,' says Byron, 'was greatly to blame in that quarrel for
+having encouraged Pope.... She should have remembered her own line,
+
+    '"He comes too near who comes to be denied."'
+
+
+[16] _Studies in English Literature_, p. 47.--_Stanford._
+
+[17] Quin (1693-1766) was the famous actor, and Patterson was Thomson's
+deputy in the surveyor-generalship of the Leeward Isles, and ultimately
+his successor.
+
+[18] The Earl of Peterborough, the meteor-like brilliancy of whose
+actions forms one of the most striking chapters in the history of his
+time.
+
+[19] _Life of Pope_, p. 216.
+
+[20] 'Pope and Swift,' says Dr. Johnson, 'had an unnatural delight in
+ideas physically impure, such as every other tongue utters with
+unwillingness, and of which every ear shrinks from the mention.'
+
+[21] Clarendon Press, Oxford.
+
+[22] No doubt many distinguished foreigners who appreciated the beauty
+of the poem had read it in the original.
+
+[23] Stephen's _Pope_, p. 163.
+
+[24] _Lectures on Art_, p. 70, Oxford.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+PRIOR, GAY, YOUNG, BLAIR, THOMSON.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Matthew Prior (1664-1721).]
+
+The ease with which the Queen Anne wits obtained office and rose to
+posts of high trust through the pleasant art of verse-making, is
+conspicuous in the career of Prior. His parents are unknown, the place
+of his birth is somewhat doubtful, although he is claimed by
+Wimborne-Minster, in Dorsetshire, and the first trustworthy facts
+recorded of his early career are that he was a Westminster scholar when
+the famous Dr. Busby, whose discipline was physical as well as mental,
+presided over the school. His father died, and his mother being no
+longer able to pay the school fees, Prior was placed with an uncle who
+kept the Rhenish Wine Tavern in Westminster. His seat was in the bar,
+and there the Earl of Dorset (1637-1705-6), a small poet, but a generous
+patron of poets, found the youth reading Horace, and, pleased with his
+'parts,' sent him back to Westminster, whence he went up to Cambridge as
+a scholar at St. John's, the college destined a century later to receive
+one of the greatest of English poets.
+
+Charles Montague, afterwards Earl of Halifax (1661-1715), the son of a
+younger son of a nobleman, was also a Westminster scholar. He entered
+Trinity College in 1679, and like Prior appears to have owed his good
+fortune to the rhymer's craft. 'At thirty,' writes Lord Macaulay, 'he
+would gladly have given all his chances in life for a comfortable
+vicarage and a chaplain's scarf. At thirty-seven he was First Lord of
+the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a Regent of the Kingdom.'
+The literary history of the Queen Anne age has many associations with
+his name. He proved a liberal patron of the wits, and of Pope among
+them, by subscribing largely to his _Homer_; but the poet's memory was
+stronger for imaginary injuries than for real benefits, and because
+Halifax had patronized Tickell, he figures in the Prologue to the
+Satires as 'full-blown Bufo, puffed by every quill.'
+
+Prior and Montague began their rhyming career early, and a partnership
+production, entitled the _Hind and Panther, transversed to the story of
+the Country Mouse and the City Mouse_ (1687), a parody of Dryden's
+famous poem published in the same year, brought both authors into
+notice. At the age of twenty-six Prior, who had previously obtained a
+fellowship, was appointed Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague. After
+that he rose steadily to eminence, became Secretary of State in Ireland,
+and was finally appointed Ambassador at the French Court. High office
+brings its troubles, and in those days was not without its perils. In
+1711 Prior was sent secretly to Paris to negotiate a peace, for which,
+when the Whigs came again into power, he was imprisoned and expected to
+lose his head. While in prison, where he remained for two years
+(1715-1717), the poet wrote _Alma_, a humorous and speculative poem on
+the relations of the soul and body, and when released published his
+_Poems_ by subscription in a noble folio, said to be the largest-sized
+volume in the whole range of English poetry. He gained 4,000 guineas by
+the publication, and with that sum and an estate purchased for him by
+Lord Harley, Prior was able to live in comfort. He died in September,
+1721, in his fifty-eighth year, and was buried in Westminster Abbey,
+under a monument for which he had had the vanity to pay five hundred
+pounds.
+
+The peculiar merit of Prior is better understood in our day than it was
+in his own. We read his poems solely for the sake of the 'lighter
+pieces,' which Johnson despised. The poet thought _Solomon_ his best
+work, but no one who toils through the three books which form that poem
+is likely to agree with this estimate. Dulness pervades the work like an
+atmosphere, but it had its admirers in the last century, and among them
+was John Wesley, who, in reply to Johnson's complaint of its
+tediousness, said he should as soon think of calling the Second or Sixth
+AEneid tedious. In the preface to the poem Prior declares that he "had
+rather be thought a good Englishman than the best poet or greatest
+scholar that ever wrote," a passage which does more honour to the poet
+than any in the text. A far more popular piece was _Henry and Emma_,
+which even so fine a judge of poetry as Cowper called 'inimitable.'
+Tastes change, let us hope for the better, and possibly none but the
+greatest poets remain unaffected by time. Assuredly Prior does not, and
+_Henry and Emma_ affords a striking illustration of the contrast between
+the poetical spirit of Prior's age and that which influences ours. The
+poem is founded on the fine ballad of the _Nut-Browne Maide_. The story,
+as originally told, is homely and quaint, written without apparent
+effort and told in 360 lines. Prior requires considerably more than
+twice that number, and his maid and her lover, instead of using the
+simple language befitting the theme, employ the conventional machinery
+of the age, and bring Jove and Mars, Cupid and Venus upon the scene,
+with allusions to Marlborough's victories and to 'Anna's wondrous
+reign.'
+
+_Alma_, a poem written in Hudibrastic verse, which shows that Prior had
+in a measure caught the vein of Butler, has some couplets familiar in
+quotations. He won, too, not a little contemporary reputation for his
+tales in verse, which are singularly coarse; but an age that tolerated
+Mrs. Manley and read the plays and novels of Aphra Behn was not likely
+to object to the grossness of Prior. Dr. Johnson would not admit that
+his poems were unfit for a lady's table, and Wesley, who appears to have
+been strangely oblivious to Prior's moral delinquencies, observes that
+his tales are the best told of any in the English tongue. Cowper praised
+him for his 'charming ease,' and this gift enabled him to write some of
+the most delightful occasional verses produced in the century. There is
+nothing more exquisite of its kind than his address, _To a Child of
+Quality_, written when the child was five years old and the poet forty,
+and one is not surprised to learn that Prior was admired by Thomas
+Moore, who more than once caught his note. A reader familiar with Moore
+and ignorant of Prior would without hesitation attribute the following
+stanzas, from the _Answer to Chloe Jealous_, to the Irish poet:
+
+    'The god of us versemen (you know, Child), the sun,
+      How after his journeys he sets up his rest;
+    If at morning o'er earth 'tis his fancy to run,
+      At night he declines on his Thetis's breast.
+
+    'So when I am wearied with wandering all day,
+      To thee, my delight, in the evening I come;
+    No matter what beauties I saw in my way;
+      They were but my visits, but thou art my home.
+
+    'Then finish, dear Cloe, this pastoral war,
+      And let us, like Horace and Lydia, agree;
+    For thou art a girl as much brighter than her
+      As he was a poet sublimer than me.'
+
+"The grammatical lapse in these last two lines," says Mr. Austin Dobson,
+"perhaps calls for correction, but many readers will probably agree with
+Moore (_Diary_, November, 1818), 'that it is far prettier as it is.'
+'Nothing,' he says truly, 'can be more gracefully light and gallant than
+this little poem.'"
+
+It was fancy and not imagination which conceived the following lines,
+but how charming is the fancy! The poem, which is given in a slightly
+abridged form, is addressed
+
+'TO A LADY: SHE REFUSING TO CONTINUE A DISPUTE WITH ME, AND LEAVING ME
+IN THE ARGUMENT.
+
+    'In the dispute whate'er I said,
+      My heart was by my tongue belied;
+    And in my looks you might have read
+      How much I argued on your side.
+
+    'You, far from danger as from fear,
+      Might have sustained an open fight;
+    For seldom your opinions err;
+      Your eyes are always in the right.
+
+    'Alas! not hoping to subdue,
+      I only to the fight aspired;
+    To keep the beauteous foe in view
+      Was all the glory I desired.
+
+    'But she, howe'er of victory sure,
+      Contemns the wreath too long delayed;
+    And, armed with more immediate power,
+      Calls cruel silence to her aid.
+
+    'Deeper to wound, she shuns the fight:
+      She drops her arms, to gain the field;
+    Secures her conquest by her flight;
+      And triumphs, when she seems to yield.
+
+    'So when the Parthian turned his steed,
+      And from the hostile camp withdrew;
+    With cruel skill the backward reed
+      He sent; and as he fled, he slew.'
+
+Wit and a ready command of verse are the characteristics of Prior's
+poetry. Both of these gifts are to be seen in his lively _English
+ballad on the Taking of Namur by the King of Great Britain_, in which he
+travesties Boileau's _Ode sur la prise de Namur_. As an epigrammatist he
+reaped his advantage from a study of Martial, and in this department of
+verse Prior is often successful. If brevity be a prominent merit in an
+epigram, he sometimes excels his master, as, for example, in this
+stanza:
+
+    'To John I owed great obligation;
+      But John unhappily thought fit
+    To publish it to all the nation;
+      Sure John and I are more than quit.'[25]
+
+This is half the length of the original Latin, and what it loses in
+elegance it gains in point.
+
+It may be hoped that the next quotation is a libel on Bishop Atterbury;
+if so, the lines have every merit but truth. The epigram is on the
+funeral of the Duke of Buckingham, who died in 1721.
+
+    'I have no hopes,' the duke he says, and dies;
+    'In sure and certain hopes,' the prelate cries:
+    Of these two learned peers, I prithee say, man,
+    Who is the lying knave, the priest or layman?
+    The duke he stands an infidel confest;
+    'He's our dear brother,' quoth the lordly priest.
+    The duke, though knave, still 'brother dear,' he cries;
+    And who can say the reverend prelate lies?
+
+Prior, it may be observed here, could say pointed things in prose as
+well as in verse, and nothing can be happier than his reply to the
+Frenchman's inquiry whether the King of England had anything to show in
+his palace equal to the paintings at Versailles illustrating the
+victories of Louis XIV: 'The monuments of my master's actions,' said the
+poet, 'are to be seen everywhere except in his own house.'
+
+It is always interesting to link poet with poet, and in relation to
+Prior many readers will recall the pathetic incident related of Sir
+Walter Scott when the wonderful intellect which had entranced the world
+was giving indications of decay. Lockhart relates how, as they were
+travelling together, a quotation from Prior led Scott to make another,
+slightly altered for the occasion, and he adds:
+
+'This seemed to put him into the train of Prior, and he repeated several
+striking passages both of the _Alma_ and the _Solomon_. He was still at
+this when we reached a longish hill, and he got out to walk a little. As
+we climbed the ascent, he leaning heavily on my shoulder, we were met by
+a couple of beggars, who were, or professed to be, old soldiers both of
+Egypt and the Peninsula. One of them wanted a leg, which circumstance
+alone would have opened Scott's purse-strings, though, _ex facie_, a sad
+old blackguard; but the fellow had recognized his person as it happened,
+and in asking an alms bade God bless him fervently by his name. The
+mendicants went on their way, and we stood breathing on the knoll. Sir
+Walter followed them with his eye, and planting his stick firmly on the
+sod, repeated, without break or hesitation Prior's verses to the
+historian Mezeray. That he applied them to himself was touchingly
+obvious, and therefore I must quote them.
+
+    '"Whate'er thy countrymen have done,
+    By law and wit, by sword and gun,
+      In thee is faithfully recited;
+    And all the living world that view
+    Thy work, give thee the praises due,
+      At once instructed and delighted.
+
+    '"Yet for the fame of all these deeds,
+    What beggar in the _Invalides_,
+      With lameness broke, with blindness smitten,
+    Wished ever decently to die,
+    To have been either Mezeray,
+      Or any monarch he has written?
+
+    '"It strange, dear author, yet it true is,
+    That down from Pharamond to Louis
+      All covet life, yet call it pain:
+    All feel the ill, yet shun the cure;
+    Can sense this paradox endure?
+      Resolve me Cambray[26] or Fontaine.
+
+    '"The man in graver tragic known
+    (Though his best part long since was done),
+      Still on the stage desires to tarry;
+    And he who played the Harlequin,
+    After the jest still loads the scene,
+      Unwilling to retire, though weary."'
+
+[Sidenote: John Gay (1685-1732).]
+
+Gay, who enjoyed an unbroken friendship with the brotherhood of wits,
+and was treated by them like a spoilt child, was born at Barnstaple in
+1685, and left an orphan at the age of ten. He was educated at the free
+grammar school in the town, and was afterwards, to his discontent,
+apprenticed to a mercer in London. He escaped from this uncongenial
+employment to be dependent on an uncle, and thus early exhibited his
+life-long disposition to rely upon others for support. 'Providence,'
+Swift writes, 'never designed Gay to be above two-and-twenty by his
+thoughtlessness and gullibility. He has as little foresight of age,
+sickness, poverty, or loss of admirers as a girl of fifteen.' His
+weakness, it has been said, appealed to Swift's strength, and Swift,
+Pope, and Arbuthnot were Gay's most faithful friends. They found
+something in him to laugh at and to love. Ladies, too, treated him with
+the kind of friendliness which has a touch of commiseration. In 1714 Gay
+was appointed secretary to Lord Clarendon, a post which he owed to
+Swift, but the death of Queen Anne in that year brought the Whigs into
+office, and destroyed the poet's prospects. Prior to this he had been
+secretary to the imperious Duchess of Monmouth. He was now left without
+money or employment, and owed much to the generosity of Pope. It was
+Gay's lot 'in suing long to bide,' to be always hoping, and nearly
+always disappointed. 'He seems,' says his latest biographer, 'to have
+begun his career under the impression that it was somebody's duty to
+provide for him in the world, and this impression clung to him through
+nearly the whole of a lifetime.'[27] Ten years before his death he was
+eagerly looking to others for support. Writing to Swift, he says: 'I
+lodge at present in Burlington House, and have received many civilities
+from many great men, but very few real benefits. They wonder at each
+other for not providing for me, and I wonder at them all.'
+
+Gay's first poem of any mark was _The Shepherd's Week_ (1714), six
+burlesque pastorals, a subject proposed to him by Pope, who was then
+smarting from the praise Philips had received in _The Guardian_. But if
+Pope meant Gay to poke his fun at Philips in _The Shepherd's Week_, he
+must have been disappointed, for the poems were accepted as genuine
+bucolics, and although humorously absurd, are, to say the least, more
+true to rustic life than the pastorals either of Philips or of Pope.
+_The Shepherd's Week_ was followed by _Trivia_ (1715), a piece suggested
+by Swift's _City Shower_. It is one of Gay's most notable productions,
+not as a poem, but as a vivid description of the streets of London
+nearly two hundred years ago. The great reputation he obtained as the
+author of _The Fables_ (1727), and still more of _The Beggar's Opera_
+(1728), the idea of which was suggested to Gay by Swift, survived him
+for some years. _The Fables_ were written for and dedicated to the
+youthful Duke of Cumberland, who is asked to "accept the moral lay, and
+in these tales mankind survey." There is skill and ingenuity in the
+poems, but higher merit they cannot boast, and young readers are likely
+to prefer the illustrations which generally accompany _The Fables_ to
+the letterpress. Many of Gay's allusions are beyond the apprehension of
+the young, and have a political flavour. _The Beggar's Opera_ was
+intended as a burlesque of the Italian opera, which had been long the
+laughing-stock of men of letters, and as the play was thought to have
+political significance, and the character of Macheath to be a portrait
+of Walpole, it was received with enthusiasm, and acted in London for
+about sixty nights. So popular did the opera become, that ladies carried
+about the songs on their fans.
+
+Eight years before, Gay had published his poems by subscription, and in
+those happy days for versemen had gained L1,000 by the venture. He put
+the money into South Sea stock, and lost it all. For _The Beggar's
+Opera_ he received about L800. It was followed by _Polly_, a play of the
+same coarse character, which, for political reasons, was not allowed to
+be acted. The result was that it had a large sale, and put money in
+Gay's purse. Ten thousand five hundred copies are said to have been
+printed in one year, and the L1,200 realized by the sale were very
+wisely retained for the poet's use by the Duke of Queensberry, under
+whose roof he had at length found a warm nest. To the student Gay is
+chiefly interesting as the only noteworthy poet of the period, south of
+the Tweed, gifted with a lyrical capacity. Two or three of his songs and
+ballads, and especially _Black-Eyed Susan_, have a charm beyond the
+reach of the mechanical versifier. But the art of song is at a low level
+even in the hands of Gay. The lyric which the Elizabethan and Jacobean
+poets loved so well, and of which the present century has produced
+specimens to be matched only by Shakespeare, may be said to have been
+lost to English poetry for the first half of the last century, since
+neither Prior's verse, delightful though it be, nor the songs of Gay,
+have enough of the poetical element to form exceptions to this
+statement.
+
+In his _Tales_ he follows Prior in grossness, while inferior to him in
+art. Like the greater number of the Queen Anne poets, Gay flatters with
+a free hand. In an epistle addressed to Lintot, the bookseller, he
+declares that Anacreon lives once more in Sheffield, and Waller in
+Granville, that Buckingham's verse will last to distant time; while Ovid
+sings again in Addison, and 'Homer's _Iliad_ shines in his _Campaign_.'
+
+One of the liveliest and most graceful of Gay's poems is addressed to
+Pope 'On his having finished his translation of Homer's _Iliad_.' It is
+called _A Welcome from Greece_, and describes the friends who assembled
+to greet the poet on his return to England.
+
+Three stanzas from the Epistle shall be quoted:
+
+    'Oh, what a concourse swarms on yonder quay!
+      The sky re-echoes with new shouts of joy;
+    By all this show, I ween 'tis Lord Mayor's day;
+      I hear the voice of trumpet and hautboy--
+    No, now I see them near.--Oh, these are they
+      Who come in crowds to welcome thee from Troy.
+    Hail to the bard, whom long as lost we mourned
+    From siege, from battle, and from storm returned!
+
+    'What lady's that to whom he gently bends?
+      Who knows not her? Ah! those are Wortley's eyes:
+    How art thou honoured, numbered with her friends!
+      For she distinguishes the good and wise.
+    The sweet-tongued Murray near her side attends;
+      Now to my heart the glance of Howard flies;
+    Now Hervey, fair of face, I mark full well,
+    With thee Youth's youngest daughter, sweet Lepell.
+
+    'I see two lovely sisters hand in hand,
+      The fair-haired Martha and Teresa brown;
+    Madge Bellenden, the tallest of the land;
+      And smiling Mary, soft and fair as down.
+    Yonder I see the cheerful Duchess stand,
+      For friendship, zeal, and blithesome humours known;
+    Whence that loud shout in such a hearty strain?
+    Why, all the Hamiltons are in her train!'
+
+Gay's love of good living was known to all his friends. 'As the French
+philosopher,' Congreve wrote, 'used to prove his existence by _cogito
+ergo sum_, the greatest proof of Gay's existence is _edit ergo est_.'
+For a long time his health compelled him to give up wine, and he tells
+Swift that he had also left off verse-making, 'for I really think that
+man must be a bold writer who trusts to wit without it.' He was
+dispirited, he told Swift not long before his death, for want of a
+pursuit, and found 'indolence and idleness the most tiresome things in
+the world.'
+
+Gay died in 1732 at the Duke of Queensberry's house, and Pope grieved
+that one of his nearest and longest ties was broken. He was interred, to
+quote Arbuthnot's words, 'as a peer of the realm,' in Westminster Abbey.
+The superficial character of the poet may be seen in his couplet
+transcribed upon the monument:
+
+    'Life is a jest, and all things show it;
+    I thought so once, and now I know it.'
+
+[Sidenote: Edward Young (1684-1765).]
+
+Gay's moderate gift of song was withheld from the famous author of the
+_Night Thoughts_. Yet Young was vain enough to think that he possessed
+it, and wrote a patriotic ode called _Ocean_, preceded by an elaborate
+essay on lyric poetry. He also produced _Imperium Pelagi_ (1729), _A
+Naval Lyric written in Imitation of Pindar's spirit_. The lyric, which
+was travestied by Fielding in his _Tom Thumb_,[28] reads like a
+burlesque, and badly treated though Pindar was by the versemen of the
+last century, there is perhaps not one of them who mocks him more
+outrageously than Young. He says that this ode is an original, and no
+critic is likely to dispute the assertion.
+
+Young was born in 1684 at Upham, near Winchester, his father, who was
+afterwards Dean of Sarum, being at that time the rector of the village.
+Edward was placed upon the foundation at Winchester College, and
+remained there until he was eighteen. He was then sent up to New
+College, and afterwards removed to Corpus. At the age of twenty-seven he
+was nominated to a law fellowship at All Souls, and took his degree of
+B.C.L. and his doctor's degree some years later. Characteristically
+enough he began his poetical career by _An Epistle to Lord Lansdowne_
+(1712), who is praised for his heavenly numbers, and is said to have
+been born "to make the muse immortal." His next poem of any consequence,
+_The Last Day_, written in heroic couplets, and filling three books, is
+correct, or fairly so, in versification, and execrable in taste. Young,
+it may be supposed, wished to produce a sense of solemnity in the
+treatment of his theme, and he does so by lamenting that the very land
+'where the Stuarts filled an awful throne' will in that day be
+forgotten. The want of taste which so often deforms Young's verse is
+also seen in the imagery he employs to illustrate the fear which even
+good men may have on appearing before that 'dread tribunal.'
+
+    'Thus the chaste bridegroom, when the priest draws nigh,
+    Beholds his blessing with a trembling eye;
+    Feels doubtful passions throb in every vein,
+    And in his cheeks are mingled joy and pain,
+    Lest still some intervening chance should rise,
+    Leap forth at once, and snatch the golden prize,
+    Inflame his woe, by bringing it so late,
+    And stab him in the crisis of his fate.'
+
+His next poem, _The Force of Religion, or Vanquished Love_, was
+suggested by the execution of Lady Jane Grey and Lord Guildford, a
+subject chosen for a tragedy by John Banks (1694), by Rowe in 1715, and
+treated with considerable dramatic power in our own day by Ross Neil. In
+Young's hands this fine theme becomes a rhetorical exercise without
+poetry and without pathos. A few lines will suffice to show the style of
+the poem. Jane and Dudley, it must be premised, are imprisoned in a
+gloomy hall:
+
+    'What can they do? They fix their mournful eyes--
+    Then Guildford, thus abruptly: "I despise
+    An empire lost; I fling away the crown;
+    Numbers have laid that bright delusion down;
+    But where's the Charles, or Dioclesian, where,
+    Could quit the blooming, wedded, weeping fair?
+    Oh! to dwell ever on thy lip! to stand
+    In full possession of thy snowy hand!
+    And thro' the unclouded crystal of thine eye
+    The heavenly treasures of thy mind to spy!
+    Till rapture reason happily destroys,
+    And my soul wanders through immortal joys!
+    Give me the world, and ask me, where's my bliss?
+    I clasp thee to my breast and answer, this."'
+
+Verse of this quality, which might be amply quoted, is of interest to
+the student of literature, since in Young's day it passed current for
+poetry. But in accepting his claims as a poet the faith of the age must
+have been often strained.
+
+Walpole, who despised the whole tribe of poets, and cared nothing for
+literature, had by some strange chance awarded to Young a pension of
+L200 a-year, whereupon in a piece called _The Instalment_, addressed to
+Sir Robert, Britain is called upon to behold
+
+    'His azure ribbon and his radiant star,'
+
+and the poet's breast 'glows with grateful fire' as he exclaims:
+
+    'The streams of royal bounty turned by thee
+    Refresh the dry domains of poesy.
+    My fortune shows, when arts are Walpole's care,
+    What slender worth forbids us to despair:
+    Be this thy partial smile from censure free,
+    'Twas meant for merit, though it fell on me.'
+
+Following in the steps of George Sandys, but with inferior power, and in
+a less racy diction, Young performed the vain task of paraphrasing part
+of the Book of Job, one of the noblest poems the world possesses, and
+translated in our authorized version in language not to be surpassed for
+dignity and simplicity.
+
+In 1719 his _Busiris_ was performed. _The Revenge_, a better known
+tragedy, written on the French model, followed in 1721, and kept the
+stage for some time. Seven years later _The Brothers_, his third and
+last tragedy, was in rehearsal, but the poet, who had lately taken holy
+orders, withdrew it at the last moment. These tragedies, which are full
+of sound and fury, are destitute of tragic power. _The Revenge_, in
+which Zanga acts the part of an Iago, has some forcible scenes, and so,
+despite much rant and fustian, has _Busiris_. Plenty of blood is shed,
+of course, and the heroines of the plays die by their own hands. Tragedy
+is supposed to exercise an elevating influence, but to counteract this
+happy result, _Busiris_ and _The Revenge_ are followed by indecent
+epilogues, in which the speakers jest at the feelings which the plays
+may have excited. For _The Brothers_ Young wrote his own epilogue. It is
+decent and dull. His genius was better fitted for satire than for the
+drama, and _The Universal Passion_, which consists of seven satires
+published in a collected form in 1728, brought him reputation and money.
+The poet Crabbe was never more surprised in his life than when John
+Murray (the famous 'My Murray' of Byron) gave him L3,000 for the
+copyright of his poems; Young received the same sum for work
+immeasurably inferior in value, and in a less legitimate way. Two
+thousand pounds, it is stated, was a gift from the Duke of Grafton, who
+said it was the best bargain he ever made, as the satires were worth
+L4,000. Young, it will be seen, preceded Pope as a satirist. He is more
+generous and humane, and has none of the venomous attacks on living
+persons by which Pope added piquancy to his verse. But he is a careless
+writer, and for the most part lacks the exquisite precision, the subtle
+wit, the rhythmical felicity, which make the couplets of Pope so
+memorable. _The Dunciad_, the _Moral Essays_, and the _Imitations_ are
+read by all lovers of literature, but _The Universal Passion_ is
+forgotten. Of the six satires, the two on women are the most spirited,
+and may be compared with Pope's on the same subject. The different
+foibles, and faults worse than foibles of the women of that day are
+exhibited with a satirist's licence, and occasionally with a Pope-like
+terseness. Take the following, for example:
+
+    'There is no woman where there's no reserve,
+    And 'tis on plenty your poor lovers starve.'
+
+    'Few to good breeding make a just pretence;
+    Good breeding is the blossom of good sense.'
+
+    'A shameless woman is the worst of men.'
+
+    'Naked in nothing should a woman be,
+    But veil her very wit with modesty.'
+
+It was not until he was nearly fifty that Young, disappointed of the
+preferment he sought, took holy orders, and in 1730 accepted the college
+living of Welwyn, in Herts, which he held till his death.
+
+In the following year the poet married Lady Elizabeth Lee, a daughter of
+the Earl of Lichfield, a union that lasted ten years. One son was the
+offspring of this marriage. Lady Elizabeth had a daughter by a former
+marriage, who was married to Mr. Temple, a son of Lord Palmerston, and
+shortly before her own death she lost both daughter and son-in-law, who,
+there can be little doubt, are the Philander and Narcissa of the _Night
+Thoughts_, the earlier books of which were published in 1742. This once
+celebrated poem, written in his old age, is the one effort of Young's
+genius that has enjoyed a great popularity. It suited well an age which,
+while far from moral, delighted in moral treatises and in didactic
+verse. In the _Night Thoughts_ Young remembers that he is a clergyman,
+and puts on his gown and bands. He puts on also his singing robes, and
+shows the reader what none of his earlier poems prove, that he is in the
+presence of a poet.
+
+The _Night Thoughts_ is remarkable in its finest passages for a strong,
+but sombre imagination, and for a command of his instrument that puts
+Young at times nearly on a level with the greatest masters of blank
+verse. On this height, however, he does not stay long. He is rich in
+great thoughts, but they do not fall unconsciously, as it were, while
+the poet pursues his argument. They are aphorisms uttered generally in
+single lines which are apt to break the continuity of the poem and to
+injure the harmony of its versification. The theme of Life, Death, and
+Immortality is not a narrow one, and affords ample space for imaginative
+treatment. Young's treatment of it is too often declamatory; he drops
+the poet in the rhetorician and the wit. There is much of the false
+sublime in the poem, and much that reveals the hollow character of the
+writer. The first book is the finest, sparkling with felicitous
+expressions and rising frequently to true poetry. The poetical quality
+of that book, however, is lessened by the author's passion for
+antithesis. The merit of the following passage, for example, is not due
+to poetical inspiration:
+
+    'How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
+    How complicate, how wonderful is man!
+    How passing wonder He, who made him such!
+    Who centered in our make such strange extremes
+    From different natures, marvellously mixed,
+    Connexion exquisite of distant worlds!
+    Distinguished link in being's endless chain!
+    Midway from nothing to the Deity;
+    A beam etherial, sullied, and absorbt!
+    Though sullied and dishonoured still divine!
+    Dim miniature of greatness absolute!
+    An heir of glory! a frail child of dust!
+    Helpless immortal! insect infinite!
+    A worm! a god!--I tremble at myself,
+    And in myself am lost. At home a stranger,
+    Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast,
+    And wondering at her own: How reason reels!
+    O what a miracle to man is man!
+    Triumphantly distressed! what joy! what dread!
+    Alternately transported and alarmed!
+    What can preserve my life? or what destroy?
+    An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave:
+    Legions of angels can't confine me there.'
+
+The opening of the ninth and last book will give a more favourable
+illustration of Young's style:
+
+    'As when a traveller, a long day past
+    In painful search of what he cannot find,
+    At night's approach, content with the next cot,
+    There ruminates awhile, his labour lost;
+    Then cheers his heart with what his fate affords,
+    And chants his sonnet to deceive the time,
+    Till the due season calls him to repose;
+    Thus I, long-travelled in the ways of men,
+    And dancing with the rest the giddy maze
+    Where Disappointment smiles at Hope's career;
+    Warned by the languor of life's evening ray,
+    At length have housed me in an humble shed,
+    Where, future wandering banished from my thought,
+    And waiting, patient, the sweet hour of rest,
+    I chase the moments with a serious song.
+    Song soothes our pains, and age has pains to soothe.'
+
+While moralizing on man's mortality Young is seldom a cheerful monitor,
+he dwells with too great persistence on the incidents of death and of
+bodily corruption, too little on life with which we have more to do than
+with death. Thus with a strange perversion he exclaims:
+
+    'This is the desart, this the solitude,
+    How populous, how vital, is the grave!
+    This is creation's melancholy vault,
+    The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom,
+    The land of apparitions, empty shades!
+    All, all on earth is shadow, all beyond
+    Is substance; the reverse is folly's creed.'
+
+and harping on the same theme in the ninth book, says:
+
+    'What is the world itself? Thy world--a grave.
+    Where is the dust that has not been alive?
+    The spade, the plough, disturb our ancestors;
+    From human mould we reap our daily bread;
+    The globe around earth's hollow surface shakes,
+    And is the ceiling of her sleeping sons.
+    O'er devastation we blind revels keep;
+    Whole buried towns support the dancer's heel.'
+
+[Sidenote: Robert Blair (1699-1746).]
+
+On laying down the _Night Thoughts_ the student may be advised to read
+Blair's _Grave_, a poem in less than 800 lines of blank verse, composed
+in a fresher and more rigorous style than the far larger work of Young,
+and rather moulded, as Mr. Saintsbury has observed, 'upon dramatic than
+upon purely poetical models.' _The Grave_, which was written before the
+publication of the _Night Thoughts_,[29] abounds with poetical
+felicities, and is pregnant with suggestions that seize the imagination,
+and appeal alike to the intellect and the heart. The brevity of the
+piece is in its favour; there is not a line that flags.
+
+    'Tell us, ye dead! will none of you, in pity
+    To those you left behind, disclose the secret?
+    Oh! that some courteous ghost would blab it out,--
+    What 'tis you are and we must shortly be.
+    I've heard that souls departed have sometimes
+    Forewarned men of their death. 'Twas kindly done
+    To knock and give the alarm. But what means
+    This stinted charity? 'Tis but lame kindness
+    That does its work by halves. Why might you not
+    Tell us what 'tis to die? Do the strict laws
+    Of your society forbid your speaking
+    Upon a point so nice?--I'll ask no more:
+    Sullen, like lamps in sepulchres, your shine
+    Enlightens but yourselves. Well, 'tis no matter;
+    A very little time will clear up all,
+    And make us learn'd as you are, and as close.'
+
+
+Blair, who was a Scotch clergyman, wrote also an _Elegy in Memory of
+William Law_, a Professor of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh, whose
+daughter he married. He writes in a masculine and homely style. His
+imagery is often more powerful than pleasing, but some of his similes
+win attention by their beauty. For example:
+
+    "Look how the fair one weeps! the conscious tears
+    Stand thick as dewdrops on the bells of flowers."
+
+Among the victims claimed by the grave is
+
+        'The long demurring maid,
+    Whose lonely unappropriated sweets
+    Smiled, like yon knot of cowslips on the cliff,
+    Not to be come at by the willing hand.'
+
+And the death of a good man is pictured in this musical couplet:
+
+    'Night dews fall not more gently to the ground
+    Nor weary worn out winds expire so soft.'
+
+Cowper, referring to the poets of his century, said that every warbler
+had Pope's tune by heart. But if they had the tune by heart, many of
+them did not make it a vehicle for their verse, and among these are
+poets of the weight and worth of Thomson and Young, of Gray and Collins.
+Poets of a minor order, too, such as Somerville, Armstrong, Glover,
+Shenstone, Akenside, and John Dyer, either did not use the heroic
+distich which Pope crowned with such honour, or used it in their least
+significant poems.
+
+[Sidenote: James Thomson (1700-1748).]
+
+Thomson's influence, though less visible than Pope's, was probably as
+great. It was felt by the poets who loved Nature, and had no turn for
+satire. To pass to him from Prior, Gay, and Young is to leave the town
+for the country. English poetry owes much to the author of _The
+Seasons_, who was the first among the poets of his century to bring men
+back to 'Nature, the Vicar of the Almighty Lord.' He could not, indeed,
+shake off altogether the fetters of the conventional diction current in
+his day, and his style is often turgid and verbose. But Thomson had, to
+use a phrase of his own, 'a fine flame of imagination,' and when brought
+face to face with Nature he has the inspiration of a poet who discerns
+the lessons which Nature is ready to teach.
+
+James Thomson was born at Ednam, on the banks of the Tweed, on September
+11th, 1700, but his father removed to Jedburgh shortly afterwards, and
+there the future poet gained his first impression of rural scenes. He
+began to rhyme in boyhood, but, unlike most young poets, had the good
+sense to make an annual bonfire of his youthful effusions. At the early
+age of fifteen he was sent to the university at Edinburgh, his father,
+who was a Presbyterian minister, wishing that his son should follow the
+same vocation. But Thomson was not destined to 'wag his head in a
+pulpit.' He had a friend at this time in David Mallet, a minor poet of
+more prudence than principle, and when Mallet had the good fortune to
+gain a tutorship in London, his companion also started for the
+metropolis in search of money and fame. It was a desperate venture, and
+the young poet's difficulties were increased by the loss of his letters
+of introduction. Scotchmen however have always countrymen willing to
+help them, and Thomson whose pedigree on the mother's side connected him
+with the famous house of Home, found temporary employment as tutor to a
+child of Lord Binning who belonged by marriage to the same family.
+Afterwards he resided with Millan, a bookseller at Charing Cross, and
+then having finished _Winter_ (1726), on which he had been at work for
+some time, he sold it to the publisher for three guineas. Before long
+it was read and warmly praised by Aaron Hill, then a man of mark in the
+world of letters. Sir Spencer Compton, the Speaker, to whom the poem was
+dedicated, gave the poet twenty guineas for the compliment; Rundle, the
+Bishop of Derry, and several ladies of rank cheered him with their
+praise, and Thomson's success was assured. It was the age of patrons,
+and he practised without shame and without discrimination the art of
+flattery. Each book of _The Seasons_ had a dedication, and the honour
+was one for which some kind of payment was expected. _Summer_ appeared
+in 1727 and _Spring_ in the year following. In 1729 the appearance of
+_Britannia_ showed the popularity of the poet and of his theme, for
+three editions were sold. It is a distinctly party poem, and contains an
+attack upon Walpole--whom he had previously praised as the 'most
+illustrious of patriots'--for submitting to indignities from Spain. The
+British Lion roars loudly in it, but there is more of fustian in the
+piece than of true patriotism. 'How dares,' the poet exclaims, 'the
+proud Iberian rouse to wrath the masters of the main:'
+
+    'Who told him that the big incumbent war
+    Would not ere this have rolled his trembling ports
+    In smoky ruin? and his guilty stores,
+    Won by the ravage of a butchered world,
+    Yet unatoned, sunk in the swallowing deep,
+    Or led the glittering prize into the Thames?'
+
+In February, 1729-30, Thomson's tragedy of _Sophonisba_, a subject
+previously chosen by Marston (1606), and by Lee (1676), was acted at
+Drury Lane. The play was dedicated to the queen, and on the opening
+night the house was crowded, but the success of the piece was slight.
+Thomson's genius was not dramatic, and while his characters declaim,
+they do not act. His next play, _Agamemnon_ (1738), was not lost for
+want of labour or of friends. Pope appeared in the theatre on the first
+night, and was greeted with applause. The Prince and Princess of Wales
+were present on another occasion, but the play did not live long. His
+third attempt, _Edward and Eleanora_, was prohibited by the Lord
+Chamberlain, since it was supposed to praise the Prince of Wales at the
+expense of the Court. In 1740 the _Masque of Alfred_, by Thomson and
+Mallet, was performed. _Tancred and Sigismunda_ followed in 1745, and
+this tragedy, in which Garrick played the leading part, had at the time
+a considerable measure of success. The plot is more interesting than
+that of _Sophonisba_, and the characters are more life-like. Despite its
+effusive sentiment, Garrick's splendid acting would, no doubt, make the
+tragedy effective on the stage, but it does not add to the literary
+reputation of the poet. _Coriolanus_, Thomson's last drama, was not
+performed upon the stage until the year after his death.
+
+Voltaire, who had met Thomson and liked him--the liking, indeed, seemed
+to be universal--praised his tragedies for being 'elegantly writ.' 'It
+may be,' he says, 'that his heroes are neither moving nor busy enough,
+but taking him all in all, methinks he has the highest claim to the
+greatest esteem.' The value of Voltaire's criticism of an English
+dramatist is best appreciated by remembering his ignorant judgment of
+Shakespeare.
+
+Thomson's laurels were gained in another field of poetry. On the
+production of _Autumn_ in 1730, _The Seasons_ in its complete form was
+published by subscription in quarto. The four books, as we have already
+said, appeared at different times, _Winter_ being the first in order and
+_Autumn_ the latest. The Hymn with which the poem concludes may be
+compared, and will not greatly suffer in the comparison, with Adam's
+morning hymn in the fifth book of _Paradise Lost_, and with Coleridge's
+_Hymn in the Valley of Chamouni_. Like them it is raised, to use the
+poet's own words, to an 'Almighty Father.' A brief extract shall be
+given:
+
+    'His praise, ye brooks, attune, ye trembling rills;
+    And let me catch it as I muse along.
+    Ye headlong torrents, rapid, and profound;
+    Ye softer floods, that lead the humid maze
+    Along the vale; and thou, majestic main,
+    A secret world of wonders in thyself,
+    Sound His stupendous praise, whose greater voice
+    Or bids you roar, or bids your roarings fall.
+    Soft roll your incense, herbs, and fruits, and flowers,
+    In mingled clouds to Him, whose sun exalts,
+    Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil paints.
+    Ye forests bend, ye harvests wave, to Him;
+    Breathe your still song into the reaper's heart,
+    As home he goes beneath the joyous moon.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Great source of day! best image here below
+    Of thy Creator, ever pouring wide,
+    From world to world, the vital ocean round,
+    On Nature write with every beam His praise.
+    The thunder rolls: be hushed the prostrate world;
+    While cloud to cloud returns the solemn hymn.
+    Bleat out afresh, ye hills; ye mossy rocks
+    Retain the sound: the broad responsive low,
+    Ye valleys, raise; for the Great Shepherd reigns,
+    And His unsuffering kingdom yet will come.'
+
+Swift complains that the _Seasons_, being all descriptive, nothing is
+doing, a defect inseparable from the subject. But the work has a poet's
+best gift--imagination--and a poet's instinct for apprehending the charm
+of what is minute in Nature, as well as of what is grand.
+
+Thomson has been called the naturalist's poet, and Hartley Coleridge
+observes that he is 'a perfect reservoir of natural images.' In his
+account of what he had learnt only by report he depends sometimes on the
+ignorant traditions of the country people; but in describing what he
+observes with the bodily eye, and with the eye of the mind, he is
+faithful to what he sees, and to what he perceives. No Dutch painter can
+be more exact and accurate than Thomson in the delineation of familiar
+scenes, and of animal life. In illustration of this gift, which Cowper
+shares with him, a scene, not to be surpassed for truthfulness of
+description, shall be quoted from _Winter_:
+
+    'Through the hushed air the whitening shower descends,
+    At first thin-wavering; till at last the flakes
+    Fall broad and wide and fast, dimming the day
+    With a continual flow. The cherished fields
+    Put on their winter robe of purest white.
+    'Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts
+    Along the mazy current. Low the woods
+    Bow their hoar head; and ere the languid sun,
+    Faint from the west, emits his evening ray,
+    Earth's universal face, deep-hid and chill,
+    Is one wild dazzling waste, that buries wide
+    The works of man. Drooping, the labourer-ox
+    Stands covered o'er with snow, and then demands
+    The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven,
+    Tamed by the cruel season, crowd around
+    The winnowing store, and claim the little boon
+    Which Providence assigns them. One alone,
+    The redbreast, sacred to the household gods,
+    Wisely regardful of th' embroiling sky,
+    In joyless fields and thorny thickets, leaves
+    His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man
+    His annual visit. Half afraid, he first
+    Against the window beats; then brisk, alights
+    On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor,
+    Eyes all the smiling family askance,
+    And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is--
+    Till more familiar grown, the table-crumbs
+    Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds
+    Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare,
+    Though timorous of heart and hard beset
+    By death in various forms, dark snares, and dogs,
+    And more unpitying men, the garden seeks
+    Urged on by fearless want. The bleating kind
+    Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth,
+    With looks of dumb despair; then, sad-dispersed
+    Dig for the withered herb through heaps of snow.'
+
+Thomson loves also to paint the landscape on a broad scale, and though
+his diction is sometimes too florid, he generally satisfies the
+imagination, as, for instance, in the splendid description in _Summer_
+of a sand-storm in the desert.
+
+                                    'Breathed hot
+    From all the boundless furnace of the sky,
+    And the wide, glittering waste of burning sand,
+    A suffocating wind the pilgrim smites
+    With instant death. Patient of thirst and toil,
+    Son of the desert! even the camel feels,
+    Shot through his withered heart, the fiery blast.
+    Or from the black-red ether, bursting broad,
+    Sallies the sudden whirlwind. Straight the sands,
+    Commoved around, in gathering eddies play;
+    Nearer and nearer still they darkening come;
+    Till with the general all-involving storm
+    Swept up, the whole continuous wilds arise;
+    And by their noonday fount dejected thrown,
+    Or sunk at night in sad disastrous sleep,
+    Beneath descending hills, the caravan
+    Is buried deep. In Cairo's crowded streets
+    The impatient merchant, wondering, waits in vain,
+    And Mecca saddens at the long delay.'
+
+The _Seasons_ was at one time, and for many years the most popular
+volume of poetry in the country. It was to be found in every cottage,
+and passages from the poem were familiar to every school-boy. The
+appreciation of the work was more affectionate than critical, and
+Thomson's faults were sometimes mistaken for beauties; but the
+popularity of the _Seasons_ was a healthy sign, and the poem, a
+forerunner of Cowper's _Task_, brought into vigorous life, feelings and
+sympathies that had been long dormant.
+
+Pope, who is twice mentioned in the poem, took a great interest in its
+progress through the press. Thomson consulted him frequently, and
+accepted many of his suggestions, while apparently retaining at all
+times an independent judgment. To the familiar episode of 'the lovely
+young Lavinia' the following graceful passage is said, but on very
+doubtful authority to have been added by Pope.[30] The first line, given
+for the sake of the context, is from Thomson's pen:
+
+    'Thoughtless of beauty, she was Beauty's self,
+    Recluse amid the close-embowering woods;
+    As in the hollow breast of Apennine,
+    Beneath the shelter of encircling hills,
+    A myrtle rises, far from human eye,
+    And breathes its balmy fragrance o'er the wild;
+    So flourished, blooming and unseen by all,
+    The sweet Lavinia; till, at length, compelled
+    By strong necessity's supreme command
+    With smiling patience in her looks she went
+    To glean Palemon's fields.'
+
+Thomson had now gained the highest mark of his fame, and, like Pope, had
+won it in a few years. Nearly two years of foreign travel followed, the
+poet having obtained the post of governor to a son of the
+Solicitor-General. The fruit of this tour was a long poem in blank verse
+on _Liberty_, which probably gave him infinite labour, but his ascent
+upon this occasion of what he calls 'the barren, but delightful mountain
+of Parnassus,' was labour lost. It is enough to say of _Liberty_, that
+it contains more than three thousand lines of unreadable blank verse.
+Sinecures were the rewards of genius in Thomson's day, and he was made
+Secretary of Briefs in the Court of Chancery. He took a cottage at
+Richmond, within an easy walk of Pope, and the two poets met often and
+lived amicably.
+
+Thomson did not enjoy his official fortune long, for his patron died,
+and though he might have kept his post had he applied to the Lord
+Chancellor, in whose gift it was, he appears to have been too lazy to do
+so. His friend Lyttelton in this emergency introduced him to the Prince
+of Wales, who, on learning that his affairs 'were in a more poetical
+posture than formerly,' gave him a pension of L100 a year. There was no
+certainty in a gift of this nature, and in about ten years it was
+withdrawn.
+
+_The Castle of Indolence_ (1748) was the latest labour of Thomson's
+life, and in the judgment of many critics takes precedence of _The
+Seasons_ in poetical merit. This verdict may be questioned, but the
+poem, written in the Spenserian stanza, has a soothing beauty and an
+enchanting felicity of expression which show the poet's genius in a new
+light. It is unlike any poetry of that age, and when compared with _The
+Seasons_, the verse, as Wordsworth justly says, 'is more harmonious and
+the diction more pure.' All the imagery of the poem is adopted to the
+vague and sleepy action of the characters represented in it. It is a
+veritable poet's dream, which carries the reader in its earliest stanzas
+into 'a pleasing land of drowsy-head:'
+
+      'In lowly dale, fast by a river's side,
+      With woody hill o'er hill encompassed round,
+      A most enchanting wizard did abide,
+      Than whom a fiend more fell is nowhere found.
+      It was, I ween, a lovely spot of ground;
+      And there a season atween June and May
+      Half prankt with Spring, with Summer half embrowned,
+      A listless climate made, where, sooth to say,
+    No living wight could work, ne cared even for play.'
+
+There are verbal inspirations in a great poet which satisfy the ear,
+capture the imagination, and live in the memory for ever. Milton's pages
+are studded with them like stars; Gray has a few, Wordsworth many, and
+Keats some not to be surpassed for witchery. Of such poetically
+suggestive lines Thomson has his share, and although it seems unfair to
+remove them from their context, the excision may be made in a few cases,
+since they show not only that a new poet had appeared in an age of
+prose, but a poet of a new order, whose inspiration was felt by his
+successors. How poetically imaginative is Thomson's imagery of the
+'meek-eyed morn, mother of dews;' of
+
+    'Ships dim discovered dropping from the clouds;'
+
+of
+
+    'Autumn nodding o'er the yellow plain;'
+
+of the summer wind
+
+    'Sweeping with shadowy gust the fields of corn;'
+
+and of the Hebrid-Isles
+
+    'Placed far amid the melancholy main,'
+
+a line which may have suggested the lovelier verse of Wordsworth
+descriptive of the cuckoo:
+
+    'Breaking the silence of the seas
+    Among the farthest Hebrides.'
+
+Thomson did not live long after the publication of _The Castle of
+Indolence_. A cold caught upon the river led to a fever, which ended
+fatally on August 27th, 1748. He had for some years been in love with a
+Miss Young, the 'Amanda' of his very feeble love lyrics, and her
+marriage is said to have hastened his death. Men, however, do not die
+for love at the mature age of forty-nine, and as Thomson was 'more fat
+than bard beseems,' and was not always temperate in his habits,
+constitutional causes are more likely to have led to the poet's death
+than Amanda's cruelty.
+
+Dr. Johnson says somewhere that the further authors keep apart from each
+other the better, and the literary squabbles of the last century
+afforded him good ground for the remark. It is to Thomson's credit that,
+like Goldsmith twenty-six years later, he died, leaving behind him many
+friends and not a single enemy. His fame rests upon two poems, _The
+Seasons_ and _The Castle of Indolence_, and on a song which has gained a
+national reputation. Apart from _Rule Britannia_, which appeared
+originally in the _Masque of Alfred_ and is spirited rather than
+poetical, his attempts to write lyrical poetry resulted in failure; but
+from his own niche in the Temple of Fame time is not likely to dislodge
+Thomson.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[25] See _Martialis Epigrammata_, book v. lii.
+
+[26] Fenelon was Archbishop of Cambray.
+
+[27] _The Poetical Works of Gay_, edited, with Life and Notes, by John
+Underhill, 2 vols.
+
+[28]
+
+    'I'll swim through seas; I'll ride upon the clouds;
+    I'll dig the earth; I'll blow out every fire;
+    I'll rave; I'll rant; I'll rise; I'll rush; I'll war;
+    Fierce as the man whom smiling dolphins bore
+    From the prosaic to poetic shore.
+    I'll tear the scoundrel into twenty pieces.'
+
+'The reader,' Fielding adds in a note, 'may see all the beauties of this
+speech in a late ode called a _Naval Lyric_.'
+
+[29] Written but not published. The earlier books of the _Night
+Thoughts_ appeared in 1742, the _Grave_ in 1743, but in a letter dated
+Feb. 25th, 1741-2, Blair in transmitting the MS. of the poem to a friend
+states that the greater portion of it was composed several years before
+his ordination ten years previously. Southey states that Blair's _Grave_
+is the only poem he could call to mind composed in imitation of the
+_Night Thoughts_, but the style as well as the date contradicts this
+judgment.
+
+[30] The tradition is founded on a volume in the British Museum
+containing MS. corrections supposed to be in Pope's handwriting. It is
+now, however, the opinion of experts that the writing is not Pope's. If
+he be the author, it is the only example of blank verse which we have
+from his pen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+MINOR POETS.
+
+Sir Samuel Garth--Ambrose Philips--John Philips--Nicholas
+    Rowe--Aaron Hill--Thomas Parnell--Thomas Tickell--William
+    Somerville--John Dyer--William Shenstone--Mark Akenside--David
+    Mallet--Scottish Song-Writers.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Sir Samuel Garth (1660-1717-18).]
+
+In Pope's day even the medical profession was influenced by party
+feeling, and Samuel Garth became known as the most famous Whig
+physician, but his friendships were not confined to one side, and he
+appears to have been universally beloved.
+
+Garth came of a Yorkshire family, and was born in 1660. He was admitted
+a Fellow of the College of Physicians in 1693, gained a large practice,
+and is said to have been very benevolent to the poor. The _Dispensary_
+(1699) is a satire called forth by the opposition of the Society of
+Apothecaries, to an edict of the College, and is a mock-heroic poem,
+which the quarrel made so effective at the time that it passed through
+several editions. The merit of achieving what the satirist intended may
+therefore be granted to the _Dispensary_. Few modern readers, however,
+will appreciate the welcome it received, and it is ludicrous to read in
+Anderson's edition of the poet that the poem 'is only inferior in
+humour, discrimination of character, and poetical ardour to the _Rape of
+the Lock_.' It would be far more accurate to say that the _Dispensary_
+has not a single merit in common with that poem, and but slight merit of
+any kind.
+
+The following passage upon death is the most vigorous, and is
+interesting as having supplied Cowper with a line in the poem on his
+Mother's Picture:[31]
+
+    ''Tis to the vulgar Death too harsh appears,
+    The ill we feel is only in our fears;
+    To die is landing on some silent shore
+    Where billows never break, nor tempests roar;
+    Ere well we feel th' friendly stroke 'tis o'er.
+    The wise through thought th' insults of death defy,
+    The fools through blest insensibility.
+    'Tis what the guilty fear, the pious crave;
+    Sought by the wretch and vanquished by the brave.
+    It eases lovers, sets the captive free,
+    And though a tyrant, offers liberty.'
+
+Addison in defending Garth in the _Whig-Examiner_ from the criticisms of
+Prior in the _Examiner_, the organ of the Tory party, says he does not
+question but the author 'who has endeavoured to prove that he who wrote
+the _Dispensary_ was no poet, will very suddenly undertake to show that
+he who gained the battle of _Blenheim_ is no general.' The comparison
+was an unfortunate one. Marlborough's military reputation has grown
+brighter with time, Garth's fame as a poet has long ago ceased to exist.
+
+A literary although not a poetical interest is associated with the name
+of "well-natured Garth," who, as Pope acknowledges, was one of his
+earliest friends; like Arbuthnot, he lived among the wits, and as a
+member of the famous Kit-cat Club he wrote verses upon the Whig beauties
+toasted by its members. His name is linked with Dryden's as well as with
+that of his illustrious successor. It will be remembered how, on the
+death of Dryden, the poet's body lay in state in the College of
+Physicians, and how, before the great procession started for
+Westminster Abbey, Sir Samuel, who was then President, delivered a Latin
+oration.
+
+Garth died in January, 1717-18, and, according to Pope, was a good
+Christian without knowing it. Addison, however, who visited Garth in his
+last illness, told Dr. Berkeley that he rejected Christianity on the
+assurance of his friend Halley that its doctrines were incomprehensible,
+and the religion itself an imposture. According to another report which
+comes through Pope, he actually 'died a papist.'
+
+[Sidenote: Ambrose Philips (1671-1749).]
+
+Ambrose Philips, who belonged, like Tickell, to Addison's 'little
+senate,' was born in 1671, and educated at St. John's, Cambridge. His
+_Pastorals_ were published in Tonson's _Miscellany_ (1709), and the same
+volume contained the _Pastorals_ of Pope. Log-rolling was understood in
+those days, and Philips's verses received warm praise in more than one
+number of the _Guardian_, the writer in one place declaring that there
+have been only four masters of the art in above two thousand years:
+'Theocritus, who left his dominions to Virgil; Virgil, who left his to
+his son Spenser; and Spenser, who was succeeded by his eldest born,
+Philips.'
+
+Pope's _Pastorals_ were not mentioned, and in revenge he devised the
+consummate artifice of sending an anonymous paper to the _Guardian_, in
+which, while appearing to praise Philips, he exalted himself. Steele
+took the bait, and considering that the essay depreciated Pope would not
+publish it without his permission, which was of course readily granted.
+'From that time,' says Johnson, 'Pope and Philips lived in a perpetual
+reciprocation of malevolence.'
+
+Philips's tragedy, _The Distrest Mother_ (1712), a translation, or
+nearly so, of Racine's _Andromaque_, was puffed in the _Spectator_. It
+is the play to which Sir Roger de Coverley was taken by his friends, and
+the representation supplied the good knight with an opportunity for
+much humorous comment.
+
+'When Sir Roger saw Andromache's obstinate refusal to her lover's
+importunities, he whispered me in the ear that he was sure she would
+never have him; to which he added with a more than ordinary vehemence,
+"You cannot imagine, sir, what it is to have to do with a widow." Upon
+Pyrrhus his threatening afterwards to leave her, the knight shook his
+head, and muttered to himself, "Ay, do if you can." This part dwelt so
+much upon my friend's imagination that at the close of the third Act, as
+I was thinking of something else, he whispered in my ear, "These widows,
+sir, are the most perverse creatures in the world. But pray," says he,
+"you that are a critic, is this play according to your dramatic rules,
+as you call them? Should your people in tragedy always talk to be
+understood? Why, there is not a single sentence in this play that I do
+not know the meaning of."'[32] Addison also inserted and praised in the
+_Spectator_ Philips's translations from Sappho (Nos. 223, 229).
+
+His odes to babes and children earned for him the _sobriquet_ of 'Namby
+Pamby,' 'a term which has been incorporated into the English language to
+designate mawkish sentiment. Namby was the infantine pronunciation of
+Ambrose, and Pamby was formed by the first letter of Philips's surname
+and that reduplication of sound which is natural to lisping
+children.'[33]
+
+Between simplicity and absurdity the line is a narrow one, and Philips
+stepped over it when he wrote to a child in the nursery--
+
+    'Dimply damsel, sweetly smiling,
+    All caressing, none beguiling;
+    Bud of beauty, fairly blowing,
+    Every charm to nature owing.'
+
+The longest of his baby songs is addressed to the Hon. Miss Carteret, in
+which he pictures the child's progress to womanhood, and anticipates her
+future loveliness and maiden reign:
+
+    'Then the taper-moulded waist
+    With a span of ribbon braced;
+    And the swell of either breast,
+    And the wide high-vaulted chest;
+    And the neck so white and round,
+    Little neck with brilliants bound;
+    And the store of charms which shine
+    Above, in lineaments divine,
+    Crowded in a narrow space
+    To complete the desperate face;
+    These alluring powers, and more,
+    Shall enamoured youths adore;
+    These and more in courtly lays
+    Many an aching heart shall praise.'
+
+The inventory of the maiden's physical charms which follows includes
+veiny temples, sloping shoulders, a hazely lucid eye, and cheek of
+health; but in the category the only allusion to the attractions of
+intellect and heart is in a couplet foretelling her
+
+                              'Gentleness of mind,
+    Gentle from a gentle kind.'
+
+That Philips translated _The Persian Tales_ is indelibly recorded by
+Pope:
+
+    'The bard whom pilfered Pastorals renown,
+    Who turns a Persian tale for half-a-crown,
+    Just writes to make his barrenness appear,
+    And strains from hard-bound brains eight lines a year.'
+
+But even Pope could award praise to Philips. In a letter to Henry
+Cromwell, in 1710, he observes that he was capable of writing very
+nobly, 'as I guess by a small copy of his, published in the _Tatler_, on
+the Danish winter;' and two years later he says to his friend Caryll:
+'Mr. Philips has two lines which seem to me what the French call very
+_picturesque_, that I cannot omit to you:
+
+    'All hid in snow in bright confusion lie,
+    And with one dazzling waste fatigue the eye!'
+
+The lines, not quite accurately quoted by Pope, are from an epistle,
+addressed to Lord Dorset from Copenhagen, which contains a few striking
+couplets, two of which may be transcribed before bidding adieu to
+Ambrose Philips:
+
+    'The vast leviathan wants room to play,
+    And spout his waters in the face of day.
+    The starving wolves along the main sea prowl,
+    And to the moon in icy valleys howl.'
+
+[Sidenote: John Philips (1676-1708).]
+
+Ambrose Philips must not be confounded with his namesake John, the
+author of a clever burlesque of Milton, called _The Splendid Shilling_
+(1705); of _Blenheim_ (1705), a poem which he was urged to write by the
+Tories in opposition to Addison's _Campaign_; and of a poem upon _Cider_
+(1706), in 'Miltonian verse,' which seems to have afforded several
+suggestions to Pope in his _Windsor Forest_. It is said to display a
+considerable knowledge of the subject, and in that its principal merit
+consists. From _The Splendid Shilling_ a brief extract may be given:
+
+    'So pass my days. But when nocturnal shades
+    This world envelop, and th' inclement air
+    Persuades men to repel benumbing frosts
+    With pleasant wines, and crackling blaze of wood;
+    Me, lonely sitting, nor the glimmering light
+    Of make-weight candle, nor the joyous talk
+    Of loving friend delights; distressed, forlorn,
+    Amidst the horrors of the tedious night,
+    Darkling I sigh, and feed with dismal thoughts
+    My anxious mind; or sometimes mournful verse
+    Indite, and sing of groves and myrtle shades,
+    Or desperate lady near a purling stream,
+    Or lover pendent on a willow tree.
+    Meanwhile I labour with eternal drought
+    And restless wish, and rave; my parched throat
+    Finds no relief, nor heavy eyes repose.
+    But if a slumber haply does invade
+    My weary limbs, my fancy still awake,
+    Thoughtful of drink, and eager, in a dream
+    Tipples imaginary pots of ale
+    In vain; awake I find the settled thirst
+    Still gnawing, and the pleasant phantom curse.'
+
+'Philips,' says the poet Campbell, 'had the merit of studying and
+admiring Milton, but he never could imitate him without ludicrous
+effect, either in jest or earnest. His _Splendid Shilling_ is the
+earliest and one of the best of our parodies; but _Blenheim_ is as
+completely a burlesque upon Milton as _The Splendid Shilling_, though it
+was written and read with gravity, ... yet such are the fluctuations of
+taste that contemporary criticism bowed with solemn admiration over his
+Miltonic cadences.'
+
+[Sidenote: Nicholas Rowe (1673-1718).]
+
+Nicholas Rowe had the honour, if it was one in those days, of being made
+Laureate on the accession of George I. His odes, epistles, and songs are
+without merit, but he gained reputation as the translator of Lucan's
+_Pharsalia_, of which Sir Arthur Gorges had produced a version in 1614,
+and his plays entitle him to a place, though not a high one, in our
+dramatic literature.
+
+Rowe edited an edition of Shakespeare, and should have known his author,
+yet in a prologue he declares that he could not draw women--an amazing
+assertion echoed by Collins, who praises Fletcher for his knowledge of
+the 'female mind,' and adds that 'stronger Shakespeare felt for man
+alone.'
+
+The chronological list of Rowe's dramas runs as follows: _The Ambitious
+Step-mother_ (1700); _Tamerlane_ (1702); _The Fair Penitent_ (1703);
+_Ulysses_ (1705); _The Royal Convert_ (1707); the _Tragedy of Jane
+Shore_ (1714); and the _Tragedy of Lady Jane Grey_ (1715). Measured by
+his contemporary dramatists he is a distinguished playwright. His
+characters do not live, but he could invent effective scenes, though in
+some cases the poet's taste may be questioned.
+
+For many years _Tamerlane_ was acted at Drury Lane on the anniversary of
+King William's landing in England, and under the names of Tamerlane and
+Bajazet the king is belauded at the expense of Louis XIV. _The Fair
+Penitent_, a piece even more successful upon the stage, will still
+please the reader, though he may question the high eulogium of Johnson,
+that "scarcely any work of any poet is at once so interesting by the
+fable, and so delightful by the language." Rowe has not the tragic power
+which can express passion without rant, and pathos without extravagance.
+In _The Fair Penitent_ Calista gives utterance to her feelings by piling
+up expletives. Thus, when her husband attacks the lover who has ruined
+her, she exclaims, 'Destruction! fury! sorrow! shame! and death!' and,
+on another occasion, she cries out, 'Madness! confusion!' words which
+give a sense of the ludicrous rather than of the tragic; and so also
+does Calista's last utterance when, addressing Altamont, she says:
+
+                    'Had I but early known
+    Thy wondrous worth, thou excellent young man
+    We had been happier both--now 'tis too late!'
+
+Rowe may be regarded as the principal representative of tragedy in the
+'age of Pope,' but his respectable work shows a fatal degeneration from
+the 'gorgeous tragedy' of the Elizabethans.
+
+[Sidenote: Aaron Hill (1684-1749).]
+
+Aaron Hill, unlike Rowe, was not distinguished as a dramatist, and
+succeeded only in two or three adaptations from the French. His claims
+as a poet are also insignificant. He was born in London in 1684, with
+expectations that were not destined to be realized, but Fortune was not
+unkind to him. His uncle, Lord Paget, Ambassador at Constantinople, gave
+the youth a warm welcome, supplied him with a tutor, and sent him to
+travel in the East. On Lord Paget's return to England, Hill accompanied
+him, and together they are said to have visited a great part of Europe.
+Some time later Hill went abroad again, and was absent two or three
+years. For awhile--it could not have been long--he was secretary to the
+Earl of Peterborough, and at the age of twenty-six, his good star being
+still in the ascendant, he married a young lady 'of great merit and
+beauty, with whom he had a very handsome fortune.' Hill was then
+appointed manager of Drury Lane, and he wrote a number of plays, the
+very names of which are now forgotten. Few men indeed so well known in
+his own day have sunk into such insignificance in ours. He wrote eight
+books of a long and unfinished epic called _Gideon_, which I suppose no
+one in the present century has had the hardihood to read; like Young he
+wrote a poem on _The Judgment Day_, a theme attempted also, shortly
+before his death, by John Philips, and that, after his kind, he produced
+a Pindaric ode goes without saying. A long poem called _The Northern
+Star_, a panegyric on Peter the Great, is said to have passed through
+several editions. The poem does not prove Hill to be a poet, but it
+shows his command of the heroic couplet. The style of the poem, which
+is an indiscriminate panegyric, may be judged from the following lines:
+
+    'Transcendent prince! how happy must thou be!
+    What can'st thou look upon unblessed by thee?
+    What inward peace must that calm bosom know,
+    Whence conscious virtue does so strongly flow!
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Such are the kings who make God's image shine,
+    Nor blush to dare assert their right divine!
+    No earth-born bias warps their climbing will,
+    No pride their power, no avarice whets their skill.
+    They poise each hope which bids the wise obey,
+    And shed broad blessings from their widening sway;
+    To raise the afflicted, stretch the healing hand,
+    Drive crushed oppression from each rescued land,
+    Bold in alternate right, or sheath or draw
+    The sword of conquest, or the sword of law;
+    Spare what resists not, what opposes bend,
+    And govern cool, what they with warmth defend.'
+
+Hill has the merit of having turned the tables upon Pope, who had put
+him into the treatise on the _Bathos_, and then into the _Dunciad_,
+where, however, the lines have more of compliment than censure, since he
+is made to mount 'far off among the swans of Thames.' Irritated by a
+note in the _Dunciad_, Hill replied in a long poem entitled _The
+Progress of Wit, a Caveat_, which opens with the following pointed
+lines:
+
+    'Tuneful Alexis, on the Thames' fair side,
+    The ladies' plaything, and the Muses' pride;
+    With merit popular, with wit polite,
+    Easy though vain, and elegant though light;
+    Desiring, and deserving others' praise,
+    Poorly accepts a fame he ne'er repays;
+    Unborn to cherish, sneakingly approves,
+    And wants the soul to spread the worth he loves.'
+
+In a letter to Hill Pope complained of these lines, and had the
+hypocrisy to say that he never thought any great matters of his poetical
+capacity, but prided himself on the superiority of his moral life. Hill
+returned a masterly and incisive reproof to this ridiculous statement,
+in the course of which he says:
+
+    'I am sorry to hear you say you never thought any great matters
+    of your poetry. It is in my opinion the characteristic you are
+    to hope your distinction from. To be honest is the duty of every
+    plain man. Nor, since the soul of poetry is sentiment, can a
+    great poet want morality. But your honesty you possess in common
+    with a million who will never be remembered; whereas your poetry
+    is a peculiar, that will make it impossible that you should be
+    forgotten.'
+
+He adds that if Pope had not been in the spleen when he wrote, he would
+have remembered that humility is a moral virtue; and how, asks the
+writer, can you know that your moral life is above that of most of the
+wits 'since you tell me in the same letter that many of their names were
+unknown to you?'
+
+Aaron Hill, though he could write a sensible letter, was not a wise man.
+He was 'everything by turns and nothing long.' Poetry was but one of his
+accomplishments, and we are told that he cultivated it 'as a relaxation
+from the study of history, criticism, geography, physic, commerce,
+agriculture, war, law, chemistry, and natural philosophy, to which he
+devoted the greatest part of his time.'
+
+As a poet Hill has the facility in composition exhibited by so many of
+his contemporaries, and he has occasionally a pretty turn of fancy. His
+last labour was the successful adaptation of Voltaire's _Merope_ to the
+English stage (1749); sixteen years before he had adapted _Zara_ with
+equal success.
+
+[Sidenote: Thomas Parnell (1679-1718).]
+
+Among the minor poets of the period an honourable place must be given to
+Parnell, who possessed the soul of a poet, but gave limited expression
+to it, for it was only during the later years of a short life that he
+discovered where his genius lay. The friend of Pope, Arbuthnot, and
+Swift, his biography has been written by Johnson, and more discursively
+by his countryman Goldsmith.
+
+Thomas Parnell was born in Dublin, 1679, entered Trinity College at the
+early age of thirteen, and in 1700 obtained the degree of Master of
+Arts. Having taken orders he gained preferment in the Church, became, in
+1706, Archdeacon of Clogher, and through the recommendation of Swift
+obtained also a good living. Parnell was fond of society, and was
+accustomed as often as possible to join the wits in London. He was a
+member of the Scriblerus Club, wrote for the _Spectator_, preached
+eloquent sermons, and had the ambition of a poet. But the loss of his
+wife preyed upon his mind, and he is said, though I believe chiefly on
+Pope's authority, to have given way to intemperance. He died suddenly at
+Chester at the age of thirty-nine in 1718.
+
+Parnell was one of the poets whose fortunes Swift did his best to
+promote. Writing in 1712, he says, 'I gave Lord Bolingbroke a poem of
+Parnell's. I made Parnell insert some compliments in it to his lordship.
+He is extremely pleased with it, and read some parts of it to-day to
+Lord Treasurer, who liked it as much. And indeed he outdoes all our
+poets here a bar's length.' And a month later he writes, 'Lord
+Bolingbroke likes Parnell mightily, and it is pleasant to see that one
+who hardly passed for anything in Ireland, makes his way here with a
+little friendly forwarding.'
+
+_The Hermit_, the _Hymn to Contentment_, an _Allegory on Man_, and a
+_Night Piece on Death_, give Parnell his title to a place among the
+poets. _The Rise of Woman_, and _Health, an Eclogue_, have also much
+merit, and were praised by Pope (but this was to their author) as 'two
+of the most beautiful things he ever read.' The story of _The Hermit_,
+written originally in Spanish, is given in _Howell's Letters_
+(1645-1655), and is admirably told by Parnell, but much that he wrote,
+including a series of long poems on Scripture characters, is poetically
+worthless. His poems, published five years after his death, were edited
+by Pope, who wisely suppressed some pieces unworthy of the poet. Then,
+as now, literary scavengers were at work. In 1758 the suppressed poems
+were published, and called forth the comment from Gray, 'Parnell is the
+dunghill of Irish Grub Street.' To Parnell Pope was indebted for the
+_Essay on Homer_ prefixed to the translation, with which he does not
+seem to have been well pleased. He complained of the stiffness of the
+style, and said it had cost him more pains in the correcting than the
+writing of it would have done.
+
+If Parnell's prose has the defect of stiffness, his lines glide with a
+smoothness that must have satisfied the ear of Pope. The higher
+harmonies of verse were unknown to him, but ease is not without a charm,
+and in illustration of Parnell's gift the final lines of _A Night Piece
+on Death_ shall be quoted:
+
+    'When men my scythe and darts supply,
+    How great a king of fears am I!
+    They view me like the last of things,
+    They make and then they draw my stings.
+    Fools! if you less provoked your fears,
+    No more my spectre form appears.
+    Death's but a path that must be trod,
+    If man would ever pass to God;
+    A port of calms, a state to ease
+    From the rough rage of swelling seas.
+    Why then thy flowing sable stoles,
+    Deep pendent cypress, mourning poles,
+    Loose scarfs to fall athwart thy weeds,
+    Long palls, drawn hearses, covered steeds,
+    And plumes of black that as they tread,
+    Nod o'er the scutcheons of the dead?
+    Nor can the parted body know,
+    Nor wants the soul these forms of woe;
+    As men who long in prison dwell,
+    With lamps that glimmer round the cell,
+    Whene'er their suffering years are run,
+    Spring forth to greet the glittering sun;
+    Such joy, though far transcending sense,
+    Have pious souls at parting hence.
+    On earth and in the body placed,
+    A few and evil years they waste;
+    But when their chains are cast aside,
+    See the glad scene unfolding wide,
+    Clap the glad wing, and tower away,
+    And mingle with the blaze of day.'
+
+[Sidenote: Thomas Tickell (1686-1740).]
+
+Tickell wished to be remembered as the friend of Addison, and with
+Addison his name is indissolubly associated. The poem dedicated to the
+essayist's memory is perhaps over-praised by Macaulay when he says that
+it would do honour to the greatest name in our literature, but it proved
+incontestibly that Tickell, as a poet, was superior to the master whom
+he so loved and honoured. His reputation hangs upon this elegy, which
+Fox pronounced perfect.[34] The _Prospect of Peace_, which passed
+through several editions, had at one time a considerable reputation, not
+assuredly for its poetry, but because it appealed to the spirit of the
+time The style of the poem may be judged from these lines:--
+
+    'Accept, great Anne, the tears their memory draws,
+    Who nobly perished in their sovereign's cause;
+    For thou in pity bidd'st the war give o'er,
+    Mourn'st thy slain heroes, nor wilt venture more.
+    Vast price of blood on each victorious day!
+    (But Europe's freedom doth that price repay.)
+    Lamented triumphs! when one breath must tell
+    That Marlborough conquered and that Dormer fell.'
+
+His _Colin and Lucy_ called forth high praise from Goldsmith as one of
+the best ballads in our language, and Gray terms it the prettiest ballad
+in the world. Three stanzas from this once famous poem shall be
+quoted:--
+
+    '"I hear a voice you cannot hear,
+      Which says I must not stay;
+    I see a hand you cannot see,
+      Which beckons me away.
+    By a false heart and broken vows,
+      In early youth I die;
+    Was I to blame because his bride
+      Was thrice as rich as I?
+
+    '"Ah, Colin, give not her thy vows,
+      Vows due to me alone;
+    Nor thou, fond maid, receive his kiss,
+      Nor think him all thy own.
+    To-morrow in the church to wed,
+      Impatient, both prepare!
+    But know, fond maid, and know, false man,
+      That Lucy will be there!
+
+    '"Then bear my corse, my comrades, bear,
+      This bridegroom blithe to meet,
+    He in his wedding trim so gay,
+      I in my winding-sheet."
+    She spoke, she died; her corse was borne
+      The bridegroom blithe to meet,
+    He in his wedding trim so gay,
+      She in her winding-sheet.'
+
+There is some fancy but no imagination in the machinery of Tickell's
+long poem on _Kensington Gardens_, a title which recalls Matthew
+Arnold's exquisite stanzas. But the pathetic beauty of Arnold's lines
+belongs to a world of poetry wholly unlike that in which even the best
+of the Queen Anne poets lived and moved.
+
+Tickell's translation of the first book of the _Iliad_ led to the
+quarrel already mentioned in the account of Pope. He wrote, also, a
+rather lengthy poem on Oxford, in which there is some absurd criticism
+of insignificant poetasters, and, as a matter of course, an extravagant
+eulogium of Addison.
+
+The few facts recorded of Tickell's life may be summed up in a
+paragraph. He was born in 1686 at Bridekirk, in Cumberland, and entered
+Queen's College, Oxford, in 1701. In 1708 he obtained his M.A. degree,
+and two years later was chosen Fellow. For sixteen years Tickell held
+his fellowship, but resigned it on his marriage in 1726. In a poem
+addressed to the lady before marriage, he asks whether
+
+    'By thousands sought, Clotilda, canst thou free
+    Thy crowd of captives and descend to me?'
+
+Praise which in those days would be regarded as fulsome secured the
+friendship and patronage of Addison, who employed him in public affairs,
+and when he became Secretary of State made Tickell Under-Secretary. To
+him Addison left the charge of editing his works, which were published
+by subscription, and appeared in four quarto volumes in 1721. In 1725 he
+was made secretary to the Lord Justices of Ireland, 'a place of great
+honour,' which he held until his death in 1740. The praise of
+Wordsworth, a poet always chary of expressing approbation, has been
+bestowed upon Tickell. 'I think him,' he said, 'one of the very best
+writers of occasional verses.'
+
+[Sidenote: William Somerville (1692-1742).]
+
+Tickell had written some lines on hunting, which he published as a
+fragment. His contemporary Somerville, selecting the same subject, wrote
+_The Chase_ (1735), a poem in blank verse. He was born at Edston, in
+Warwickshire, and was said, Dr. Johnson writes, 'to be of the first
+family in his county.' He was educated at Winchester and Oxford, and had
+the tastes of a scholar as well as of a country gentleman, which, among
+other accomplishments, included that of hard drinking. We know little
+about him, and what we do know is deplorable, for his friend Shenstone
+writes that he was plagued and threatened by low wretches, and 'forced
+to drink himself into pains of the body in order to get rid of the pains
+of the mind.' He died in 1742, the owner of a good estate, which, owing
+to a contempt for economy, he was never able to enjoy. 'I loved him for
+nothing so much,' said Shenstone, 'as for his
+flocci-nauci-nihili-pili-fication of money.'
+
+In _The Chase_ Somerville had the advantage of knowing his subject, but
+knowledge is not poetry, and the interest of the poem is not due to its
+poetical qualities. He deserves some credit for his skill in handling a
+variety of metres as well as blank verse, in which his principal poem is
+written. In an address _To Mr. Addison_, the couplet,
+
+    'When panting Virtue her last efforts made,
+    You brought your Clio to the virgin's aid,'
+
+is praised by Johnson as one of those happy strokes which are seldom
+attained. In the same poem Shakespeare and Addison are brought together
+in a way that is far from happy:
+
+    'In heaven he sings; on earth your muse supplies
+    Th' important loss, and heals our weeping eyes,
+    Correctly great, she melts each flinty heart
+    With equal genius, but superior art.'
+
+Praise can be too strong even for a poet's digestion, and Somerville,
+who writes a great deal more nonsense in the same strain, should have
+remembered that he was not addressing a fool. If the poetical adulation
+of the time is to be excused, it must be on the ground that a poet had
+to live by patronage and not by the public. In a pecuniary point of view
+his subservience to men in high position was often successful. An almost
+universal custom, it was not regarded as degrading; but the poet must
+have been peculiarly constituted who was not degraded by it.
+
+[Sidenote: John Dyer (1698(?)-1758).]
+
+In the last century any subject was deemed suitable for poetry, and the
+Welsh poet, John Dyer, who was born about 1698, found in his later life
+poetical materials in _The Fleece_ (1757), a poem in four books of blank
+verse. His genius for descriptive poetry and his passionate and
+intelligent delight in natural objects are seen more pleasantly in
+_Grongar Hill_ (published in the same year as Thomson's _Winter_), a
+poem not without grammatical inaccuracies, one of which deforms the
+first couplet, but full of poetical feeling. In an ease of composition
+which runs into laxity he reminds us occasionally of George Wither. His
+chief merit is, that while independent of Thomson, he was inspired by
+the same love, and wrote with the same aim. Dyer is not content with
+bare description, but likes to moralize on the landscape he surveys.
+Thus, when looking on a ruined tower, the poet exclaims:
+
+    'Yet time has seen, that lifts the low,
+    And level lays the lofty brow,
+    Has seen this broken pile compleat,
+    Big with the vanity of state;
+    But transient is the smile of fate!
+    A little rule, a little sway,
+    A sunbeam in a winter's day,'
+    Is all the proud and mighty have
+    Between the cradle and the grave.'
+
+Dyer who is best seen in the octosyllabic metre, chose it also for _The
+Country Walk_, a poem in which, notwithstanding an occasional lapse into
+the conventional diction of the period, the rural pictures are drawn
+from life. He takes the reader into the farm-yard and fields as he
+writes:
+
+    'I am resolved this charming day
+    In the open field to stray,
+    And have no roof above my head
+    But that whereon the gods do tread.
+    Before the yellow barn I see
+    A beautiful variety
+    Of strutting cocks, advancing stout,
+    And flirting empty chaff about;
+    Hens, ducks, and geese, and all their brood,
+    And turkeys gobbling for their food;
+    While rustics thrash the wealthy floor,
+    And tempt all to crowd the door.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    And now into the fields I go,
+    Where thousand flaming flowers glow,
+    And every neighbouring hedge I greet
+    With honey-suckles smelling sweet;
+    Now o'er the daisy meads I stray
+    And meet with, as I pace my way,
+    Sweetly shining on the eye
+    A rivulet gliding smoothly by,
+    Which shows with what an easy tide
+    The moments of the happy glide.'
+
+_An Epistle to a Friend in Town_, records his satisfaction with the
+country retirement in which his days are passed. In a rather awkward
+stanza he says that he is more than content, and is indeed charmed with
+everything, and the lines close with the moralizing that was dear to
+Dyer's heart:
+
+    'Alas! what a folly that wealth and domain
+      We heap up in sin and in sorrow!
+    Immense is the toil, yet the labour how vain!
+      Is not life to be over to-morrow?
+    Then glide on my moments, the few that I have,
+      Smooth-shaded and quiet and even;
+    While gently the body descends to the grave,
+      And the spirit arises to heaven.'
+
+Dyer was an artist as well as a poet, and visited Italy, which suggested
+a poem in blank verse, _The Ruins of Rome_ (1740). After his return to
+England he entered into holy orders, took a wife, who is said to have
+been a descendant of Shakespeare, and settled at Calthorp in
+Leicestershire, which he afterwards exchanged for a living in
+Lincolnshire. There is much to like in Dyer, and he has had the good
+fortune to win the applause of two great poets. Gray says, in a letter
+to Horace Walpole, that he had 'more of poetry in his imagination than
+almost any of our number,' and Wordsworth in a sonnet, _To the Poet,
+John Dyer_, writes:
+
+    'Though hasty Fame hath many a chaplet culled
+    For worthless brows, while in the pensive shade
+    Of cold neglect she leaves thy head ungraced,
+    Yet pure and powerful minds, hearts meek and still,
+    A grateful few, shall love thy modest Lay,
+    Long as the shepherd's bleating flock shall stray
+    O'er naked Snowdon's wide aerial waste;
+    Long as the thrush shall pipe on Grongar Hill!'
+
+[Sidenote: William Shenstone (1714-1764).]
+
+'The true rustic style,' Charles Lamb writes, 'I think is to be found in
+Shenstone,' and he calls his _Schoolmistress_ the 'prettiest of poems.'
+
+William Shenstone was born in 1714 at the Leasowes in Hales-Owen, a spot
+upon which he afterwards expended his skill as a landscape gardener. In
+1732 he went up to Pembroke College, Oxford, and remained there for some
+years without taking a degree. Those years appear to have been devoted
+to poetry. In 1737 Shenstone published a small volume anonymously. This
+was followed by the _Judgment of Hercules_ (1741), and by the
+_Schoolmistress_ (1742). In 1745 he undertook the management of his
+estate, and began, to quote Dr. Johnson's quaint description, 'to point
+his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his walks, and to
+wind his waters; which he did with such judgment and such fancy, as made
+his little domain the envy of the great and the admiration of the
+skilful; a place to be visited by travellers and copied by designers.'
+On this estate, with its lakes and cascades, its urns and poetical
+inscriptions, its hanging woods, and 'wild shaggy precipice,' Shenstone
+appears to have spent all his fortune. He led the life of a dilettante,
+and died unmarried at the age of fifty. His elegies and songs are dead,
+and whatever vitality remains in his verse will be found in the
+_Pastoral Ballad_ and the _Schoolmistress_.
+
+The ballad written in anapaestic verse has an Arcadian grace, against
+which even Johnson's robust intellect was not proof. For the following
+lines he says, 'if any mind denies its sympathy it has no acquaintance
+with love or nature':
+
+    'When forced the fair nymph to forego,
+      What anguish I felt in my heart!
+    Yet I thought--but it might not be so--
+      'Twas with pain that she saw me depart.
+    She gazed as I slowly withdrew,
+      My path I could hardly discern;
+    So sweetly she bade me adieu,
+      I thought that she bade me return.
+
+The _Schoolmistress_, written in imitation of Spenser, has the merits of
+simplicity and homely humour. The village dame is a life-like character,
+and the urchins whom she is supposed to teach, and does sometimes teach
+by chastisement, are cunningly portrayed.
+
+From the verses _Written at an Inn in Henley_ three stanzas may be
+quoted. The last will be already known to readers familiar with their
+Boswell:
+
+    'I fly from pomp, I fly from plate,
+      I fly from falsehood's specious grin!
+    Freedom I love, and form I hate,
+      And choose my lodgings at an inn.
+
+    'Here, waiter! take my sordid ore,
+      Which lacqueys else might hope to win;
+    It buys what courts have not in store,
+      It buys me freedom at an inn!
+
+    'Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round,
+      Where'er his stages may have been,
+    May sigh to think he still has found
+      The warmest welcome at an inn.'
+
+Unhappily this final verse, which Johnson is said to have repeated 'with
+great emotion,' has lost its application. The modern traveller, instead
+of being warmly welcomed at an inn, loses his identity and becomes a
+number.
+
+[Sidenote: Mark Akenside (1721-1770).]
+
+Akenside, who was born at Newcastle, 1721, received his education in
+Edinburgh, where he was sent to prepare for the ministry among the
+Dissenters. He, however, changed his mind, became a medical student, and
+finally, though much disliked for his manners, gained reputation as a
+physician in London. He is stated to have been excessively stiff and
+formal, and a frigid stiffness marks the _Pleasures of Imagination_
+(1744), a remarkable work considering the writer's age, since it is
+without the faults of youth. The poem is founded on Addison's _Essays_
+on the subject in the _Spectator_, and the poet also owes a considerable
+debt to Shaftesbury. Akenside's blank verse has the merits of dignity
+and strength. But the work is as cold as the author's manners were said
+to be, and in spite of what may be called poetical power, as distinct
+from a high order of inspiration, the poem leaves the reader unmoved.
+Pope, who saw it in MS., said that Akenside was 'no everyday writer,'
+which is a just criticism. The _Pleasures of Imagination_ has the merits
+of careful workmanship and of some originality, but the interest which
+it at one time excited is not likely to be revived. In 1757 Akenside
+re-wrote the poem, and I believe that no critic, with the exception of
+Hazlitt, regards the second attempt as an improvement on the first. His
+skill in the use of classical imagery is seen to advantage in the _Hymn
+to the Naiads_ (1746), and he deserves praise, too, for his
+inscriptions, which are distinguished for conciseness and vigour of
+style. The poet, it may be added, wrote a great number of odes that lack
+all, or nearly all, the qualities which should distinguish lyrical
+poetry. Not a spark of the divine fire warms or illuminates these
+reputable verses, but the author states that his chief aim was to be
+correct, and in that he has succeeded.
+
+[Sidenote: David Mallet (1700-1765).]
+
+David Mallet, a friend or acquaintance of Thomson, was contemptible as a
+man and comparatively insignificant as a poet. He did a large amount of
+dirty work, and appears to have made a good income by it. The base
+character of the man was known to Bolingbroke, of whose basest purpose
+he made him the instrument (see c. vii.). Mallet's ballad of _William
+and Margaret_ (1724) is known to many readers, and so is the inferior
+ballad _Edwin and Emma_, which was written many years afterwards. In
+1728 he published _The Excursion_, a poem not sufficiently significant
+to prevent Wordsworth from selecting the same title. In Mallet's poem on
+_Verbal Criticism_ (1733), Johnson states that he paid court to Pope,
+and was rewarded by a travelling tutorship gained through the poet's
+influence. In 1731 his tragedy, _Eurydice_, was acted at Drury Lane. He
+joined Thomson, as we have said elsewhere, in the composition of the
+masque of _Alfred_, and 'almost wholly changed' the piece after
+Thomson's death. _Amyntor and Theodora_, a long poem in blank verse,
+appeared in 1747; _Britannia_, a masque, in 1753, and _Elvira_, a
+tragedy, in 1763. Mallet, who was without qualifications for the task,
+wrote a life of Lord Bacon. He is said to have obtained a pension for
+inflaming the mind of the public against Admiral Byng, and thereby
+hastening his execution.
+
+In Anderson's edition of the poets, Mallet's biography is related with
+more fulness than by Dr. Johnson, and, after frankly recording acts
+which fully justify Macaulay's statement that Mallet's character was
+infamous, the writer adds, 'his integrity in business and in life is
+unimpeached.'
+
+
+SCOTTISH SONG-WRITERS.
+
+When the poets of England were writing satires, moral essays, and
+elaborate didactic treatises, the poets of Scotland were singing, in
+bird-like notes, songs of humour and of love. It is remarkable that the
+Scotch, the shrewdest, hardest, and most business-like people in these
+islands, should be so richly endowed with a gift shared and enjoyed by
+rich and poor alike. The most exquisite of English lyrics fall, where
+culture is wanting, on regardless ears; the songs of Ramsay and of
+Burns, of Lady Anne Lindsay and Jane Elliot, of Hogg and Lady Nairne, of
+Tannahill and Macneil, are household words in Scotland to gentle and
+simple. A few of the choicest songs of Scotland are due to ladies of
+rank, but the larger number have sprung from 'the huts where poor men
+lie.' Ramsay was a barber and wig-maker; Burns, as all the world knows,
+followed the plough; Tannahill was a weaver; Hogg a shepherd; and Robert
+Nicoll the son of a small farmer, 'ruined out of house and hold.'
+
+[Sidenote: Allan Ramsay (1686-1758).]
+
+Allan Ramsay was, born at Leadhills, in Lanarkshire, in 1686, and was
+therefore Pope's senior by two years. He has been called 'the restorer
+of Scottish poetry,' and by his compilation of _The Evergreen_ (1724),
+and of _The Tea-Table Miscellany_, published in the same year, he
+gathered up the wealth of song scattered through the country. _The
+Miscellany_ extended to four volumes, and before the poet's death had
+reached twelve editions. An undying interest belongs to both
+anthologies. _The Evergreen_ was the first poetry Walter Scott perused,
+and in a marginal note on his copy of _The Tea-Table Miscellany_ he
+writes: 'This book belonged to my grandfather, Robert Scott, and out of
+it I was taught _Hardiknute_ by heart before I could read the ballad
+myself. It was the first poem I ever learnt, the last I shall ever
+forget.' The ballad Scott loved so well, I may say in passing, was
+written as a whole or in part by Lady Wardlaw (1677-1727),[35] and
+belongs therefore either to our period or to the later years of the
+seventeenth century.
+
+In 1725 Ramsay published _The Gentle Shepherd_, a pastoral that puts to
+shame the numerous semi-classical and mythological poems which appeared
+under that name in England. It is essentially a rural poem, in which the
+action and language harmonize with what we know, or think we know, of
+country manners and life. There is neither striking invention in the
+plot nor much individuality in the characters, but there is poetical
+harmony throughout, many pretty rustic scenes, and sufficient interest
+to carry the reader pleasantly over the ground. _The Gentle Shepherd_ is
+the work of a poet, and gives a higher impression of Ramsay's power than
+his songs alone would warrant. His lyrical pieces, though not wholly
+without the lilt and charm such verse exacts, are perhaps mainly of
+service in showing the immeasurable superiority of Burns. Ramsay was a
+successful poet, and not too much of a poet to be also a successful man
+of business. He exchanged wig-making for bookselling, kept a shop in the
+High Street of Edinburgh, and finally retired to a villa which he had
+built for himself on the Castle Hill. A good-humoured, care-defying man,
+he enjoyed life in an easy way, and was not disposed to repine when his
+road lay down the hill. In an epistle to a friend he writes:
+
+    'And now in years and sense grown auld,
+    In ease I like my limbs to fauld,
+    Debts I abhor, and plan to be
+    From shackling trade and dangers free;
+    That I may, loosed frae care and strife,
+    With calmness view the edge of life;
+    And when a full ripe age shall crave,
+    Slide easily into my grave.'
+
+Among the Scottish song-writers of the period may be mentioned Robert
+Crawford (1695?-1732), whose love verses, written in a conventional
+strain, are not without music; Lord Binning (1696-1732), the author of a
+pretty song called _Ungrateful Nanny_; and William Hamilton of Bangour
+(1704-1754), who wrote the well-known _Braes of Yarrow_. The most
+charming of Scottish lyrics belong, however, to a later period of the
+century than the age of Pope.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The student who reads the minor poets who figured, in some cases with
+much applause, during the years of Pope's ascendency, will be struck by
+the almost total absence from their works of creative power. These
+rhymers wrote for the age, and illustrate it, but they did not write for
+all time, and a small volume would suffice to hold all their verse which
+is of permanent value. Too often they imagined that by the composition
+of flowing couplets they proved their title to rank with inspired poets.
+They confounded the art of verse-making with the divine art of poetry,
+and were not aware that the substance of their work is prose. Now and
+then the digger in this mine will discover a small nugget of gold, but
+for the most part the interest called forth by the poets mentioned in
+the present chapter, is more historical than poetical, and the reader in
+passing to the great prose writers of the age will be conscious of gain
+rather than of loss.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[31] Cowper's line,
+
+    'Where tempests never beat nor billows roar,'
+
+is not an improvement upon Garth's. Tempests, it has been justly said,
+do not beat.
+
+[32] The _Spectator_, No. 335.
+
+[33] Elwin and Courthope's _Pope_, vol. vii., p. 62.
+
+[34] Edward Young tried his skill on the same theme in a poetical
+epistle to Tickell, but his lines are leaden and his praise absurd.
+Addison's glory was so great, he says, as a statesman and a patriot,
+that
+
+          'It borders on disgrace
+    To say he sung the best of human race.'
+
+
+[35] To Lady Wardlaw Dr. Robert Chambers attributed twenty-five ballads,
+and among them several of the finest we possess, which are regarded as
+ancient by every other authority. If the assumption were proved, this
+lady would hold a distinguished and unique position among the poets of
+the Pope period, but there is absolutely no ground for the theory so
+zealously advocated by Chambers.
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+THE PROSE WRITERS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+JOSEPH ADDISON--SIR RICHARD STEELE.
+
+
+As essayists, the writings of Addison and of Steele are familiar to all
+readers of eighteenth-century literature. Their work in other
+departments may be neglected without much loss; but the student who
+disregards the _Tatler_, the _Spectator_, the _Guardian_, and some of
+the essay-volumes which follow in their wake, will be blind to one of
+the most significant literary features of the period.
+
+The alliance between Addison and Steele was so intimate, that to judge
+of one apart from the other, would be fair to neither. It may be well,
+therefore, after giving the leading facts in the lives of the two
+friends, to bring them together again while considering the work they
+accomplished in their literary partnership. One point, I think, will
+come out clearly in this examination, namely, that while Steele might,
+under very inferior conditions, have produced the _Tatler_ and
+_Spectator_ without Addison, it is highly improbable that Addison, as an
+essayist, would have existed without Steele.
+
+[Sidenote: Joseph Addison (1672-1719).]
+
+Addison lives on the reputation of his prose works, but he thought that
+he was a poet, and was regarded as a poet by his contemporaries. It was
+by verse that he won his earliest reputation, and it was on his Pegasus
+that he rose to be Secretary of State. He was born on May 1st, 1672, at
+Milston, in Wiltshire, a parish of which his father was the rector, and
+was educated at the Charterhouse, where he contracted his memorable
+friendship with Steele. Thence, in 1687, at the boyish age of fifteen,
+he went up to Queen's College, Oxford, and in a few months, thanks to
+his Latin verses, gained a scholarship at Magdalen, of which college ten
+years later he became a fellow.
+
+While at Oxford he acquired, after the fashion of the day, what Johnson
+calls 'the trade of a courtier.' His Latin poem on the _Peace of
+Ryswick_ was dedicated to Montague, and two years later a pension of
+L300 a year, gained through Somers and Montague, enabled him to travel,
+in order that by gaining a knowledge of French and Italian, he might be
+fitted for the diplomatic service. Some time after his return to England
+he published his _Remarks on Several Parts of Italy_ (1705), and
+dedicated the volume to Swift, 'the most agreeable companion, the truest
+friend, and the greatest genius of his age.'
+
+Addison's patrons had now lost their power, and he was left to his own
+exertions. His difficulties did not last long. In 1704 the battle of
+Blenheim called forth several weak efforts from the poetasters, and as
+the Government required verse more worthy of the occasion, the
+Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the recommendation of Montague, now Earl
+of Halifax, applied to Addison, who, in answer to the appeal, published
+_The Campaign_, in 1705. The poem contains the well-known similitude of
+the angel, and also an apt allusion to the great storm that had lately
+destroyed fleets and devastated the country.
+
+    'So when an angel by divine command
+    With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,
+    Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past,
+    Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
+    And, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform,
+    Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.'
+
+_The Campaign_, which has no other passage worth quoting, proved a happy
+hit, and was of such service to the Ministry, that Addison found the way
+to fame and fortune. He was appointed Commissioner of Appeals, and not
+long after Under Secretary of State. In 1707 he accompanied his friend
+and patron, Halifax, on a mission to Hanover, and two years later he was
+appointed Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. In Dublin
+he gained golden opinions. 'I am convinced,' Swift writes, 'that
+whatever Government come over, you will find all marks of kindness from
+any parliament here with respect to your employment; the Tories
+contending with the Whigs which should speak best of you. In short, if
+you will come over again when you are at leisure, we will raise an army
+and make you king of Ireland.' When the Whig Ministry fell in 1710, and
+Addison lost his appointment, he must have gained a fortune, for he was
+able to purchase an estate for L10,000.
+
+In the early years of the century the Italian opera, which had been
+brought into England in the reign of William and Mary, excited the mirth
+and opposition of the wits. Lord Chesterfield, who called it 'too absurd
+and extravagant to mention,' said, 'Whenever I go to the opera I leave
+my sense and reason at the door with my half-guinea, and deliver myself
+up to my eyes and ears.' Steele, Gay, and Pope ridiculed the new-fangled
+entertainment, and Colley Cibber, too, pointed his jest at these
+'poetical drams, these gin-shops of the stage that intoxicate its
+auditors, and dishonour their understanding with a levity for which I
+want a name.' Addison, who has some lively papers on the subject in the
+_Spectator_, undertook to give a faithful account of the progress of
+the Italian opera on the English stage, 'for there is no question,' he
+writes, 'but our great grandchildren will be very curious to know why
+their forefathers used to sit together like an audience of foreigners in
+their own country; and to hear whole plays acted before them in a tongue
+which they did not understand.'
+
+Before writing thus in the _Spectator_, Addison, in order to oppose the
+Italian opera, by what he regarded as a more rational pastime, produced
+his English opera of _Rosamond_, which was acted in 1706, and proved a
+failure on the stage. The music is said to have been bad, and the poetry
+is the work of a writer destitute of lyrical genius. Lord Macaulay, who
+finds a merit in almost everything produced by Addison, praises 'the
+smoothness with which the verses glide, and the elasticity with which
+they bound,' and considers that if he 'had left heroic couplets to Pope,
+and blank verse to Rowe, and had employed himself in writing airy and
+spirited songs, his reputation as a poet would have stood far higher
+than it now does.' The gliding movement of the verse may be admitted;
+but lyric poetry demands the higher qualities of music and imaginative
+treatment, and Addison's 'smoothness,' so far from being a poetical
+gift, is a mechanical acquisition.
+
+In 1713 his _Cato_, with its stately rhetoric and cold dignity, received
+a very different reception. The prologue, written by Pope, is in
+admirable accordance with the spirit of the play. Addison's purpose is
+to exhibit a great man struggling with adversity, and Pope writes:
+
+    'He bids your breasts with ancient ardour rise,
+    And calls forth Roman drops from British eyes;
+    Virtue confessed in human shape he draws,
+    What Plato thought, and God-like Cato was:
+    No common object to your sight displays,
+    But what with pleasure Heaven itself surveys;
+    A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,
+    And greatly falling with a falling state!
+    While Cato gives his little senate laws,
+    What bosom beats not in his country's cause?'
+
+Addison has proved that he could draw a life-like character in his
+representation of Sir Roger de Coverley, but the _dramatis personae_, who
+act a part, or are supposed to act one, in _Cato_, are mere dummies,
+made to express fine sentiments. There is no flesh and blood in them,
+and owing to the dramatist's regard for unity of place, the play is full
+of absurdities. Yet _Cato_ was received with immense applause. It was
+regarded from a political aspect, and both Whig and Tory strove to turn
+the drama to party account. 'The numerous and violent claps of the Whig
+party,' Pope writes, 'on the one side of the theatre, were echoed back
+by the Tories on the other; while the author sweated behind the scenes
+with concern to find their applause proceeding more from the hand than
+the head.'
+
+In another letter he says: 'The town is so fond of it, that the orange
+wenches and fruit women in the parks offer the books at the side of the
+coaches, and the prologue and epilogue are cried about the streets by
+the common hawkers.' It would be interesting to ascertain what there was
+in the state of public affairs in the spring of 1713, which created this
+enthusiasm. Swift, writing to Stella, alludes to a rehearsal of the
+play, but makes no criticism upon it; and Berkeley, who was in London at
+the time, and had a seat in Addison's box on the first night, is also
+silent about it. In a letter written, as it happens, by Bolingbroke, on
+the day that _Cato_ was produced, he indicates the signs of the time, as
+they appeared to a Tory statesman: 'The prospect before us,' he writes,
+'is dark and melancholy. What will happen no man is able to foretell.'
+
+It was this sense of doubt and insecurity in the nation that gave
+significance to trifles. The political atmosphere was charged with
+electricity. The Tories, though in office, were far from feeling
+themselves secure, and both Harley and Bolingbroke were in
+correspondence with the Pretender. Atterbury, who was heart and soul
+with him, had just been made a bishop, Protestant ascendancy was in
+danger, the security of the country seemed to hang on the frail life of
+the Queen, and the strong party spirit of the time was easily fanned
+into a flame. We cannot now place ourselves in the position of the
+spectators whose passions gave such popularity to _Cato_. Its mild
+platitudes and rhetorical periods, its coldness and sobriety, seem ill
+fitted to arouse the fervour of playgoers, but Addison, whose good luck
+rarely failed him, was especially fortunate in the moment chosen for the
+representation of the play. Had _Cato_ exhibited genius of the highest
+order, it could not have been more successful. Cibber writes that it was
+acted in London five times a week for a month to constantly crowded
+houses, and when the tragedy was acted at Oxford, 'Our house,' he says,
+'was in a manner invested, and entrance demanded by twelve o'clock at
+noon, and before one it was not wide enough for many who came too late
+for places.'[36]
+
+_Cato_ had the good fortune to run in London for thirty-five nights, and
+gained also some reputation on the continent. It is formed on the French
+model, and Addison was therefore praised by Voltaire as 'the first
+English writer who composed a regular tragedy.' He added that _Cato_ was
+'a masterpiece.' If so, it is one of the masterpieces that has long
+ceased to be read. Little could its author have surmised that his
+tragedy, received with universal praise, had but a brief life to live,
+while the Essays which he had already contributed to the _Tatler_ and
+_Spectator_ would make his name familiar to future generations.
+
+Addison's poetry may now be regarded as extinct, and most of the poems
+he wrote are probably unknown to the present generation of readers even
+by name. His Latin verses are pronounced excellent by all competent
+critics, but when a man writes verses in a dead language he does so
+generally to show his scholarship, and not to express his inspiration.
+Latin verse is, as M. Taine says, a faded flower. Now and then, indeed,
+a poem has been written with merits apart from its latinity--witness the
+_Epitaphium Damonis_ of Milton--but Addison, who lacked poetic fire in
+his native language, was not likely to find it in a dead tongue. His
+English poems are generally dull, and sometimes, as in his earliest
+poem, the _Account of the greatest English Poets_ (1694), the tameness
+of the verse is matched by the ignorance of the criticism. The student
+will observe how differently the theme is treated by a true poet like
+Drayton in his _Epistle to Reynolds_; or, like Ben Jonson, in the many
+allusions that he makes to his country's poets. Compare, too, Addison's
+_Letter from Italy_ (1701) with the lovely lines on a like theme in
+Goldsmith's _Traveller_, and the contrast between a verseman and a poet
+is at once apparent. Addison, it may be added, is remembered for his
+hymns, which may be found in most selections of sacred verse, and
+deserve a place in the best of them. As the forerunner of Isaac Watts
+(1674-1748) and of Charles Wesley (1708-1788), he struck upon what at
+that time might, in our country, be almost called a new department of
+literature; and it is remarkable that an age which so dreaded enthusiasm
+should have originated verse which gives utterance to the most emotional
+form of spiritual aspiration. As hymn-writers, Englishmen were more
+than a century behind the best sacred poets of Germany. Luther had
+taught the German people the power of hymnody, but it was during the
+Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), and after its conclusion, that the spirit
+of devotion found full expression in religious verse. Just before the
+engagement at Leipzic, Gustavus Adolphus wrote his well-known battle
+hymn, and the peace was celebrated in a noble hymn by Martin Rinkart. He
+was followed by a succession of sacred singers whose devout utterances
+influenced and in some degree inspired the Wesleys.
+
+    "A verse may find him whom a sermon flies,"
+
+says George Herbert, and the enormous power wielded by Methodism owes a
+large portion of its strength to song.
+
+Amidst much in their writings that is questionable in taste and weak in
+expression, both Watts and Charles Wesley have written hymns which prove
+their incontestible right to a place among the poets, and the influence
+they have exerted over the English-speaking race is beyond the power of
+the literary historian to estimate. The external divisions of the
+Christian Church are numerous; its unity is to be seen in the Hymn Book.
+'Men whose theological views contrast most strongly,' says Mr. Abbey in
+his essay on _The English Sacred Poetry of the Eighteenth Century_,
+'meet on common ground when they express in verse the deeper aspirations
+of the heart and the voice of Christian praise.'
+
+In 1714, on the death of the Queen, Addison was once more in office, and
+held his old position of Irish Secretary. In the following year he
+defended the Whig Government and Whig principles in the _Freeholder_, a
+paper published twice weekly. In it he gives no niggard praise to the
+Government of George I., and to the King himself, for his 'civil
+virtues,' and for his martial achievements. Addison's praise disagrees,
+it need scarcely be said, with the more minute and veracious description
+of the King given by Thackeray, but a party politician in those days
+could scarcely be a faithful chronicler. He could see what he wished to
+see, but found it necessary to shut his eyes when the prospect became
+unpleasant. George was a heartless libertine, but Addison observes with
+great satisfaction that the women most eminent for virtue and good sense
+are in his interest. 'It would be no small misfortune,' he says, 'to a
+sovereign, though he had all the male part of the nation on his side, if
+he did not find himself king of the most beautiful half of his subjects.
+Ladies are always of great use to the party they espouse, and never fail
+to win over numbers to it. Lovers, according to Sir William Petty's
+computation, make at least the third part of the sensible men of the
+British nation, and it has been an uncontroverted maxim in all ages,
+that though a husband is sometimes a stubborn sort of a creature, a
+lover is always at the devotion of his mistress. By this means it lies
+in the power of every fine woman to secure at least half-a-dozen
+able-bodied men to his Majesty's service. The female world are likewise
+indispensably necessary in the best causes to manage the controversial
+part of them, in which no man of tolerable breeding is ever able to
+refute them. Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.'
+
+The essayist thinks it fortunate for the Whigs 'that their very enemies
+acknowledge the finest women of Great Britain to be of that party;' and
+in an amusing but rather absurd way he discourses to maids, wives, and
+widows on the advantages of adhering to the Hanoverian Government. It is
+characteristic of Addison that a political paper like the _Freeholder_
+should be flavoured with the humour and badinage he found so effective
+in the _Spectator_. To the ladies he appeals again and again, but not to
+their reason. He gives them mirth instead of argument, and thinks it
+more likely to prevail with the 'Fair Sex.' The _Freeholder_ has several
+papers worthy of the author in his best moods, the best of them,
+perhaps, being the 'Tory Fox-hunter,' with which, to quote Johnson's
+words, 'bigotry itself must be delighted.' In the year which gave birth
+to the _Freeholder_, _The Drummer_, a comedy, was acted at Drury Lane,
+and ran three nights. The play was not acknowledged by Addison, neither
+was it printed in Tickell's edition of his works; but Steele, who
+published an edition of the play, with a dedication to Congreve, never
+doubted, and there is no reason to doubt, that Addison was the author.
+'The piece,' Mr. Courthope writes, 'is like _Cato_, a standing proof of
+Addison's deficiency in dramatic genius. The plot is poor and trivial,
+nor does the dialogue, though it shows in many passages traces of its
+author's peculiar vein of humour, make amends by its brilliancy for the
+tameness of the dramatic situation.'[37]
+
+After the _Freeholder_ Addison wrote nothing of importance, unless we
+except the essay published after his death _On the Evidences of
+Christianity_. Of this essay it will suffice to quote the judgment of
+his most distinguished eulogist. After observing that the treatise shows
+the narrow limits of Addison's classical knowledge, Lord Macaulay adds:
+'It is melancholy to see how helplessly he gropes his way from blunder
+to blunder. He assigns as grounds for his religious belief stories as
+absurd as that of the Cock Lane Ghost, and forgeries as rank as
+Ireland's Vortigern; puts faith in the lie about the Thundering Legion;
+is convinced that Tiberius moved the senate to admit Jesus among the
+gods, and pronounces the letter of Agbarus, King of Edessa, to be a
+record of great authority. Nor were these errors the effects of
+superstition, for to superstition Addison was by no means prone. The
+truth is, that he was writing about what he did not understand.'
+
+In 1716, after having been made one of the Commissioners for Trades and
+Colonies, he married the Countess Dowager of Warwick, with whom he had
+been acquainted for some years. The marriage, according to the doubtful
+authority of Pope, was not a happy one, and is said to have driven
+Addison to the consolations of the tavern. He did not need them long. In
+1717 Sunderland became Prime Minister, and made Addison a Secretary of
+State, an appointment which he resigned eleven months afterwards; and in
+1719 he died at Holland House at the age of forty-seven, leaving one
+daughter as the memorial of the union. He lies, as is fitting, in the
+great Abbey of which he has written so beautifully.
+
+Tickell's noble tribute to his friend's memory belongs to the undying
+poetry which neither age nor fresher forms of verse can render obsolete.
+It must suffice to quote here a few lines from a poem which, despite
+some conventional expressions common to the time, is worthy of its theme
+throughout:
+
+    'If pensive to the rural shades I rove,
+    His shape o'ertakes me in the lonely grove;
+    'Twas there of Just and Good he reasoned strong,
+    Cleared some great truth, or raised some serious song;
+    There patient showed us the wise course to steer,
+    A candid censor, and a friend severe;
+    There taught us how to live; and (oh! too high
+    The price for knowledge) taught us how to die.'
+
+There are few men of literary eminence in the eighteenth century of whom
+we know so little as of Addison. His own _Spectator_, who never opened
+his lips but in his club, is scarcely more silent than the essayist's
+biographers, so trifling are the details they have to record beyond the
+bare facts of his official and literary career. Steele knew him better,
+and, in spite of an unhappy estrangement at the last, probably loved him
+more than anyone else, and had he written his story, as he once proposed
+doing, the narrative might have been charming; but, alas for Steele's
+resolutions!
+
+That Addison was a shy man we know--Lord Chesterfield said he was the
+most timid man he ever knew--and it speaks well for his resolution and
+strength of purpose that he should have risen notwithstanding this
+timidity to so high a position in public affairs. His want of oratorical
+power was a drawback to his efficiency, and Sir James Macintosh was
+probably right in saying that Addison as Dean of St. Patrick's, and
+Swift as Secretary of State, would have been a happy stroke of fortune,
+putting each into the place most fitted for him. The essayist's reserve,
+while it closed his lips in general society, did not prevent him from
+being one of the most fascinating of companions in the freedom of
+conversation with a few intimate friends. Swift, Steele, and even Pope,
+testify to Addison's irresistible charm in the select society that he
+loved. Young said he could chain the attention of every hearer, and Lady
+Mary Montagu declared that he was the best company in the world.
+
+[Sidenote: Richard Steele (1672-1729).]
+
+Richard Steele was born in Dublin, 1672, of English parents, and
+educated at the Charterhouse, where, as we have said, Addison was at the
+same time a pupil. In 1690 he matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford,
+Addison being then demy at Magdalen. Steele left college without taking
+a degree, and entered the army as a cadet. After a time he obtained the
+rank of captain in Lord Lucas's fusiliers, and wrote his treatise, _The
+Christian Hero_ (1701), with the design, he says, 'principally to fix
+upon his own mind a strong impression of virtue and religion in
+opposition to a stronger propensity towards unwarrantable pleasure.'
+Steele was an honest lover of the things most worthy of love, but his
+frailty too often proved stronger than his virtue, and the purpose of
+_The Christian Hero_ was not answered.
+
+Jeremy Collier's _Short View of the Immorality and Profanity of the
+English Stage_, published in 1698, had made, as it well might, a
+powerful impression, and Steele, who was always ready to inculcate
+morality on other people, wrote four comedies with a moral purpose. _The
+Funeral; or Grief a-la-Mode_ was acted with success at Drury Lane in
+1701, and when published passed through several editions. _The Lying
+Lover_ followed two years later, and was, in the comfortable judgment of
+the author, 'damned for its piety.' This was followed, in 1705, by _The
+Tender Husband_, a play suggested by the _Sicilien_ of Moliere, as _The
+Lying Lover_ had been founded on the _Menteur_ of Corneille. Many years
+later Steele's last play, _The Conscious Lovers_ (1722), completed his
+performances as a dramatist. It was dedicated to the King, who is said
+to have sent the author L500. The modern reader will find little worthy
+of attention in the dramas of Steele. His sense of humour enlivens some
+of the scenes, and is, perhaps, chiefly visible in _The Funeral_; but
+for the most part dulness is in the ascendant, and the sentiment is
+frequently mawkish. _The Conscious Lovers_, said Parson Adams, contains
+'some things almost solemn enough for a sermon.' This may be true, but
+we do not desire a sermon in a play, and Steele, who is always a lively
+essayist, loses his liveliness in writing for the stage. It has been
+observed by Mr. Ward that, taking a hint from Colley Cibber, he 'became
+the real founder of that sentimental comedy which exercised so
+pernicious an influence upon the progress of our dramatic literature.'
+'It would be unjust,' he adds, 'to hold him responsible for the
+feebleness of successors who were altogether deficient in the comic
+power which he undoubtedly even as a dramatist exhibits; but in so far
+as their aberrations were the result of his example, he must be held to
+have contributed, though with the best of motives, to the decline of the
+English drama.'[38] One of the prominent offenders who followed in
+Steele's wake was George Lillo (1693-1739), whose highly moral
+tragedies, written for the edification of playgoers, have the kind of
+tragic interest which is called forth by any commonplace tale of crime
+and misery. In Lillo's two most important dramas, _George Barnwell_
+(1731), a play founded on the old ballad, and _The Fatal Curiosity_
+(1736), there is a total absence of the elevation in character and
+language which gives dignity to tragedy. His plays are like tales of
+guilt arranged and amplified from the Newgate Calendar. The author wrote
+with a good purpose, and the public appreciated his work, but it is not
+dramatic art, and has no pretension to the name of literature.
+
+Throughout his life Steele was at war with fortune. His hopefulness was
+inexhaustible, but he learnt no lessons from experience, and escaped
+from one slough to fall into another. He was as unthrifty as Goldsmith,
+whom in many respects he resembles, and his warm, impulsive nature was
+allied to a combativeness and jealousy which sometimes led him to
+quarrel with his best friends. Of his passion for the somewhat exacting
+lady whom he married,[39] and of the 400 and odd notelets addressed by
+the lover-husband to his 'dear, dearest Prue,' and 'absolute Governess,'
+it is enough to say here, that the story told offhand in his own words,
+shows how lovable the man was in spite of the faults which he never
+attempted to conceal. Only about a week before the marriage the lady had
+fair warning of one probable drawback to her happiness as a wife.[40] On
+the morning of August 30th, 1707, Steele advised his 'fair one' to look
+up to that heaven which had made her so sweet a companion, and in the
+evening of that day he wrote:
+
+
+    'DEAR LOVELY MRS. SCURLOCK,
+
+    'I have been in very good company, where your health, under the
+    character of _the woman I loved best_, has been often drunk, so
+    that I may say I am dead drunk for your sake, which is more than
+    I _die for you_.
+
+    'RICH. STEELE.'
+
+
+
+After marriage Steele's extravagance and impecuniosity must have proved
+a severe trial to Prue. At times he would live in considerable style,
+and Berkeley, who writes, in 1713, of dining with him frequently at his
+house in Bloomsbury Square, praises his table, servants, and coach as
+'very genteel.' At other times the family were without common
+necessaries, and on one occasion there was not 'an inch of candle, a
+pound of coal, or a bit of meat in the house.'
+
+On the 12th April, 1709, Steele issued the first number of the
+_Tatler_, its supposed author being the Isaac Bickerstaff, whose name,
+thanks to Swift, had been 'rendered famous through all parts of Europe.'
+The essays appeared every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, for the
+convenience of the post, and at the outset contained political news,
+which Steele, by his government appointment of Gazetteer, was enabled to
+supply. After awhile, however, much to the advantage of the _Tatler_,
+this news was dropped. The articles are dated from White's
+Chocolate-house, from Will's Coffee-house, from the Grecian, and from
+the St. James's. It is probable that the column in Defoe's _Review_,
+containing _Advice from the Scandal Club_, suggested his 'Lucubrations'
+to Steele. If so, it does not detract from his originality of treatment,
+for Defoe's town gossip is poor stuff. Addison, who knew nothing of the
+project beforehand, came, ere long, to his friend's assistance; but it
+was not until about eighty numbers had appeared, that he became a
+frequent contributor, and before that time Steele had made his mark.
+When the essays were afterwards reprinted in four volumes, Steele, who
+was never wanting in gratitude, generously acknowledged the help he had
+received. 'I fared,' he says, 'like a distressed prince who calls in a
+powerful neighbour to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary. When I had
+once called him in, I could not subsist without dependence on him.' The
+_Tatler_ still supplies delightful entertainment, and in the almost
+total absence of amusing and wholesome reading in Steele's time, must
+have proved a welcome companion. Readers who are inundated by what is
+called 'light literature' can with difficulty imagine the dearth
+suffered in Pope's day, when the interminable romances of Calprenede, of
+Mdlle. de Scuderi and her brother, and of Madame la Fayette, were the
+liveliest books considered fit for a modest woman to read. A novel,
+however, in ten volumes, like the _Grand Cyrus_ or _Clelie_, had one
+advantage over the cheap fictions of our time, its interest was not soon
+exhausted.
+
+The _Tatler_ has claims upon the student's attention, apart from the
+entertainment it affords. Steele, who lived from hand to mouth, and
+wrote, as he lived, on the impulse of the moment, had unwittingly begun
+a work destined to form an epoch in English literature. The _Essay_, as
+we now understand the word, dates from the _Lucubrations of Isaac
+Bickerstaff_, and Steele and Addison, who may boast a numerous progeny,
+have in Charles Lamb the noblest of their sons.
+
+On the 2nd January, 1711, Steele wrote the final number of the _Tatler_,
+partly on the plea that the essays would suffice to make four volumes,
+and partly because he was known to be the author, and could not, as Mr.
+Steele, attack vices with the freedom of Mr. Bickerstaff. Addison, who
+had done so much to assist Steele in his first venture, was as ignorant
+of his intention to close the work as he was of its initiation. Two
+months later _The Spectator_ appeared, and this time the friends worked
+in concert. It proved a brilliantly successful partnership. The second
+number, in which the characters of the club are introduced, was written
+by Steele, and to him we owe the first sketch of the immortal Sir Roger
+de Coverley:
+
+'When he is in town he lives in Soho Square. It is said he keeps himself
+a bachelor by reason he was crossed in love by a perverse, beautiful
+widow of the next county to him. Before his disappointment, Sir Roger
+was what you call a fine gentleman, had often supped with my Lord
+Rochester and Sir George Etheridge, fought a duel upon his first coming
+to town, and kicked bully Dawson in a public coffee-house for calling
+him youngster. But being ill-used by the above-mentioned widow, he was
+very serious for a year and a half; and though, his temper being
+naturally jovial, he at last got over it, he grew careless of himself,
+and never dressed afterwards. He continues to wear a coat and doublet of
+the same cut that were in fashion at the time of his repulse, which, in
+his merry humours, he tells us has been in and out twelve times since he
+first wore it.... He is now in his fifty-sixth year, cheerful, gay, and
+hearty, keeps a good house both in town and country; a great lover of
+mankind; but there is such a mirthful cast in his behaviour, that he is
+rather beloved than esteemed. His tenants grow rich, his servants look
+satisfied, all the young women profess love to him, and the young men
+are glad of his company. When he comes into a house he calls the
+servants by their names, and talks all the way upstairs to a visit. I
+must not omit that Sir Roger is a justice of the quorum; that he fills
+the chair at a quarter-session with great abilities; and three months
+ago gained universal applause by explaining a passage in the Game Act.'
+
+In their daily issue, as well as afterwards in volumes, the essays had
+an extensive sale. They were to be found on every breakfast-table, and
+so popular did they prove, that when the imposition of a halfpenny tax
+destroyed a number of periodicals, Steele found it safe to double the
+price of the _Spectator_. The vivacity and humour of the paper were
+visible from the beginning. 'Mr. Steele,' Swift wrote, 'seems to have
+gathered new life, and to have a new fund of wit.' Of 555 papers,
+Addison wrote 274 and Steele 236, while the remaining forty-five were
+the work of occasional contributors. In the full tide of its success,
+and without any assigned reason, the _Spectator_ was brought to a
+conclusion in December, 1712, and in the following spring Steele started
+the _Guardian_, which might have been as fortunate as its predecessor,
+had not the editor's zeal tempted him to diverge to politics. He had
+also a disagreement with his publisher, and the _Guardian_ was allowed
+but a short life of 175 numbers. Of these about fifty were due to
+Addison, and upwards of eighty to Steele.
+
+Steele's political ardour was irrepressible, and a paper in the
+_Guardian_ (No. 128), demanding the abolition of Dunkirk, called forth a
+pamphlet from Swift, in which the weaknesses of his former friend are
+sneered at and denounced with enough of truthfulness to enhance their
+malice. After allowing that Steele has humour, and is no disagreeable
+companion 'after the first bottle,' Swift adds, 'Being the most
+imprudent man alive, he never follows the advice of his friends, but is
+wholly at the mercy of fools and knaves, or hurried away by his own
+caprice, by which he has committed more absurdities in economy,
+friendship, love, duty, good manners, politics, religion, and writing
+than ever fell to one man's share.' A little later, in anticipation of
+the Queen's death, Steele published _The Crisis_ (1714), a political
+pamphlet, which led to his expulsion from the House of Commons. It was
+answered by one of the most masterly of Swift's pamphlets, _The Public
+Spirit of the Whigs_, in which it is suggested that Steele might be
+superior to other writers on the Whig side 'provided he would a little
+regard the propriety and disposition of his words, consult the
+grammatical part, and get some information in the subject he intends to
+handle.'
+
+The reader is chiefly concerned with Steele as an essayist, and it is
+unnecessary to follow his career in the House of Commons and out of it.
+Yet there is one anecdote too characteristic to be omitted in the
+briefest notice of his life. Lady Charlotte Finch had been attacked in
+the _Examiner_ 'for knotting in St. James's Chapel during divine
+service, in the immediate presence both of God and her Majesty, who were
+affronted together.' Steele denounced the calumny in the _Guardian_.
+Upon taking his seat as member for Stockbridge, he was attacked by the
+Tories on account of _The Crisis_, which they deemed an inflammatory
+libel, and defended himself in a speech which occupied three hours. When
+he left the House, Lord Finch, who, like Steele, was a new member, rose
+to make his maiden speech in defence of the man who had defended his
+sister; a nervous feeling caused him to hesitate, and he sat down,
+exclaiming, 'It is strange I cannot speak for this man, though I could
+readily fight for him.' The House cheered these generous words, and Lord
+Finch rising again, made an able speech. The effort was a vain one, and
+Steele lost his seat. A few months later, after the death of Queen Anne,
+he entered the House again as member for Boroughbridge, and having been
+placed in the commission of peace for Middlesex, on presenting an
+address from the county, he received the honour of knighthood.
+
+Meanwhile he had not renounced his vocation of essayist. The _Guardian_
+was followed by the _Englishman_ (1713), the _Englishman_ by the _Lover_
+(1714), and the _Lover_ by the _Reader_ (1714), a journal strongly
+political in character. Of this only nine numbers were issued. Then came
+_Town Talk_, the _Tea Table_, _Chit-chat_, and the _Theatre_. Sir
+Richard appears to have been always in a hurry to break new ground, a
+foible not confined to literature. He was continually starting new
+projects, and never doubted, in spite of numberless failures, that his
+latest effort to make a fortune would be successful.
+
+Notwithstanding his appointments as manager of Drury Lane and as a
+Commissioner in Scotland to inquire into the Estates of Traitors,
+Steele's money difficulties did not lessen as he advanced in life; worse
+still, he had the misfortune to quarrel with his oldest and dearest
+friend. For this he and Addison were alike to blame, and Addison dying a
+few months later, there was no time for reconciliation. In 1718 Steele
+had lost his wife, and some years afterwards his only remaining son.
+Ultimately, broken in health and fortune, Sir Richard retired to
+Carmarthen, and there, in 1729, he died.
+
+'I was told,' says Victor, 'he retained his cheerful sweetness of temper
+to the last; and would often be carried out in a summer's evening, when
+the country lads and lasses were assembled at their rural sports, and
+with his pencil give an order on his agent, the mercer, for a new gown
+to the best dancer.'[41]
+
+All literature worthy of the name is the expression of the writer's
+life, of his aspirations, and of his ultimate aims; and since man is a
+moral being, it cannot be severed from morality. To point a moral, if it
+be within the scope of imaginative art, is subordinate to its main
+purpose. To delight by stimulating the imagination, to give a new beauty
+to existence by widening the realm of thought,--these are some of the
+noblest purposes of literature; and while men and women of creative
+genius are among our wisest teachers, the wisdom we gain from them comes
+to us without direct enforcement. In the last century, however, authors
+of good character, and authors who had no character to boast of, were
+equally impressed with the necessity of adorning their pages with moral
+maxims, and if this moral was not inserted in the body of the work, it
+was inevitable that it should be tacked on to the end of it like a tail
+to a kite. Steele in his artless way had a moral end in view, though his
+method of reaching it was not always wise or even discreet. Addison had
+his moral also. It pervades everything he wrote, but so artfully does
+he make use of it, that the reader is not unpleasantly conscious of a
+purpose. His allegories belong to an obsolete form of literature, but
+one of them at least _The Vision of Mirza_, may be still read with
+pleasure. His Saturday essays, which are nearly always serious in
+character, are the sermons of a layman, expressed in the most lucid
+style and in the purest English. His tales, like his allegories, have
+lost much of their flavour, but the humorous essays, in which he depicts
+the manners of the time, as well as the numbers devoted to the Spectator
+Club and to Addison's beloved Sir Roger, have a perennial charm. There
+is a felicity in the essayist's touch which is beyond imitation,
+although a reader might give, as Johnson suggested, days and nights to
+the study. The style is the man, and to write as Addison wrote it would
+be necessary to reach his moral and intellectual level, to see with his
+shrewd but kindly eyes, and to have his fine sense of humour. His
+faults, too, must be shared by his imitator--the somewhat too delicate
+refinement of a nature that never yields to impulse--the feminine
+sensitiveness that is allied to jealousy. Addison, in the judgment of
+his admirers, comes very near to perfection, and that is an irritating
+quality in a fellow mortal. It is, if it be not paradoxical to say so,
+the defect of his essays. There is nothing definite to find fault with
+in them, but we feel that strength is wanting. The clear and silent
+stream is a beautiful object, but after awhile it becomes monotonous,
+and we long for the swift and impetuous movement of a mountain torrent.
+It would be a thankless task, however, to dwell insistently on the
+deficiencies of a writer who has done so much for literature, and so
+much, too, for what is better than literature. We may wish that he had
+more warmth in him, somewhat more of energy and passion, yet such merits
+would be scarcely consonant with the graceful charm which gives to the
+prose writings of Addison an unrivalled position in Pope's age, and, it
+might be added, in the eighteenth century, were it not for the priceless
+literary gift bestowed upon Oliver Goldsmith.
+
+Steele's fame as a writer has been overshadowed by the more exquisite
+genius of Addison, and his reputation has suffered partly from his own
+frailties and partly from the contemptuous way in which he has been
+treated by the panegyrists and critics of Addison. Pity is closely
+allied to contempt, and Sir Richard has come to be regarded as a
+scapegrace whose chief honour in life was the friendship of the
+accomplished essayist. Yet it was Steele who created the form of
+literature in which Addison earned his laurels, and without which he
+would in the present day be utterly forgotten. Steele was the discoverer
+of a new country, and if Addison took possession of its fairest portion,
+it was after his friend had pointed out the path and made the way easy.
+It would be very unjust, however, to treat of Steele solely as a
+pioneer. His own work, though less perfect than that of Addison, a
+consummate master of composition, is rich in variety and spirit, in
+pathos and in knowledge of the world. Steele is often careless, but he
+is never dull, and writes with a glow of enthusiasm that excites the
+reader's sympathy. Truly does Mr. Dobson say that while Addison's essays
+are faultless in their art and beyond the range of his friend's more
+impulsive nature, 'for words which the heart finds when the head is
+seeking; for phrases glowing with the white heat of a generous emotion;
+for sentences which throb and tingle with manly pity or courageous
+indignation, we must go to the essays of Steele.'[42]
+
+Sir Richard's pathetic touches and artless turns of expression come
+from the heart. He is the most natural of writers, but does not seem to
+be aware that nature, in order to be converted into good literature,
+needs a little clothing. His essays have often a looseness or negligence
+of aim unpardonable in a man who can write so well. A conspicuous
+illustration of this defect may be seen in No. 181 of the _Tatler_, one
+of the most beautiful pieces from Steele's pen.
+
+'The first sense of sorrow,' he writes, 'I ever knew was upon the death
+of my father, at which time I was not quite five years of age; but was
+rather amazed at what all the house meant, than possessed with a real
+understanding why nobody was willing to play with me. I remember I went
+into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping alone by it.
+I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a-beating the coffin and
+calling "Papa," for, I know not how, I had some slight idea that he was
+locked up there. My mother catched me in her arms, and transported
+beyond all patience of the silent grief she was before in, she almost
+smothered me in her embraces; and told me in a flood of tears, "Papa
+could not hear me, and would play with me no more, for they were going
+to put him under ground, whence he could never come to us again." She
+was a very beautiful woman of a noble spirit, and there was a dignity in
+her grief amidst all the wildness of her transport, which, methought,
+struck me with an instinct of sorrow, that before I was sensible of what
+it was to grieve, seized my very soul, and has made pity the weakness of
+my heart ever since.'
+
+Later on in the essay, and still looking back on the past, Steele
+recalls the untimely death of the first object his eyes ever beheld with
+love, and then abruptly dismissing his regrets he carelessly finishes
+the paper with this characteristic passage: 'A large train of disasters
+were coming on to my memory when my servant knocked at my closet door,
+and interrupted me with a letter, attended with a hamper of wine of the
+same sort with that which is to be put to sale on Thursday next at
+Garraway's Coffee-house. Upon the receipt of it I sent for three of my
+friends. We are so intimate that we can be company in whatever state of
+mind we meet, and can entertain each other without expecting always to
+rejoice. The wine we found to be generous and warming, but with such a
+heat as moved us rather to be cheerful than frolicsome. It revived the
+spirits, without firing the blood. We commended it until two of the
+clock this morning, and having to-day met a little before dinner, we
+found that though we drank two bottles a man, we had much more reason to
+recollect than forget what had passed the night before.'
+
+Steele, to quote Johnson's phrase, was 'the most agreeable rake that
+ever trod the rounds of indulgence,' but he had many a fine quality that
+does not harmonize with the character of a rake; and although he hurt
+himself by his follies, he did his best to help others by his genial
+wisdom. If he did not sufficiently regard his own interests, his
+thoughts, as Addison said, 'teemed with projects for his country's
+good.' Savage Landor, with an impulse of somewhat extravagant eulogy,
+exclaimed, 'What a good critic Steele was! I doubt if he has ever been
+surpassed.' This is one of the sayings that will not bear examination.
+Steele had doubtless the fine perception of what is noble in art and
+literature, which some men possess instinctively. He felt what was good,
+but does not appear either to have reached or strengthened his
+conclusions by any process of study.
+
+As an essayist Steele is careless, rapid, emotional, and disposed to be
+on the best terms with himself and with his readers. He makes them sure
+that if they could have met him in his rollicking mood at Will's
+Coffee-house, he would have treated them all round, even if, like
+Goldsmith, he had been forced to borrow the money to do it. But he was
+not always in this reckless humour. His heart was expansive in its
+sympathies and tender as a woman's; his mind was open to all kindly
+influences, and his essays have in them the rich blood and vivid
+utterances of a man who has 'warmed both hands before the fire of life.'
+
+Between Steele's _Guardian_ (1713) and the _Rambler_ of Johnson (1750),
+a period of thirty-seven years, a swarm of periodicals testify to the
+fame of Steele and Addison. The reader curious on the subject will find
+in Dr. Drake's essays a minute account of the numerous essayists who
+flourished, or who made an effort to live, between the close of the
+eighth volume of the _Spectator_ and the beginning of the present
+century. Of these a few have still a place on our shelves, but for the
+most part they enjoyed a butterfly existence, and serve but to prove the
+immeasurable superiority of the writers who created the English Essay.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[36] Cibber's _Apology_, p. 386.
+
+[37] Courthope's _Addison_, p. 150.
+
+[38] _English Dramatic Literature_, vol. ii., p. 603.
+
+[39] 'It is a strange thing,' he writes, 'that you will not behave
+yourself with the obedience people of worse features do, but that I must
+be always giving you an account of every trifle and minute of my time.'
+
+[40] Steele had been previously married to Mrs. Stretch, a widow, who
+possessed an estate in the West Indies; but the lady did not long
+survive the marriage.
+
+[41] Victor's _Original Letters, Dramatic Pieces, and Poems_, vol. i.,
+p. 330.
+
+[42] _Selections from Steele_, by Austin Dobson. Introduction, p. xxx.
+Clarendon Press.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+JONATHAN SWIFT--JOHN ARBUTHNOT.
+
+
+The booksellers who employed the most famous man of letters then living
+(1777), to write the _Lives of the Poets_, selected the authors whose
+biographies were to accompany the poems they proposed to publish. They
+did not know the difference between versemakers and poets; but they
+probably did know what authors of the rhyming tribe were likely to prove
+the most popular. Dr. Johnson, who was then in his sixty-ninth year, was
+willing to write the _Lives_ to order. He added, indeed, three or four
+names to the list which had been given him; but he made no protest, and
+contented himself, as he told Boswell, in saying that a man was a dunce
+when he thought that he was one.
+
+Among the biographies included by Johnson in the _Lives_, appears the
+illustrious name of Swift. He was far indeed from being a dunce; but
+just as certainly he was not a poet, unless the title be given to him by
+courtesy. On the other hand, Swift ranks among the most distinguished
+prose writers of his time--many critics consider him the greatest--and
+he therefore finds his natural place in the prose section of this
+volume.
+
+[Sidenote: Jonathan Swift (1667-1745).]
+
+Swift's life is an extraordinary psychological study, but it will
+suffice to state here the bare outline of his career. He was a
+posthumous child, and born in Dublin of English parents, November 30th,
+1667. When a year old he was kidnapped by his nurse out of pure
+affection, and carried off to Whitehaven, where she remained with the
+child for three years. At the age of six the boy was sent to Kilkenny
+school, and there he had William Congreve (1670-1729), the future
+dramatist, for a schoolfellow. Neither at school nor at Trinity College,
+Dublin, which he entered as a boy of fifteen, did Swift distinguish
+himself, and he left the University in disgrace. At the Revolution he
+found a refuge with his mother at Leicester, and she, through a family
+relationship, obtained a position for her boy in the house of Sir
+William Temple (1628-1698), who was accounted a great man in his own
+day, and was famous alike for statecraft and literature. By many readers
+he will be best remembered as the husband of the charming Dorothy
+Osborne, whose innocently sweet love-letters have not lost their
+freshness in the lapse of two centuries.
+
+There was a degree of servitude in Swift's position of secretary, which
+galled his proud spirit. But Temple, so far from treating him unkindly,
+introduced him to the King, and employed him in 'affairs of great
+importance.' In 1694 he left Temple, went to Dublin, took holy orders,
+and lived as prebend of Kilroot on L100 a year. In 1696 he resigned the
+office and returned to Moor Park, where he remained until Sir William
+Temple's death, in 1699. There he studied hard, ran up a steep hill
+daily for exercise, and cultivated the acquaintance of Esther Johnson,
+the 'Stella' destined to take a strange part in Swift's history, then a
+mere girl, and a companion of Temple's sister, who lived with him after
+his wife's death.
+
+Swift began his literary career by writing Pindaric odes, one of which
+led Dryden to say, and the prediction was amply verified, 'Cousin Swift,
+you will never be a poet.' Probably no man of genius ever wrote worse
+poetry than is to be found in these portentous efforts.
+
+Here is one fair illustration of his flights as an ode writer, and the
+reader will not ask for more:
+
+    'Were I to form a regular thought of Fame,
+      Which is perhaps, as hard to imagine right
+      As to paint Echo to the sight,
+    I would not draw the idea from an empty name;
+      Because, alas! when we all die,
+      Careless and ignorant posterity,
+    Although they praise the learning and the wit,
+      And though the title seems to show
+    The name and man by whom the book was writ,
+      Yet how shall they be brought to know
+    Whether that very name was he, or you, or I?
+      Less should I daub it o'er with transitory praise,
+      And water-colours of these days:
+    These days! where e'en th' extravagance of poetry
+      Is at a loss for figures to express
+    Men's folly, whimsies, and inconstancy,
+      And by a faint description makes them less.
+    Then tell us what is Fame, where shall we search for it?
+    Look where exalted Virtue and Religion sit,
+    Enthroned with heavenly Wit!
+      Look where you see
+      The greatest scorn of learned Vanity!
+      (And then how much a nothing is mankind!
+    Whose reason is weighed down by popular air.
+      Who, by that, vainly talks of baffling death,
+      And hopes to lengthen life by a transfusion of breath,
+      Which yet whoe'er examines right will find
+      To be an art as vain as bottling up of wind!)
+    And when you find out these, believe true Fame is there,
+      Far above all reward, yet to which all is due;
+      And this, ye great unknown! is only known in you.'
+
+It is remarkable that at the very time Swift was perpetrating these
+lyrical atrocities, he was at work on the _Tale of a Tub_, which is
+generally regarded as the most masterly effort of his genius. A critic
+has said that Swift's poetry 'lacks one quality only--imagination,' but
+verse without imagination is like a body without a soul, like a house
+without windows, like a landscape-painting without atmosphere, and no
+license of language will allow us to call Swift a poet. Enough that he
+became a master of rhyme, and used it with extraordinary facility. Dr.
+Johnson's estimate of Swift's powers in this respect is a just one:
+
+'In the poetical works of Dr. Swift there is not much upon which the
+critic can exercise his powers. They are often humorous, almost always
+light, and have the qualities which recommend such compositions, ease
+and gaiety. They are, for the most part, what their author intended. The
+diction is correct, the numbers are smooth, and the rhymes exact. There
+seldom occurs a hard-laboured expression, or a redundant epithet; all
+his verses exemplify his own definition of a good style; they consist of
+proper words in proper places.'
+
+The merits with which Swift's verse is credited are, therefore, not
+poetical merits, unless we accept what Schlegel calls the miserable
+doctrine of Boileau, that the essence of poetry consists in diction and
+versification.
+
+The great bulk of Swift's verse is suggested by the incidents of the
+hour. No subject is too trivial for his pen; but the poems which are
+addressed to Stella, and others which, like _Cadenus and Vanessa_, and
+_On the Death of Dr. Swift_, have a personal interest, are by far the
+most attractive. We see the best side of Swift when he addresses Stella,
+whether in verse or prose. The birthday rhymes he delighted to write in
+her praise have the mark of sincerity, and there is true feeling in the
+lines which describe her as a ministering angel in his sickness:
+
+    'When on my sickly couch I lay,
+    Impatient both of night and day,
+    Lamenting in unmanly strains,
+    Called every power to ease my pains;
+    Then Stella ran to my relief
+    With cheerful face and inward grief;
+    And though by Heaven's severe decree
+    She suffers hourly more than me,
+    No cruel master could require
+    From slaves employed for daily hire,
+    What Stella, by her friendship warmed,
+    With vigour and delight performed;
+    My sinking spirits now supplies
+    With cordials in her hands and eyes,
+    Now with a soft and silent tread
+    Unheard she moves about my bed.
+    I see her taste each nauseous draught
+    And so obligingly am caught,
+    I bless the hand from whence they came,
+    Nor dare distort my face for shame.'
+
+The poem in which Swift imagines what will take place upon his death, is
+full of satiric humour, combined with that vein of bitterness that is
+never long absent from his writings. His humour is always allied to
+sadness; his mirth often sounds like a cry of misery. In this poem he
+pictures his gradual decay, and how his special friends, anticipating
+the end, will show their tenderness by adding largely to his years:
+
+    'He's older than he would be reckoned,
+    And well remembers Charles the Second.
+    He hardly drinks a pint of wine,
+    And that I doubt is no good sign.
+    His stomach too begins to fail,
+    Last year we thought him strong and hale,
+    But now he's quite another thing,
+    I wish he may hold out till Spring.'
+
+No enemy can match a friend, Swift adds, in portending a great
+misfortune:
+
+    'He'd rather choose that I should die
+    Than his prediction prove a lie,
+    No one foretells I shall recover,
+    But all agree to give me over.'
+
+So he dies, and the first question asked is, 'What has he left and who's
+his heir?' and when these questions are answered, the Dean is blamed for
+his bequests. The news spreads to London and is told at Court:
+
+    'Kind Lady Suffolk, in the spleen,
+    Runs laughing up to tell the Queen.
+    The Queen so gracious, mild, and good,
+    Cries, "Is he gone? 'tis time he should."'
+
+But the loss of the Dean will cause a brief regret to his most intimate
+friends:
+
+    'Poor Pope will grieve a month; and Gay
+    A week; and Arbuthnot a day.
+    St. John himself will scarce forbear
+    To bite his pen and drop a tear.
+    The rest will give a shrug, and cry,
+    "I'm sorry--but we all must die."'
+
+Why grieve, indeed, at the death of friends, since no loss is more easy
+to supply, and in a year the Dean will be forgotten, and his wit be out
+of date.
+
+    'Some country squire to Lintot goes,
+    Inquires for "Swift in Verse and Prose."
+    Says Lintot, "I have heard the name;
+    He died a year ago." "The same."
+    He searches all the shop in vain.
+    "Sir, you may find them in Duck Lane,
+    I sent them with a load of books
+    Last Monday to the pastrycook's.
+    To fancy they could live a year!
+    I find you're but a stranger here.
+    The Dean was famous in his time,
+    And had a kind of knack at rhyme.
+    His way of writing now is past,
+    The town has got a better taste."'
+
+Enough has been transcribed to show Swift's art in this poem, which is
+of considerable, but not of wearisome length. Perhaps ten or twelve
+pieces, in addition to those already mentioned, will repay the student's
+attention. One of the worthiest is a _Rhapsody on Poetry_. _Baucis and
+Philemon_, too, is a lively piece that pleased Goldsmith, and will
+please every reader. It was much altered from the original draught at
+Addison's suggestion; but the alterations are not improvements.[43] _The
+City Shower_ is a piece of Dutch painting, reminding us of Crabbe. _Mrs.
+Harris's Petition_ is an admirable bit of fooling; _Mary the Cook-Maid's
+Letter_, is in its way inimitable; and so, too, is the amusing talk of
+'my lady's waiting-woman' in _The Grand Question Debated_.
+
+It is difficult, unhappily, to pursue one's way through Swift's poems,
+without being repelled again and again by the filth in which it pleases
+him to wade. _The Beast's Confession_, which has been reprinted in the
+_Selections from Swift_ (Clarendon Press), is not obscene, like _The
+Lady's Dressing-Room_, _Strephon and Chloe_, and other poems of the
+class; but it has the inhumanity which deforms the description of the
+Houyhnhnms. Strange to say, in private life Swift appears to have been
+not only moral in conduct, but refined in conversation, and he is even
+said to have rebuked Stella on one occasion for a slightly coarse
+remark. His imagination was diseased, and he was himself always
+apprehensive of the calamity under which he became at last 'a driveller
+and a show.' 'I shall be like that tree,' he said once to the poet
+Young, 'I shall die at the top.'
+
+It has been already said that _The Tale of a Tub_ was written at Moor
+Park. It appeared in 1704, and although published anonymously and never
+owned, the book effectually stood in the way of Swift's high preferment
+in the Church. Queen Anne declined, and not without reason, to make its
+author a bishop.
+
+It is a satire of amazing power, written by a man who takes, as Swift
+took throughout life, a misanthropical view of human nature, and who
+agrees with the cynical judgment of Carlyle, that men are mostly fools.
+Swift, however, did not consider fools useless, but observes that they
+'are as necessary for a good writer as pen, ink, and paper.' Never was
+volume written which betrayed in larger characters the opinions and
+disposition of its author. Swift was consistent in defending the
+National Church as a political institution; but in the _Tale of a Tub_
+he does so with weapons an atheist might use if he possessed the skill.
+The author maintains that in his ridicule of the Church of Rome and of
+Protestant dissenters, he is only displaying the abuses which deform the
+Christian Church; but no defence can be urged for his wild and
+irreverent method of turning subjects into ridicule which by a vast
+number of people are regarded as sacred. In judging of Swift's satire
+from a moral standing-point, one test, as Mr. Leslie Stephen observes,
+may be supposed to guide our decision. 'Imagine the _Tale of a Tub_ to
+be read by Bishop Butler and by Voltaire, who called Swift a _Rabelais
+perfectionne_. Can anyone doubt that the believer would be scandalized,
+and the scoffer find himself in a thoroughly congenial element? Would
+not any believer shrink from the use of such weapons, even though
+directed against his enemies?'[44]
+
+Although the wit poured out with such profusion in the _Tale of a Tub_,
+in so far as it offends the moral sense, fails to give pleasure, the
+reader is astonished, as Swift in later life was himself, at the genius
+displayed in this allegory, the argument of which may be told in a few
+words.
+
+A man is supposed to have three sons by one wife, and all at a birth. On
+his deathbed he leaves to each of them a new coat, which he says will
+grow with their growth, and last as long as they live. In his will he
+leaves directions, saying how the coats are to be used, and warning them
+against neglecting his instructions. For some years all goes well, the
+will is studied and followed, and the brothers, Peter (the Church of
+Rome), Martin (the Church of England), and Jack (the Calvinist), live in
+unity. How by degrees they misinterpret their father's will, how Peter
+begins by adding topknots to his coat, and afterwards grows so
+scandalous that his brothers resolve to leave him, and then fall out
+between themselves, is told with abundant wit. A great part of the
+volume consists of digressions written in Swift's most vigorous style,
+and with the cynical humour in which he has no competitor.
+
+It is always interesting to observe the influence of a work of genius on
+other minds, and in connection with the _Tale of a Tub_ a story told of
+his boyhood by William Cobbett is worth recording:
+
+'I was trudging through Richmond,' he writes, 'in my blue smock-frock,
+and my red garters tied under my knees, when, staring about me, my eyes
+fell upon a little book in a bookseller's window, on the outside of
+which was written, "_Tale of a Tub_, price threepence." The title was so
+odd that my curiosity was excited.... It was something so new to my mind
+that though I could not at all understand some of it, it delighted me
+beyond description; and it produced what I have always considered a sort
+of birth of intellect. I read on till it was dark, without any thought
+of supper or bed.' Cobbett adds, that having read till he could see no
+longer, he put the volume in his pocket, and 'tumbled down' by the side
+of a haystack, 'where I slept till the birds in Kew Gardens awakened me
+in the morning; when off I started to Kew, reading my little book.'
+
+One of the greatest masters of prose in the language has also recorded
+the impression made upon him by this wonderful book. At the age of
+eighty-three Landor wrote: 'I am reading once more the work I have read
+oftener than any other prose work in our language.... What a writer! Not
+the most imaginative or the most simple, not Bacon or Goldsmith had the
+power of saying more forcibly or completely whatever he meant to say.'
+'Simplicity,' said Swift, 'is the best and truest ornament of most
+things in human life;' and Landor, commenting on Swift's style, observes
+that 'he never attempted to round his sentences by redundant words,
+aware that from the simplest and the fewest arise the secret springs of
+genuine harmony.'
+
+The volume containing the _Tale of a Tub_ had also within its covers the
+_Battle of the Books_, which was suggested by a controversy that
+originated in France, and had been carried on by Sir W. Temple in
+England, as to the relative merits of the Ancients and the Moderns. Out
+of this, too, arose a discussion by some _savants_, with Richard Bentley
+(1662-1742), the greatest scholar of the age, at their head, with regard
+to the genuineness of the _Epistles of Phalaris_, a subject discussed in
+Macaulay's essay on Temple in his usually brilliant style. Swift, in the
+_Battle of the Books_ sides with Temple and with Charles Boyle, the
+nominal editor of the _Epistles_, who, in the famous _Reply to Bentley_,
+fought behind the shield of Atterbury. In a combat, which takes place in
+the Homeric style, the enemies of the Ancients, Bentley and Wotton, are
+slain by one lance upon the field. The mighty deed was achieved by
+Boyle. 'As when a slender cook has trussed a brace of woodcocks, he with
+iron skewer pierces the tender sides of both, their legs and wings close
+pinioned to their ribs, so was this pair of friends transfixed, till
+down they fell joined in their lives, joined in their deaths; so closely
+joined, that Charon would mistake them both for one, and waft them over
+Styx for half his fare.' The humour of the piece is delightful, and it
+matters not a whit for the enjoyment of it, that the wrong heroes gain
+the victory.
+
+In 1708 Swift produced several pamphlets or tracts, and in one of them,
+the _Argument against Abolishing Christianity_, he found ample scope for
+the irony of which he was so consummate a master.
+
+'Great wits,' he writes, 'love to be free with the highest objects; and
+if they cannot be allowed a God to revile or renounce, they will speak
+evil of dignities, abuse the Government, and reflect upon the ministry;
+which I am sure few will deny to be of much more pernicious
+consequence;' and he observes, in concluding the argument: 'Whatever
+some may think of the great advantages to trade by this favourite
+scheme, I do very much apprehend that in six months' time the Bank and
+East India Stock may fall at least one _per cent._ And since that is
+fifty times more than ever the wisdom of our age thought fit to venture
+for the preservation of Christianity, there is no reason we should be at
+so great a loss merely for the sake of destroying it.'
+
+An amusing piece which appeared also at this time from Swift's pen, is
+of literary interest. Under the name of Isaac Bickerstaff he predicted
+the death, upon a certain day, of Partridge, a notorious astrologer and
+almanac maker. When the day arrived his decease was announced, and he
+was afterwards decently buried by Swift, despite a loud protest from the
+poor man that he was not only alive, but well and hearty. The town took
+up the joke, all the wits joined in it, and Steele, who started the
+_Tatler_ in the following year (1709), found it of advantage to assume
+the name of Bickerstaff, which these squibs had made so popular. Swift
+loved practical jokes, and sometimes yielded to a license that bordered
+on buffoonery. He was now in London, charged with a mission from the
+Irish Church, and hoping for Church preferment himself. With the latter
+object in view he published the _Sentiments of a Church of England Man_
+(1708). Two years later, vexed at heart at being unable to gain for the
+Irish clergy privileges enjoyed by their English brethren, and foiled,
+too, in his ambition, Swift forsook the Whig party, which he had never
+loved, and going over to the Tories, fought their battle for some years
+with so masterly a pen, as to become a great power in the country.
+
+Some time before his return to London in 1710, a weekly Tory paper had
+been started by Bolingbroke and Prior called _The Examiner_, and in
+opposition to it, upon September 14th in that year, Addison produced the
+_Whig Examiner_ which lived a brief life of five numbers and died on the
+8th of October. Three weeks later, on the 2nd November, after thirteen
+numbers of the _Examiner_ had been published, Swift took up the pen, and
+from that date to June 14th, 1711, every paper was from his hand. Never
+before had a political journal exercised such power. In his change of
+party Swift was sincere in purpose, but unscrupulous in his methods of
+pursuing it, and to gain his ends told lies with a vigour that has
+rarely been surpassed. He is never delicate in his treatment of
+opponents, and when finer weapons would be useless, strikes with a
+sledge hammer. That such a writer, a master of every method most
+effective in controversy, should have been valued by the statesmen of
+the day is not surprising. When he forsook the Whig camp there was no
+opponent to pit against him, for neither Addison with his delicate
+humour, nor Steele with his brightness and versatility, could grapple
+with an enemy like this.
+
+Swift's arrogance in these days of his power was that of a despot. He
+was doing great things for ministers, and took care that they should
+know it. He was proud of his self-assertion, proud of being rude. Great
+men, and great ladies too, who wished for his acquaintance, had to make
+the first advances. He caused Lady Burlington to burst into tears by
+rudely ordering her to sing. 'She should sing or he would make her.' 'I
+was at court and church to-day,' he tells Stella, 'I generally am
+acquainted with about thirty in the drawing-room, and am so proud I make
+all the lords come up to me.' On one occasion he sent the Lord Treasurer
+into the House of Commons to call out the principal Secretary of State
+in order to say that he would not dine with him if he intended to dine
+late. He relates, too, how he warned St. John not to appear cold to him,
+for he would not be treated like a school-boy, and if he heard or saw
+anything to his disadvantage to let him know in plain words, and not to
+put him in pain by the change of his behaviour, for it was what he would
+hardly bear from a crowned head. 'If we let these great ministers
+pretend too much,' he says, 'there will be no governing them.' And in a
+letter to Pope he makes the following confession: 'All my endeavours
+from a boy to distinguish myself were only for want of a great title and
+fortune that I might be treated like a lord ... whether right or wrong
+it is no great matter; and so the reputation of great learning does the
+work of a blue ribbon, and of a coach and six horses.'
+
+It would be out of place in this volume to dwell on Swift's feats as a
+political writer; for us the most interesting fact connected with the
+years 1710-14 is that during that eventful period of Swift's life, in
+which he was hobnobbing with Ministers of State and doing them infinite
+service by his pen, he was writing at odd moments his inimitable
+_Journal to Stella_, and gaining the love which ended so tragically, of
+Hester Vanhomrigh. This strange chapter in Swift's life is closely bound
+up with his literary history, and must therefore be briefly noticed.
+
+At Moor Park Swift, who was more than twenty years her senior, had seen
+Esther Johnson growing up into womanhood. He had been to her as a
+master, a position he always liked to assume towards women.[45] When he
+settled in Ireland it was arranged that Esther and her companion, Mrs.
+Dingley, should also live there. Her preceptor, in his regard for
+propriety, appears never to have seen Esther apart from the useful
+Dingley, and his letters are apparently addressed to both of them, but
+Esther knew, as we know, that all the tenderness and affectionate humour
+they contain was meant for her alone. Swift never writes as a lover, but
+the kind of love he gave to 'Stella' sufficed to bind her to him for
+life. If there were moments when she wished to escape from his power,
+the wish was hopeless. Having once submitted to his fascination, she was
+held by it to the end. Hester Vanhomrigh, who was about ten years
+younger than Stella, felt the same spell, and having a far less
+restrained nature than Miss Johnson, gave free expression to the passion
+which devoured her. Between his two admirers, for such they were, Swift
+had a difficult course to steer. To Stella he was linked by strong ties
+of companionship, and to her, according to some authorities, he was
+secretly married. Whether this were the case or not she had the larger
+claims upon him, and if one of the twain had to be sacrificed, Vanessa
+must be the victim.
+
+In _Cadenus and Vanessa_ (1713) a poem which every student of Swift will
+read, the author strove to achieve an impossibility. His aim was to
+ignore the lover and to assume the character of a master to an
+intelligent and favourite pupil, or of a father to a daughter. His
+dignity and age, he says, forbade the thought of warmer feelings.
+
+    'But friendship in its greatest height,
+    A constant rational delight,
+    On Virtue's basis fixed to last
+    When love's allurements long are past,
+    Which gently warms but cannot burn,
+    He gladly offers in return;
+    His want of passion will redeem
+    With gratitude, respect, esteem;
+    With that devotion we bestow
+    When goddesses appear below.'
+
+And this was Swift's method of dealing with a woman who confessed the
+'inexpressible passion' she had for him, and that his 'dear image' was
+always before her eyes. 'Sometimes,' she wrote, 'you strike me with that
+prodigious awe, I tremble with fear; at other times a charming
+compassion shines through your countenance which moves my soul.' Swift
+had acted far more than indiscreetly in encouraging a friendship with
+Vanessa, and when she followed him to Dublin, in the neighbourhood of
+which she had some property, he knew not how to escape from the snare
+his own folly had laid. To Stella he had given 'friendship and esteem,'
+but, as he is careful to add, 'ne'er admitted love a guest;' the same
+cold gift was offered to Vanessa, but in vain. According to a report,
+the authority of which is doubtful, Miss Vanhomrigh wrote to Stella, in
+1723, asking if she was Swift's wife. She replied that she was, and sent
+the letter she had received to Swift. In a towering passion he rode to
+Vanessa's house, threw the letter on the table, and left again without
+saying a word. The blow was fatal, and Vanessa died soon afterwards,
+revoking her will in Swift's favour and leaving to him the legacy of
+remorse. Having told in outline this episode in Swift's story, I return
+to the _Journal to Stella_, which dates from September 2nd, 1710, to
+June 6th, 1713.
+
+Little did Swift imagine that the chit-chat he was writing every day for
+Esther Johnson's sake would be read and enjoyed by thousands who care
+little or nothing for the party questions upon which the strenuous
+efforts of his intellect were expended. The early years of the
+eighteenth century contain nothing more delightful than this _Journal_.
+Its gossip, its nonsense, its freshness and ease of style, the
+tenderness concealed, or half-revealed, in its 'little language,' and
+the illustrations it supplies incidentally of the manners of the court
+and town, these are some of the charms that make us turn again and again
+to its pages with ever-increasing pleasure. We enjoy Swift's egotism and
+trivialities, as we enjoy the egotism of Pepys or Montaigne, and can
+imagine the eagerness with which the _Letters_ were read by the lovely
+woman whose destiny it was to receive everything from Swift save the
+love which has its consummation in marriage. The style of the _Journal_
+is not that of an author composing, but of a companion talking; and it
+is all the more interesting since it reveals Swift's character under a
+pleasanter aspect than any of his formal writings. We see in it what a
+warm heart he had for the friends whom he had once learnt to love, and
+with what zeal he exerted himself in assisting brother-authors, while
+receiving little beyond empty praise from ministers himself.
+
+In the winter of 1713-14 Swift joined the Scriblerus Club, an
+association of such wits as Pope, Parnell, Arbuthnot, and Gay, and it
+was about this time that his friendship with Pope began. The members
+proposed writing a satire between them, and when Swift was exiled to
+Dublin as Dean of St. Patrick's, he pursued indirectly the suggestion of
+the Scriblerus wits by writing _Gulliver's Travels_ (1726), a book that
+has made his name known throughout Europe, and in all the lands where
+English literature is read. Although Swift did not hesitate to make use
+of hints and descriptions which he had met with in the course of his
+reading, this is one of the most original works of fiction ever written,
+and one of the wittiest. Yet like almost everything that Swift wrote, it
+is deformed by grossness of expression, and in the latter portion by a
+malignant contempt for human nature which betrays a diseased
+imagination. The stories of the Lilliputians and Brobdingnags, purified
+from coarse allusions, are the delight of children; but the description
+of the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos excites disgust and indignation. He said
+that his object in writing the satire was to vex the world, and he has
+succeeded.
+
+'It cannot be denied,' says Sir Walter Scott, one of the sanest and
+healthiest of imaginative writers, 'that even a moral purpose will not
+justify the nakedness with which Swift has sketched this horrible
+outline of mankind degraded to a bestial state; since a moralist ought
+to hold with the Romans that crimes of atrocity should be exposed when
+punished, but those of flagitious impurity concealed. In point of
+probability, too--for there are degrees of probability, proper even to
+the wildest fiction--the fourth part of _Gulliver_ is inferior to the
+three others.... The mind rejects, as utterly impossible, the
+supposition of a nation of horses, placed in houses which they could not
+build, fed with corn which they could neither sow, reap, nor save,
+possessing cows which they could not milk, depositing that milk in
+vessels which they could not make, and, in short, performing a hundred
+purposes of rational and social life for which their external structure
+altogether unfits them.'[46]
+
+Neither morality, nor a regard for probability are so outraged in the
+story of the Lilliputians and Brobdingnags.
+
+Having once accepted Swift's assumption of the existence of little
+people not six inches high, and of a country in which the inhabitants
+'appeared as tall as an ordinary spire-steeple,' the exactness and
+verisimilitude of the narrative, with its minute geographical details,
+make it appear so reasonable that a young reader may feel inclined to
+resent the criticism of an Irish bishop who said that 'the book was full
+of improbable lies, and for his part he hardly believed a word of it.'
+It is curious to note that Swift, who made a strange vow in early life
+'not to be fond of children, or let them come near me hardly,' should
+have done more to delight them than any author of his century, with the
+exception, perhaps, of Defoe. Gay and Pope wrote a joint letter to Swift
+on the appearance of the _Travels_, pretending that they did not know
+the author, and advising him to get the book if it had not yet reached
+Ireland. 'From the highest to the lowest,' they declare, 'it is
+universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery.... It has
+passed Lords and Commons _nemine contradicente_, and the whole town,
+men, women, and children, are quite full of it.' A book which attained
+in the author's lifetime a wellnigh unprecedented popularity should
+have yielded him a large profit. What it did yield we do not know, but
+in a letter dated 1735, in which, perhaps, he alludes to the _Travels_,
+Swift says, 'I never got a farthing for anything I writ, except once,
+about eight years ago, and that by Mr. Pope's prudent management for
+me.'
+
+The injustice done to Ireland in the last century, as short-sighted as
+it was cruel, is described at large in the second volume of Mr. Lecky's
+_History_. Swift, who hated Ireland, felt a righteous indignation at the
+misgovernment which threatened the country with ruin, and some of his
+most powerful phillipics were secretly written in her defence.
+
+In 1720 he issued a pamphlet urging the Irish to use only Irish
+manufactures: 'I heard the late Archbishop of Tuam,' he writes, 'mention
+a pleasant observation of somebody's, that Ireland would never be happy
+till a law were made for burning everything that came from England,
+except their people and their coals. I must confess, that as to the
+former, I should not be sorry if they would stay at home; and for the
+latter, I hope, in a little time we shall have no occasion for them
+
+    "Non tanti mitra est, non tanti judicis ostrum--"
+
+but I should rejoice to see a staylace from England be thought
+scandalous, and become a topic for censure at visits and tea-tables.'
+
+The pamphlet is a forcible attack on the oppression under which Ireland
+laboured, and the Government answered it by prosecuting the printer.
+Nine times the jury were sent back by the Chief Justice before they
+consented to bring in a 'special verdict,' and ultimately the
+prosecution was dropped.
+
+Two years later the English Government granted a patent to a man of the
+name of Wood to issue a new copper coinage for Ireland to an
+extravagant amount, out of which, in return for bribes to the Duchess of
+Kendal, it was supposed that the speculator would make a considerable
+profit at Ireland's expense. The country was aroused, and Swift, by the
+issue of the _Drapier's Letters_, purporting to come from a Dublin
+draper, roused the passions of the people to a white heat. It was known
+perfectly well from whom the _Letters_ came, but no one would betray
+Swift, and when the printer was thrown into prison the jury refused to
+convict. The battle was fought with vigour, Swift conquered, and the
+patent was withdrawn. A brief passage from the fourth and final letter
+'To the Whole People of Ireland' shall be quoted. It will be seen that
+the writer is not afraid of plain speaking. After saying that the king
+cannot compel the subject to take any money except it be sterling gold
+or silver, he adds:
+
+    'Now here you may see that the vile accusation of Wood and his
+    accomplices, charging us with disputing the King's prerogative
+    by refusing his brass, can have no place--because compelling the
+    subject to take any coin which is not sterling is no part of the
+    King's prerogative, and I am very confident, if it were so, we
+    should be the last of his people to dispute it, as well from
+    that inviolable loyalty we have always paid to his Majesty, as
+    from the treatment we might in such a case justly expect from
+    some, who seem to think we have neither common sense nor common
+    senses. But, God be thanked, the best of them are only our
+    fellow-subjects, and not our masters. One great merit I am sure
+    we have which those of English birth can have no pretence
+    to--that our ancestors reduced this kingdom to the obedience of
+    England; for which we have been rewarded with a worse
+    climate--the privilege of being governed by laws to which we do
+    not consent--a ruined trade--a House of Peers without
+    jurisdiction--almost an incapacity for all employments--and the
+    dread of Wood's halfpence. But we are so far from disputing the
+    king's prerogative in coining, that we own he has power to give
+    a patent to any man for setting his royal image and
+    superscription upon whatever materials he pleases, and liberty
+    to the patentee to offer them in any country from England to
+    Japan; only attended with one small limitation--that nobody
+    alive is obliged to take them.'
+
+With much humour, in the last paragraph of the letter, Swift undertakes
+to show that Walpole is against Wood's project 'by this one invincible
+argument, that he has the universal opinion of being a wise man, an able
+minister, and in all his proceedings pursuing the true interest of the
+King his master; and that as his integrity is above all corruption, so
+is his fortune above all temptation.'
+
+Swift's arguments in the _Drapier's Letters_ are sophistical, his
+statements grossly exaggerated, and his advice sometimes shameless, as,
+for instance, in recommending what is now but too well known as
+'boycotting.' The end, however, was gained, and the Dean was treated
+with the honours of a conqueror. On his return from England in 1726, a
+guard of honour conducted him through the streets, and the city bells
+sounded a joyful peal. Wherever he went he was received with something
+like royal honours, and when Walpole talked of arresting him, he was
+told that 10,000 soldiers would be needed to make the attempt
+successful. The Dean's hatred of oppression and injustice had its
+limits. He defended the Test Act, and assailed all dissenters with
+ungovernable fury. It was his aim to exclude them from every kind of
+power.
+
+In 1729, with a passion outwardly calm and in a moderate style, which
+makes his amazing satire the more appalling, Swift published _A Modest
+Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from
+being a Burden to their Parents or Country and for making them
+Beneficial to the Public_. A more hideous piece of irony was never
+written; it is the fruit of an indignation that tore his heart. The
+_Proposal_ is, that considering the great misery of Ireland, young
+children should be used for food. 'I grant,' he says,'this food will be
+somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they
+have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title
+to the children. 'A very worthy person, he says, considers that young
+lads and maidens over twelve would supply the want of venison, but 'it
+is not improbable that some scrupulous people might be apt to censure
+such a practice (although, indeed, very unjustly), as a little bordering
+upon cruelty; which I confess has always been with me the strongest
+objection against any project, how well soever intended.' The
+business-like way in which the argument is conducted throughout, adds
+greatly to its force. Swift has written nothing so terrible as this
+satire, and nothing that surpasses it in power.
+
+The Dean was fretting away his life when he wrote this pamphlet. Two
+years before he had paid his last visit to the country where, as he said
+in a letter to Gay, he had made his friendships and left his desires. On
+the death of George I. he visited England, vainly hoping to gain some
+preferment there through the aid of Mrs. Howard, the mistress of George
+II., and returned to 'wretched Dublin,' to lose the woman he had loved
+so well and treated so strangely, and to 'die in a rage like a poisoned
+rat in a hole.' After Stella's death, in 1728, Swift's burden of
+misanthropy was never destined to be lightened. His rage and gloom
+increased as the years moved on, and in penning his lines of savage
+invective against the Irish House of Commons, the Dean had a fit and
+wrote no more verse. Here is a specimen of his _saeva indignatio_:
+
+    'Could I from the building's top
+    Hear the rattling thunder drop,
+    While the devil upon the roof
+    (If the devil be thunder-proof)
+    Should with poker fiery red
+    Crack the stones and melt the lead;
+    Drive them down on every skull,
+    While the den of thieves is full;
+    Quite destroy that harpies' nest,
+    How might then our isle be blest!'
+
+It should be observed at the same time that even in his declining days,
+when his heart was heavy with bitterness, Swift indulged in practical
+jokes and in the most trivial pursuits. _Vive la bagatelle_ was his cry,
+but it was the cry of a man who had as deep a contempt for the wiser
+pursuits of life as for its frivolities. Of the mirth that is the
+natural outcome of a cheerful nature, the Dean knew nothing. His
+hilarity was but a vain attempt to escape from despair. In 1740 he
+writes of being very miserable, extremely deaf, and full of pain.
+Sometimes he gave way to furious bursts of temper, and for several years
+before the end came, he fell into a state resembling idiocy. Swift died
+on October 19th, 1745, leaving his money to a hospital for lunatics,
+
+    'And showed by one satiric touch
+    No nation needed it so much.'
+
+A brilliant writer, who has undertaken to prove the 'glaring injustice'
+of the popular estimate of Swift, and by his forcible epithets has
+strengthened the grounds on which that estimate is built, observes that
+Swift's 'philosophy of life is ignoble, base, and false,' that 'his
+impious mockery extends even to the Deity,' and that 'a large portion of
+his works exhibit, and in intense activity, all the worst attributes of
+our nature--revenge, spite, malignity, uncleanness.'[47]
+
+This harsh judgment is essentially a true one; but Swift's was a
+many-sided character. He was a misanthrope, with deep, though very
+limited affections, a man frugal to eccentricity, with a benevolence at
+once active and extensive. His powerful intellect compels our
+admiration, if not our sympathy. His irony, his genius for satire and
+humour, his argumentative skill, his language, which is never wanting in
+strength, and is as clear as the most pellucid of mountain
+streams--these gifts are of so rare an order, that Swift's place in the
+literary history of his age must be always one of high eminence.
+Doubtless, as a master of style, he has been sometimes over-praised. If
+we regard the writer's end, it must be admitted that his language is
+admirably fitted for that end. What more then, it may be asked, can be
+needed? The reply is, that in composition, as in other things, there are
+different orders of excellence. The kind, although perfect, may be a low
+kind, and Swift's style wants the 'sweetness and light,' to quote a
+phrase of his own, which distinguish our greatest prose writers. It
+lacks also the elevation which inspires, and the persuasiveness that
+convinces while it charms. With infinitely more vigour than Addison,
+Swift, apart from his _Letters_, has none of Addison's attractiveness.
+No style, perhaps, is better fitted to exhibit scorn and contempt; but
+its author cannot express, because he does not possess, the sense of
+beauty.
+
+Unlike Pope, Swift was a man of affairs rather than of letters. He wrote
+neither for literary fame nor for money. His ambition was to be a ruler
+of men, and in imperious will he was strong enough to make a second
+Strafford. 'When people ask me,' said Lord Carteret, 'how I governed
+Ireland, I say that I pleased Dr. Swift, "_quaesitam meritis sume
+superbiam_."' As a political pamphleteer he succeeded, because he was
+savagely in earnest, and had the special genius of a combatant. If
+argument was against him he used satire; if satire failed he tried
+invective; his armoury was full of weapons, and there was not one of
+them he could not wield. He loved power, and exercised it on the
+ministers who needed the services of his pen. And, as we have already
+said, he dispensed his favours like a king! Swift's commanding genius
+gives even to his most trivial productions a measure of vitality. The
+student of our eighteenth century literature is arrested by the man and
+his works, and to treat either him or them with indifference would be to
+neglect a significant chapter in the history of the time.
+
+[Sidenote: John Arbuthnot (1667-1735).]
+
+John Arbuthnot, one of the most prominent of the Queen Anne wits, and
+the warm friend of Swift and Pope, was born at Arbuthnot, near Montrose,
+in 1667. He studied medicine at Aberdeen, and having taken his doctor's
+degree at St. Andrews, came, after the wont of ambitious Scotchmen, to
+seek his fortune in London, where in 1700 he published an _Essay on the
+Usefulness of Mathematical Learning_, and having won high reputation as
+a man of science, was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. A few years
+later he was made Physician Extraordinary to Queen Anne; and it was not
+long before he had as high a repute among men of letters as with men of
+science. He suffered frequently from illness; but no pain, it has been
+said, could extinguish his gaiety of mind. In the last century Hampstead
+was a favourite resort of invalids. Arbuthnot had sent Gay there on one
+occasion, and thither in 1734 he went himself, so ill that he 'could
+neither sleep, breathe, eat, nor move.' Contrary to his expectation he
+regained a little strength, and lived until the following spring. 'Pope
+and I were with him,' Lord Chesterfield wrote, 'the evening before he
+died, when he suffered racking pains.... He took leave of us with
+tenderness, without weakness, and told us that he died not only with the
+comfort, but even the devout assurance of a Christian.'
+
+There is not one of Pope's circle who holds a more enviable position
+than Arbuthnot. In strength of intellect and readiness of wit Swift only
+was his equal, and in classical learning he was Swift's superior. Like
+Othello, Arbuthnot was of a free and open nature, and his friends clung
+to him with an affection that was almost womanly. He had the fine
+impulses of Goldsmith combined with the manliness and practical sagacity
+of Dr. Johnson, and Johnson recognized in this celebrated physician a
+kindred spirit. 'I think Dr. Arbuthnot,' he said, 'the first man among
+the wits of the age. He was the most universal genius, being an
+excellent physician, a man of deep learning, and a man of much humour.'
+His genius and generous qualities were amply acknowledged by his
+contemporaries, Pope calls Arbuthnot 'as good a doctor as any man for
+one that is ill, and a better doctor for one that is well;' Swift said
+he had every virtue which could make a man amiable; Berkeley wrote of
+him as a great philosopher who was reckoned the first mathematician of
+the age and had the character 'of uncommon virtue and probity,' and
+Chesterfield, who declared that his knowledge and 'almost inexhaustible
+imagination' were at every one's service, added that 'charity,
+benevolence, and a love of mankind appeared unaffectedly in all he said
+and did.'
+
+Strange to say we know little of Arbuthnot but what is to be gleaned
+from the correspondence of his friends, and it is only of late years
+that an attempt has been made to write the doctor's biography, and to
+collect his works.[48] To edit these works satisfactorily is a difficult
+and a doubtful task--several of Arbuthnot's writings having been
+produced in connection with Swift, Pope, and Gay. So indifferent was he
+to literary fame, that his children are said to have made kites of
+papers in which he had jotted down hints that would have furnished good
+matter for folios. His most famous work is _The History of John Bull_
+(1713), which Macaulay considered the most humorous political satire in
+the language. It was designed to help the Tory party at the expense of
+the Duke of Marlborough, whose genius as a military leader was probably
+equal to that of Wellington, while he fell far below the 'Great Duke' in
+the virtues which form a noble character. The irony and dry humour of
+the satire remind one of Swift, and, like Arbuthnot's _Art of Political
+Lying_, is so much in Swift's vein throughout that M. Taine may be
+excused for attributing both of these pieces to the Dean of St.
+Patrick's.
+
+The _History of John Bull_ is not fitted to attain lasting popularity.
+It will be read from curiosity and for information; but the keen
+excitement, the amusement, and the irritation caused by a brilliant
+satire of living men and passing events can be but vaguely imagined by
+readers whose interest in the statecraft of the age is historical and
+not personal. Arbuthnot, like Swift, belonged to the Tory camp, and both
+did their utmost to depreciate the great General who never knew defeat,
+and to promote the designs of Harley. When Arbuthnot produced his
+satire, all the town laughed at the representation of Marlborough as an
+old smooth-tongued attorney who loved money, and was said by his
+neighbours to be hen-pecked, 'which was impossible by such a
+mild-spirited woman as his wife was.' That an 'honest plain-dealing
+fellow' like John Bull the Clothier, should be deceived by such wily men
+of business as Lewis Baboon of France, and Lord Strutt of Spain, and
+also that other tradesmen should be willing to join John and Nic Frog,
+the linen-draper of Holland, in the lawsuit, provided that Bull and
+Frog, or Bull alone, would bear the law charges, is made to appear
+likely enough; and Scott says truly that 'it was scarce possible so
+effectually to dim the lustre of Marlborough's splendid achievements as
+by parodying them under the history of a suit conducted by a wily
+attorney who made every advantage gained over the defendant a reason for
+protracting law procedure, and enhancing the expense of his client.' In
+this long lawsuit everybody is represented as gaining something except
+_John Bull_, whose ready money, book debts, bonds, and mortgages go into
+the lawyer's pockets. Whether the nickname of _John Bull_ originated
+with Arbuthnot or was merely adopted by him is not known.
+
+Arbuthnot was an active member of the Scriblerus Club, and wrote the
+larger portion of the _Memoirs of Martin Scriblerus_ (1741), the design
+of which was, as Pope said, to ridicule false tastes in learning, in the
+character of a man 'that had dipped into every art and science, but
+injudiciously in each.' Dr. Johnson says of this work that no man can be
+wiser, better, or merrier for remembering it. Perhaps he is right; but
+the _Memoirs_ contain some humorous points which, if they do not create
+merriment, may yield some slight amusement. The pedant's endeavours to
+make a philosopher of his child are sufficiently ludicrous. He is
+delighted to find that the infant has the wart of Cicero and the very
+neck of Alexander, and hopes that he may come to stammer like
+Demosthenes, 'and in time arrive at many other defects of famous men.'
+As the boy grows up his father invents for him a geographical suit of
+clothes, and stamps his gingerbread with the letters of the Greek
+alphabet, which proved so successful a mode of teaching the language,
+that on the very first day the child 'ate as far as iota.' He also
+taught him as a diversion 'an odd and secret manner of stealing,
+according to the custom of the Lacedemonians, wherein he succeeded so
+well that he practised it till the day of his death.' Martin studies
+logic, philosophy, and medicine, and discovers that the seat of the soul
+is not confined to one place in all persons, but resides in the stomach
+of epicures, in the brain of philosophers, in the fingers of fiddlers,
+and in the toes of rope-dancers. His discoveries, it may be added, are
+made 'without the trivial help of experiments or observations.'
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[43] _Life of Jonathan Swift_, by John Forster, vol. i., pp. 164-174.
+Mr. Forster did not live to produce more than one volume of a work to
+which for many years he had given 'much labour and time.'
+
+[44] _English Men of Letters--Jonathan Swift_, by Leslie Stephen, p. 43.
+
+[45] Mrs. Pendarves writes (1733) 'The day before we came out of town we
+dined at Doctor Delany's, and met the usual company. The Dean of St.
+Patrick's was there _in very good humour_, he calls himself "_my
+master_," and corrects me when I speak bad English or do not pronounce
+my words distinctly. I wish he lived in England, I should not only have
+a great deal of entertainment from him, but improvement.'--_Life and
+Correspondence of Mrs Delany_, vol. i., p. 407.
+
+[46] _Life of Swift_, p. 299.
+
+[47] _Jonathan Swift, a Biographical and Critical Study_, by J. Churton
+Collins, p. 267.
+
+[48] See _The Life and Works of Dr. Arbuthnot_, by George A. Aitken.
+Oxford, Clarendon Press.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+DANIEL DEFOE--JOHN DENNIS--COLLEY CIBBER--LADY MARY WORTLEY
+    MONTAGU--EARL OF CHESTERFIELD--LORD LYTTELTON--JOSEPH SPENCE.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Daniel Defoe (1661-1731).]
+
+The most voluminous writer of his century is popularly remembered as the
+author of one book, published in old age. Everybody has read _Robinson
+Crusoe_, and knows the name of its author; but few readers outside the
+narrow circle of literary students are aware of Defoe's exhaustless
+labours as a politician, social reformer, projector, pamphleteer, and
+novelist.
+
+It would be well for the author's reputation if we knew less about him
+than we do. There was a time when he was regarded as a noble sufferer in
+the cause of civil and religious liberty. His faults were credited to
+his age while his virtues were supposed to place him on an eminence far
+above the time-servers who despised him. He has been praised as a man
+courageously living for great aims, who was maligned by the malice of
+party, and to whose memory scant justice has been done. 'No one,' says
+Henry Kingsley, 'could come up to the standard of his absolute
+precision,' and his 'inexorable honesty alienated everyone.' These words
+were written in 1868. Four years previously, however, the discovery of
+six letters in the State Paper Office, in Defoe's own hand, had entirely
+destroyed his character for inexorable honesty, and the researches of
+his latest and most exhaustive biographer,[49] who regards his hero's
+vices as virtues, do but serve to give greater prominence to the
+baseness of his conduct. Defoe, by his own confession, was for many
+years in the pay of the Government for secret services, taking shares in
+Tory papers and supervising them as editor, in order to defeat the aims
+of the party to which he professed to be allied, and of the proprietors
+with whom he was in partnership. Thus in 1718, he writes as a plea that
+his labours should be remembered: 'I am, Sir, for this service, posted
+among Papists, Jacobites, and enraged High Tories--a generation who I
+profess my very soul abhors; I am obliged to hear traitorous expressions
+and outrageous words against his majesty's person and government, and
+his most faithful servants, and smile at it all as if I approved it; I
+am obliged to take all the scandalous and indeed villainous papers that
+come, and keep them by me as if I would gather materials from them to
+put them into the _News_; nay, I often venture to let things pass which
+are a little shocking that I may not render myself suspected. Thus I bow
+in the House of _Rimmon_, and must humbly recommend myself to his
+lordship's protection, or I may be undone the sooner, by how much the
+more faithfully I execute the commands I am under.' It would not be fair
+to judge Defoe altogether by the moral standard of our own day, but the
+part he played as a servant and spy of the government would have been an
+act of baseness in any age, and of this he seems to have been conscious.
+
+Daniel Foe, who about 1703 assumed the prefix of De, for no assignable
+reason, was the son of a butcher and Nonconformist in Cripplegate, who
+had the youth educated for the ministry. Daniel, however, preferred a
+more exciting occupation, and took part in the unfortunate expedition of
+the Duke of Monmouth. Escaping from that peril he began business as a
+hose factor in Cornhill, and carried it on until he failed about the
+year 1692. Already he had learnt to use the pen, and a loyal pamphlet
+secured for him a public appointment which lasted for some years. He was
+also connected with a brick manufactory at Tilbury. Meanwhile he wrote
+for the press, and showed himself the possessor of a clear and masculine
+style, which could be 'understanded of the people.'
+
+In 1698 Defoe published his _Essay on Projects_, 'which perhaps,'
+Benjamin Franklin says, 'gave me a turn of thinking that had an
+influence on some of the principal future events of my life.'
+
+One of the most interesting projects in the book is the proposal to form
+an Academy on the French model. In 1712 Swift wrote a pamphlet (the only
+piece he published with his name) entitled _A proposal for correcting,
+improving, and ascertaining the English tongue_, in which he suggests
+the foundation of an Academy under the protection of the Queen and her
+ministers. The idea it will be seen had been anticipated fifteen years
+before.
+
+    'The peculiar study of the Academy of France,' Defoe writes,
+    'has been to refine and correct their own language, which they
+    have done to that happy degree that we see it now spoken in all
+    the courts of Christendom as the language allowed to be most
+    universal. I had the honour once to be a member of a small
+    society who seemed to offer at this noble design in England; but
+    the greatness of the work and the modesty of the gentlemen
+    concerned prevailed with them to desist from an enterprise which
+    appeared too great for private hands to undertake. We want
+    indeed a Richelieu to commence such a work, for I am persuaded
+    were there such a genius in our kingdom to lead the way, there
+    would not want capacities who could carry on the work to a
+    glory equal to all that has gone before them. The English tongue
+    is a subject not at all less worthy the labours of such a
+    society than the French, and capable of a much greater
+    perfection. The learned among the French will own that the
+    comprehensiveness of expression is a glory in which the English
+    tongue not only equals, but excels its neighbours.... It is a
+    great pity that a subject so noble should not have some as noble
+    to attempt it; and for a method what greater can be set before
+    us than the Academy of Paris, which, to give the French their
+    due, stands foremost among all the great attempts in the learned
+    part of the world.'
+
+Defoe also projected a Royal Military Academy, and an academy for women
+which should have only one entrance and a large moat round it. With
+these precautions, spies, he observes, would be unnecessary, since, in
+his opinion, 'there needs no other care to prevent intriguing than to
+keep the men effectually away.' He had the Eastern notion of guarding
+women from danger by preventing the access to it, yet he could write:
+
+    'A woman of sense and manners is the finest and most delicate
+    part of God's creation; the glory of her Maker, and the great
+    instance of His singular regard to man, His darling creature, to
+    whom He gave the best gift either God could bestow or man
+    receive. And it is the sordidest piece of folly and ingratitude
+    in the world to withhold from the sex the due lustre which the
+    advantages of education gives to the natural beauty of their
+    minds. A woman well bred and well taught, furnished with the
+    additional accomplishments of knowledge and behaviour, is a
+    creature without comparison; her society is the emblem of
+    sublime enjoyments; her person is angelic and her conversation
+    heavenly.... She is every way suitable to the sublimest wish,
+    and the man that has such a one to his portion has nothing to do
+    but to rejoice in her and be thankful.'
+
+In verse Defoe published the _True Born Englishman_ (1701), in defence
+of King William and his Dutch followers:
+
+    'William's the name that's spoke by every tongue,
+    William's the darling subject of my song;
+    Listen, ye virgins, to the charming sound,
+    And in eternal dances hand it round.
+    Your early offerings to this altar bring,
+    Make him at once a lover and a king.'
+
+The nonsense deepens as the rhyme goes on. For William every tender vow
+is to be made, he is to be the first thought in the morning, and his
+name will act as a charm, affrighting the infernal powers and guarding
+from the terror of the night.
+
+The poem proved very popular, and Defoe writes that had he been able to
+enjoy the profit of his own labour he would have gained above L1,000. He
+printed nine editions at the price of one shilling a copy, but meanwhile
+twelve surreptitious editions were published and sold for a few pence, a
+fraud for which he says he had no remedy but patience. Throughout his
+busy life of authorship he was indeed continually victimized by pirates.
+
+While in verse Defoe extolled the king as if he were a demi-god, he did
+William good service by his pamphlets, and was in some degree admitted
+into his confidence.
+
+Up to the king's death in 1702 his course appears to have been
+straightforward; after the accession of Anne he acted a less honourable
+part. No fault can be found with his design that year in writing _The
+Shortest Way with the Dissenters_, a piece of irony unsurpassed in that
+age until the publication of Swift's _Modest Proposal_, twenty-seven
+years later. The satire was at first accepted as a serious argument. The
+Dissenters were alarmed, and the most bigoted of High Churchmen
+delighted. Then, Defoe's aim being discovered, both parties joined in
+the cry for vengeance. He was condemned to stand for three days in the
+pillory, and was afterwards imprisoned in Newgate. To the 'hieroglyphic
+state machine, contrived to punish Fancy in,' the undaunted man
+addressed a hymn which was hawked about the streets, and the mob instead
+of pelting him with offensive missiles, covered him with flowers.
+'Earless on high stood unabashed Defoe,' says Pope. He was unabashed,
+but he was not earless.
+
+In Newgate he remained until 1704, when he was released by Harley. In
+prison he wrote a minutely circumstantial account of the great storm
+commemorated in Addison's _Campaign_. How much of Defoe's narrative is
+truth and how much invention it is impossible to say. The fact that he
+solemnly vouches for the accuracy of his statements inclines one to
+believe that they are not to be trusted, for this was always Defoe's
+_role_ as a writer of fiction. His first and most deliberate effort is
+to impose upon his readers, and in this art he is without a rival.
+
+While in Newgate he began his _Review_, a political journal of great
+ability. The first number was published in February, 1704, and it
+existed, though not in its original form, for more than nine years.
+
+'When it is remembered that no other pen was ever employed than that of
+Defoe, upon a work appearing at such frequent intervals, extending over
+more than nine years, and embracing, in more than five thousand printed
+pages, essays on almost every branch of human knowledge, the achievement
+must be pronounced a great one, even if he had written nothing else. If
+we add that between the dates of the first and last numbers of the
+_Review_ he wrote and published no less than eighty other distinct
+works, containing 4,727 pages, and perhaps more not now known, the
+fertility of his genius must appear as astonishing as the greatness of
+his capacity for labour.'[50]
+
+Defoe was permitted to leave his prison upon condition that he should
+act in the secret service of the Government, and his work was that of an
+hireling writer unburdened by principle. When Harley was ejected he made
+himself useful to Godolphin; when Godolphin was dismissed he went back
+to Harley, and 'the spirit of the _Review_ changed abruptly.' A more
+useful man for the work he had undertaken could not be found. His
+dexterity, his boldness, his knowledge of men and of affairs, his
+readiness as a writer, and it must be added his unscrupulousness, fitted
+him admirably for services which had to be done in secret.
+
+Much that he did openly was deserving of high praise. He was tolerant in
+an intolerant age, he did his best to forward the Union of England and
+Scotland, his patriotic spirit was not feigned, his words are often
+weighty with wisdom, and it has been truly said, that 'his powerful
+advocacy was enlisted in favour of almost every practicable scheme of
+social improvement that came to the front in his time.'[51]
+
+With equal truth the writer adds that Defoe was 'a wonderful mixture of
+knave and patriot.' The knavery is seen to some extent in his method of
+workmanship as a man of letters. In _A True Relation of the Apparition
+of one Mrs. Veal[52] the next day after her Death to one Mrs. Bargrave
+at Canterbury, 8th September, 1705_ (1706) Defoe's art of mystification
+is skilfully practised.
+
+'This relation,' he says in the Preface, 'is matter of fact, and
+attended with such circumstances as may induce any reasonable man to
+believe it. It was sent by a gentleman, a Justice of Peace at Maidstone,
+in Kent, and a very intelligent person, to his friend in London as it is
+here worded; which discourse is here attested by a very sober and
+understanding gentleman, who had it from his kinswoman who lives in
+Canterbury, within a few doors of the house in which the within-named
+Mrs. Bargrave lives ... and who positively assured him that the whole
+matter as it is related and laid down is really true, and what she
+herself had in the same words, as near as may be, from Mrs. Bargrave's
+own mouth.'
+
+In addition to this circumstantial statement, the veritable appearance
+of the ghostly lady is confirmed by the fact that she wore a scoured
+silk gown, newly made up, which, as Mrs. Bargrave told a friend, she
+felt and commended. 'Then Mrs. Watson cried out, "you have seen her
+indeed, for none knew but Mrs. Veal and myself that the gown was
+scoured."' The ghost came chiefly for the purpose of recommending
+Drelincourt's volume, _A Christian's Defence Against the Fear of Death_,
+then in its third edition. The fourth edition contained Mrs. Bargrave's
+story. 'I am unable to say,' Mr. Lee writes, 'when Defoe's "Apparition"
+became a necessary appendage to the book; but think, that since the
+eleventh edition, to the present time, Drelincourt has never been
+published without it.'
+
+When in 1719, at the age of fifty-nine, he produced his first and
+greatest work of fiction, _Robinson Crusoe_, he aimed by the constant
+reiteration of commonplace details to give a matter-of-fact aspect to
+the narrative, and in most of his later novels, with the exception of
+_Colonel Jack_ (1722), which he allows to be in part a 'moral romance,'
+Defoe boldly maintains that his relations are in every respect true to
+biography and to history. To make this more probable he overloads his
+pages with a number of business-like statements, and with affairs so
+insignificant and sordid that only his genius can save the narrative
+from being wearisome. To inculcate morality he carries his readers into
+the worst dens of vice--his heroes being pickpockets, pirates, and
+convicts, and his heroines depraved women of the lowest order. The
+interest felt in _Captain Singleton_ (1720), in _Moll Flanders_ (1722),
+in _Colonel Jack_ (1722), and in _Roxana_ (1724), is to be found in the
+minute record of their shameless adventures, their miseries and vices.
+When the characters reform, Defoe's occupation is gone. The atmosphere
+the reader is forced to breathe in these tales is indeed so oppressive
+that he will be glad to escape from it into the pure and exhilarating
+air of a Shakespeare or a Scott.
+
+A critic has asserted that as models of fictitious narrative these tales
+are supreme, but it is impossible to agree with this judgment. The
+highest imaginative art is not deceptive art. The fact that Lord Chatham
+thought the _Memoirs of a Cavalier_[53] (1720) a true history, is not to
+the credit of the work as fiction. As well, it has been said, might you
+claim the highest genius for the painter, whose fruit and flowers were
+so deceptively painted as to tempt birds to peck at the canvas.
+
+Whatever interest the reader feels in Defoe's 'secondary novels,' of
+which _Roxana_ is the most powerful, is due to scenes which disgust as
+much as they impress. The vividness with which they are depicted is
+undeniable, but one does not desire to inspect filth with a microscope.
+Happily _Robinson Crusoe_, on which the author's fame rests, is a
+thoroughly healthy book that still holds its place as the best, or one
+of the best, volumes ever written for boys. There is genius as well as
+extraordinary skill in the way this admirable story is told, but it is
+not among the fictions which are read with as much pleasure in old age
+as in youth. Defoe's amazing gift of invention does not compensate for
+the want of a creative and elevating imagination.
+
+_The History of the Plague in London_ (1722) stands next to _Robinson
+Crusoe_ in literary merit. Had Defoe been a witness, as he pretends to
+have been, of the scenes which he describes, the record could not be
+more vivid. It professes to have been 'written by a citizen who
+continued all the while in London,' and 'lived without Aldgate Church
+and Whitechapel Bars, on the left hand or north side of the street.' In
+this case, as in others, the circumstantial character of the narrative
+led readers to regard it as a true history, and Dr. Mead, in his
+_Discourse on the Plague_ (1744), quotes the book as an authority.
+
+Highly characteristic of Defoe's style, and of his art as a moralist is
+the _Religious Courtship_, also published in 1722. It is the fictitious
+history of a family told partly in dialogue, and so written as to
+attract the reader in spite of repetitions and of reflections as
+praiseworthy as they are commonplace. It appeals to a class whose
+attention would not be won by fine literature, and has not appealed in
+vain, for the book, after passing through a large number of editions,
+has not yet lost its popularity. Morally the work is unobjectionable,
+though not a little narrow, and it is strange that it should have
+appeared about the same time as a story so offensively coarse as _Moll
+Flanders_.
+
+The most veracious book written by Defoe is _A Tour through the Whole
+Island of Great Britain, By a Gentleman_, 1724, in three volumes. The
+full title of the work is too long to quote, but it may be observed that
+the promises it holds out under five headings are satisfactorily
+fulfilled. The _Tour_ bears the marks of having been written with great
+care and from personal observation throughout. Defoe states that before
+publishing the book he had made seventeen large circuits or separate
+journeys, and three general tours through the whole island. It contains
+curious information as to the state of England and Scotland one hundred
+and seventy years ago, and readers interested in our social progress and
+the industrial life of the country will find much to interest them in
+the traveller's shrewd observations and careful details. The love of
+mountain and lake scenery felt by Gray more than forty years later was a
+passion unknown to Defoe and to most of his contemporaries. In the
+_Tour_ Westmoreland is described as the wildest, most barbarous and
+frightful country of any which the author had passed over. He observes
+that it is 'of no advantage to represent horror,' and the impassable
+hills with their snow-covered tops 'seemed,' he says, 'to tell us all
+the pleasant part of England was at an end.' The _Tour_ exhibits Defoe's
+literary gift of expressing what he has to say in the clearest language.
+A homely style which fulfils its purpose has a merit deserving of
+recognition. For steady work upon the road the sober hackney is of more
+service than the race-horse.
+
+Defoe was a husband and father and a man of affairs, yet, like his own
+Crusoe, he lived a lonely life, and in 1731, owing to some strange
+circumstance of which there is no record, died a lonely death at a
+lodging-house at Moorfields. He has been called the father of the
+English novel, and deserves the title, although on a slighter scale
+Steele and Addison preceded him as writers of fiction. As a novelist he
+is without refinement, without ideality, without passion; he looks at
+life from a low level, but in the narrow territory of which he is
+master--the art of realistic invention--his power of insight is
+incontestible. Defoe adopted a method dear in our day to some of the
+least worthy of French novelists, who while aiming to copy Nature debase
+her. For Nature must be interpreted by Art, since only thus can we
+obtain a likeness that shall be both beautiful and true. Defoe,
+nevertheless, has contributed one book of lasting value to the
+literature of his country, and such a gift, in the eyes of the literary
+chronicler, hides a multitude of faults.
+
+[Sidenote: John Dennis (1657-1733-4).]
+
+John Dennis was born in London and educated at Harrow and Caius College,
+Cambridge. His relations with Pope give him a more prominent position
+among men of letters than he would otherwise deserve, and mark with
+unpleasing distinctness the coarse methods of literary warfare adopted
+in Pope's day. The poet began the attack in his _Essay on Criticism_.
+Dennis had written a tragedy called _Appius and Virginia_, and Pope, who
+had a grudge against him for not admiring his _Pastorals_, showed his
+spite in the following lines:
+
+    'But Appius reddens at each word you speak,
+    And stares tremendous, with a threatening eye,
+    Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.'
+
+It was perilous in Pope to allude to the personal defects of an
+antagonist, and Dennis attacked him coarsely in return as a 'young,
+squab, short gentleman, an eternal writer of amorous pastoral madrigals,
+and the very bow of the god of Love.' 'He has reason,' he adds, 'to
+thank the good gods that he was born a modern; for had he been born of
+Grecian parents, and his father by consequence had by law the absolute
+disposal of him, his life had been no longer than one of his poems--the
+life of half a day.'
+
+Dennis's pamphlet on the _Essay_ caused Pope some pain when he heard of
+it, 'But it was quite over,' he told Spence, 'as soon as I came to look
+into his book and found he was in such a passion.'
+
+The critic, however, was a thorn in Pope's flesh for many a year, and
+the poet showed his irritation by assaulting him in prose and verse.
+Dennis was equally ready, although not equally capable of returning the
+poet's blows, and when free from the impotence of anger, made several
+shrewd critical thrusts which his antagonist felt keenly.
+
+Dennis aspired to be a poet and dramatist. He wrote a bombastic poem in
+blank verse called _The Monument_, sacred to the immortal memory of 'the
+good, the great, the god-like, William III.'; a poem, also in blank
+verse, and still more 'tremendous,' to quote his favourite word, on the
+_Battle of Blenheim_, in which he frequently invokes his soul to say and
+sing a thousand things far beyond his soul's reach--and a poem equally
+laboured and grandiloquent, on the Battle of Ramillies, in which there
+are passages that read like a burlesque of Milton. Dennis observes in
+his _Grounds of Criticism in Poetry_ (1704) that 'poetry unless it
+pleases, nay, and pleases to a height, is the most contemptible thing in
+the world.' This is just criticism, but the writer did not recognize
+that his own verse was contemptible. In this essay, which contains many
+sound critical remarks and an appreciation of Milton seldom felt at that
+time, he has the bad taste to quote as an illustration of the sublime, a
+passage from his own paraphrase of the Te Deum:
+
+    'Where'er at utmost stretch we cast our eyes
+    Through the vast frightful spaces of the skies,
+    Ev'n there we find Thy glory, there we gaze
+    On Thy bright Majesty's unbounded blaze;
+    Ten thousand suns prodigious globes of light
+    At once in broad dimensions strike our sight;
+    Millions behind, in the remoter skies,
+    Appear but spangles to our wearied eyes;
+    And when our wearied eyes want farther strength
+    To pierce the void's immeasurable length
+    Our vigorous towering thoughts still further fly,
+    And still remoter flaming worlds descry;
+    But even an Angel's comprehensive thought
+    Cannot extend so far as Thou hast wrought;
+    Our vast conceptions are by swelling, brought,
+    Swallowed and lost in Infinite, to nought.'
+
+It is significant of Dennis's judgment of his own verse that these
+inflated lines follow one of the loveliest passages contained in
+_Paradise Lost_. Milton describes the moon unveiling her peerless light;
+and the poet-critic exhibits in juxtaposition his 'vigorous towering
+thoughts' about the stars. The comparison forced upon the reader is
+unfortunate.
+
+His tragedies, _Iphigenia_ (1704), _Liberty Asserted_ (1704), _Appius
+and Virginia_ (1709), and a comedy called _A Plot and No Plot_ (1697)
+were brought upon the stage. _Liberty Asserted_, which was received with
+applause due to the violence of its attacks upon the French, although
+called a tragedy, does not end tragically. The heroine's patriotism is
+so fervid that she professes herself willing, while loving one man, to
+marry another whom she does not love, if her country deems him the more
+worthy.
+
+Among other poetical attempts, Dennis addressed a Pindaric Ode to
+Dryden, and the great poet, with the flattery which he was always ready
+to lavish on his well-wishers, called him 'one of the greatest masters'
+in that kind of verse. 'You have the sublimity of sense as well as
+sound,' he wrote, 'and know how far the boldness of a poet may lawfully
+extend.'
+
+It may be added that Dennis on one occasion successfully opposed one of
+the ablest controversialists of the age. In _The Absolute Unlawfulness
+of Stage Entertainments fully demonstrated_, William Law attacked
+dramatic representations, not on account of the evils at that time
+associated with them, but as 'in their own nature grossly sinful.' 'To
+suppose an innocent play,' Law says, 'is like supposing innocent lust,
+sober rant, or harmless profaneness,' and throughout the pamphlet this
+strain of fierce hostility is maintained.
+
+'Law,' says his biographer,'measured his strength with some of the very
+ablest men of his day, with men like Hoadly and Warburton, and Tindal
+and Wesley; and it may safely be said that he never came forth from the
+contest defeated. But, absurd as it may sound, it is perfectly true that
+what neither Hoadly nor Warburton, nor Tindal, nor Wesley could do, was
+done by John Dennis.... "Plays," wrote Law, "are contrary to Scripture
+as the devil is to God, as the worship of images is to the second
+commandment." To this Dennis gave the obvious and unanswerable retort
+that "when St. Paul was at Athens, the very source of dramatic poetry,
+he said a great deal publicly against the idolatry of the Athenians, but
+not one word against their stage. At Corinth he said as little against
+theirs. He quoted on one occasion an Athenian dramatic poet, and on
+others Aratus and Epimenides. He was educated in all the learning of the
+Grecians, and could not but have read their dramatic poems; and yet, so
+far from speaking a word against them, he makes use of them for the
+instruction and conversion of mankind."'
+
+Dennis's pamphlet, _The Stage defended from Scripture, Reason,
+Experience, and the Common Sense of Mankind for Two Thousand Years_, was
+published in 1726. In his latter days he suffered from two grievous
+calamities, poverty and blindness. In 1733 Vanbrugh's play, _The
+Provoked Husband_, was acted for his benefit, and his old enemy Pope
+wrote the prologue, of which the sarcasm is more conspicuous than the
+kindness. There is a story, to which allusion is made in the _Dunciad_,
+that Dennis had invented some kind of theatrical thunder, and how, being
+once present at a tragedy, he fell into a great passion because his art
+had been appropriated, and cried out ''Sdeath! that is _my_ thunder.'
+The critic was also known to have an intense hatred of the French and of
+the Pope, and these peculiarities are not forgotten in the prologue.
+
+After saying that Dennis lay pressed by want and weakness, his doubtful
+friend adds:
+
+    'How changed from him who made the boxes groan,
+    And shook the stage with thunders all his own!
+    Stood up to dash each vain Pretender's hope,
+    Maul the French tyrant, or pull down the Pope!
+    If there's a Briton then, true bred and born,
+    Who holds Dragoons and wooden shoes in scorn;
+    If there's a critic of distinguished rage;
+    If there's a senior who contemns this age;
+    Let him to-night his just assistance lend,
+    And be the Critic's, Briton's, Old Man's friend.'
+
+Dennis got L100 by this benefit, but had little time in which to spend
+it, for he died about a fortnight afterwards at the age of
+seventy-seven. Upon his death Aaron Hill wrote some memorial verses, in
+which he prophesies that, while the critic's frailties will be no longer
+remembered,
+
+    'The rising ages shall redeem his name,
+    And nations read him into lasting fame.'
+
+It will be seen that the poets did not all treat Dennis unkindly. If
+praise were substantial food, he would have had enough to sustain him
+from 'glorious John' alone.
+
+[Sidenote: Colley Cibber (1671-1757).]
+
+Colley Cibber holds a more prominent place than Dennis in the list of
+men whom Pope selected for attack. He could not have chosen one more
+impervious to assault. The poet's anger excited Cibber's mirth, his
+satire contributed to his content. The comedian's unbounded
+self-satisfaction and good humour, his vivacity and spirits, were proof
+against Pope's malice. Graceless he may have been, but a dullard the
+mercurial 'King Colley' was not.
+
+Born in 1671, he disappointed the hopes of his father, the famous
+sculptor, and at the age of eighteen made his first appearance on the
+stage. As actor and as dramatist, the theatre throughout his life was
+Cibber's all-absorbing interest. His first play, _Love's Last Shift_
+(1696), kept possession of the stage for forty years, and his best play,
+_The Careless Husband_ (1704), received a like welcome. As an actor he
+was also successful, and played for L50 a night, the highest sum ever
+given at that time to any English player. His career was as long as it
+was prosperous. 'Old Cibber plays to-night,' Horace Walpole wrote in
+1741, 'and all the world will be there.'
+
+It was only as Poet Laureate, for he could not write poetry, that Cibber
+displayed his inferiority. The honour was conferred in 1730, two years
+after Gay had produced the _Beggar's Opera_, when Pope was in the height
+of his fame, when Thomson had published his _Seasons_ and Young _The
+Universal Passion_. Pope, as a Roman Catholic, was out of the running,
+but there were poets living who would have saved the office from the
+disgrace brought upon it by Cibber. 'As to Cibber,' Swift wrote to Pope,
+'if I had any inclination to excuse the Court, I would allege that the
+Laureate's place is entirely in the Lord Chamberlain's gift; but who
+makes Lord Chamberlains is another question.' The sole result of the
+appointment that deserves to be recorded is an epigram by Johnson, as
+just as it is severe:
+
+    'Augustus still survives in Maro's strain,
+    And Spenser's verse prolongs Eliza's reign;
+    Great George's acts let tuneful Cibber sing,
+    For Nature formed the Poet for the King!'
+
+Of poetry there is no trace in the five volumes of his dramatic works;
+there are few touches of nature, and little genuine wit, but these
+defects are to some extent supplied by sparkling dialogue and lively
+badinage. Cibber is often sentimental, and when he is sentimental he is
+odious. His attempts to express strong emotion and honourable feeling
+excite laughter instead of sympathy, and on this account it is difficult
+to accept without some deduction Mr. Ward's favourable judgment of _The
+Careless Husband_,[54] which, if it be one of the cleverest of Cibber's
+dramas, is also one of the most conspicuous for this defect. Here, as
+elsewhere, Cibber should have left sentiment alone. Imagine a lover
+exclaiming to a relenting mistress, 'Oh, let my soul thus bending to
+your power, adore this soft descending goodness!' or a man conversing in
+the following strain with a wife who has discovered and forgiven his
+infidelities:
+
+    '_Sir Charles._ Come, I will not shock your softness by any
+    untimely blush for what is past, but rather soothe you to a
+    pleasure at my sense of joy for my recovered happiness to come.
+    Give then to my new-born love what name you please, it cannot,
+    shall not be too kind. Oh! it cannot be too soft for what my
+    soul swells up with emulation to deserve. Receive me then entire
+    at last, and take what yet no woman ever truly had, my conquered
+    heart.
+
+    '_Lady Easy._ Oh, the soft treasure! Oh, the dear reward of
+    long-desiring love--thus, thus to have you mine is something
+    more than happiness, 'tis double life and madness of abounding
+    joy....
+
+    '_Sir Charles._ Oh, thou engaging virtue! But I'm too slow in
+    doing justice to thy love. I know thy softness will refuse me;
+    but remember, I insist upon it--let thy woman be discharged this
+    minute.'
+
+It has been said that Cibber wrote genteel comedy because he lived in
+the best society. If this assertion be true, the reader of his plays
+will decide that the best society of those days was unrefined and
+immoral, and that genteel comedy can be extremely vulgar. Cibber's
+dramas are coarse in incident, and often offensive in suggestion. The
+language is frequently gross, and even when he writes, or professes to
+write, with a moral purpose, his method may justly offend a rigid
+moralist. Moreover his comedy, like that of the dramatists of the
+Restoration, is of a wholly artificial type. Human nature has
+comparatively little place in it, and the fine ladies and gentlemen, the
+fops and fools who play their parts in his scenes, belong to a world
+which has no existence off the boards of the theatre.
+
+His one work which is still read by all students of the drama, and by
+many who are not students, is the _Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley
+Cibber_ (1740), which Dr. Johnson, who sneered at actors, allowed to be
+very entertaining. It is that, and something more, for it contains much
+just and generous criticism. Cibber was the author or adapter of about
+thirty plays, and in the latter vocation did not spare Shakespeare.
+
+[Sidenote: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762).]
+
+Letter writing, a delightful branch of literature, attained its highest
+excellence in the eighteenth century. It is an art which gains most, if
+the paradox may be allowed, by being artless. The carefully studied
+epistle, written with a view to publication, may have its value, but it
+cannot have the charm of a letter written in the familiar intercourse of
+friendship. It is the correspondence prompted by the heart which reaches
+the heart of the reader. The humour, the gaiety, the tenderness, and the
+chatty details that make a letter attractive, should be prompted by the
+feelings and events of the hour. Carefully constructed sentences and
+rhetorical flourishes ring hollow; to write for effect is to write
+badly, and to make a display of knowledge is to reveal an ignorance of
+the art.
+
+For letter writing, although the most natural of literary gifts, is not
+wholly due to nature. It is the outcome of many qualities which need
+cultivation; the soil that produces such fruit must have been carefully
+tilled. In our day epistolary correspondence has been in great measure
+destroyed by the penny post and by rapidity of communication. In the
+last century postage was costly: and although the burden was frequently
+and unjustly lightened by franks, the transmission of letters was slow
+and uncertain. Letters, therefore, were seldom written unless the writer
+had something definite to say, and had leisure in which to say it. Much
+time was spent in the occupation, letters were carefully preserved as
+family heirlooms, and thus it has come to pass that much of our
+knowledge of the age, and very much of the pleasure to be gained from a
+study of the period, is due to its letter writers. The list of them is a
+striking one, for it includes the names of Swift and Steele, of Pope and
+Gay, of Bolingbroke and Chesterfield, of Mrs. Delany and Mrs. Thrale,
+and of the three gifted rivals in the art, Gray, Horace Walpole, and
+Cowper.
+
+In the band of authors famous for their correspondence, Lady Mary
+Wortley Montagu holds a conspicuous place. Reference has been already
+made to the Pope correspondence, large in bulk and large too in
+interest. To this Lady Mary contributed slightly, and the greater
+portion of her letters were addressed to her husband, to her sister,
+Lady Mar, and to her daughter, the Countess of Bute. She was shrewd
+enough to know their value: 'Keep my letters,' she wrote, 'they will be
+as good as Madame de Sevigne's forty years hence;' and they are,
+perhaps, as good as letters can be which are written with a sense of
+their value, which Madame de Sevigne's were not. Lady Mary, who may be
+said to have belonged to the wits from her infancy, for in her eighth
+year she was made the toast of the Kit Kat Club, was not only a beauty,
+but a woman of some learning and of the keenest intelligence. At twenty
+she translated the _Encheiridion_ of Epictetus. She was a great reader
+and a good critic, unless, which often happened, political prejudices
+warped her judgment. She had considerable facility in rhyming, and both
+with tongue and pen cultivated many enmities, the deadliest of her foes
+being the poet who was at one time her most ardent admirer. The story of
+Lady Mary's career, with its vicissitudes and singularities, may be read
+in Lord Wharncliffe's edition of her _Life and Letters_. She is a
+prominent figure in the literature of the period, and made several
+passing contributions to it, but apart from a few facile and far from
+decent verses her letters are the sole legacy she has left behind her
+for the literary student. Some of them, and especially those addressed
+to her sister the Countess of Mar, are often coarse; those to her
+daughter the Countess of Bute exhibit good sense, and all abound in
+lively sallies, interesting anecdotes, and the personal allusions which
+give a charm to correspondence. The section containing the letters
+written during her husband's embassy to Constantinople (1716-1718) is
+perhaps the best known.
+
+Among the strangest of Lady Mary's letters are those addressed to her
+future husband, whom she requests to settle an annuity upon her in
+order to propitiate her friends. In one of them she describes her
+father's purpose to marry her as he thought fit without regarding her
+inclinations, and observes that having declined to marry 'where it is
+impossible to love,' she is bidden to consult her relatives: 'I told my
+intention to all my nearest relations. I was surprised at their blaming
+it to the greatest degree. I was told they were sorry I would ruin
+myself; but if I was so unreasonable they could not blame my F. [father]
+whatever he inflicted on me. I objected I did not love him. They made
+answer they found no necessity of loving; if I lived well with him that
+was all was required of me; and that if I considered this town I should
+find very few women in love with their husbands and yet a many happy. It
+was in vain to dispute with such prudent people.'
+
+This incident is characteristic of the period, but Lady Mary's letters
+to Wortley Montagu are more characteristic of the woman who had her own
+views of female propriety, and of the right method of love-making. To
+escape from the man she hated, she eloped with Wortley, and if, in
+story-book phrase, the curiously-matched couple 'lived happily ever
+afterwards,' it was probably because for more than twenty years they
+lived apart.
+
+Of the following letter, written in her old age, it has been aptly said
+that 'the graceful cynicism of Horace and Pope has perhaps never been
+more successfully reproduced in prose.'[55]
+
+    'Daughter, daughter! Don't call names; You are always abusing my
+    pleasures, which is what no mortal will bear. Trash, lumber and
+    stuff are the titles you give to my favourite amusement. If I
+    called a white staff a stick of wood, a gold key gilded brass,
+    and the ensigns of illustrious orders coloured strings, this
+    may be philosophically true, but would be very ill received. We
+    have all our playthings; happy are they that can be contented
+    with those they can obtain; those hours are spent in the wisest
+    manner that can easiest shade the ills of life, and are the
+    least productive of ill-consequences.... The active scenes are
+    over at my age. I indulge with all the art I can my taste for
+    reading. If I would confine it to valuable books, they are
+    almost as rare as valuable men. I must be content with what I
+    can find. As I approach a second childhood, I endeavour to enter
+    into the pleasures of it. Your youngest son is perhaps at this
+    very moment riding on a poker with great delight, not at all
+    regretting that it is not a gold one, and much less wishing it
+    an Arabian horse which he would not know how to manage. I am
+    reading an idle tale, not expecting wit or truth in it, and am
+    very glad it is not metaphysics to puzzle my judgment, or
+    history to mislead my opinion. He fortifies his health by
+    exercise; I calm my cares by oblivion. The methods may appear
+    low to busy people; but if he improves his strength, and I
+    forget my infirmities, we both attain very desirable ends.'
+
+Lady Mary, it may be added, deserves to be remembered for her courage in
+trying inoculation on her own children, and then introducing it into
+this country. This was in 1721, seventy-eight years before Jenner
+discovered a more excellent way of grappling with the small pox.
+
+[Sidenote: Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773).]
+
+Lord Chesterfield's position in the literature of the period is also
+among the letter writers. He was emphatically a man of affairs, and as
+Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1745, gained a high reputation. He entered
+upon his labours with the resolution to be independent of party, and
+during his brief administration did all that man could do for the
+benefit of the country. In his public career, Chesterfield has the
+reputation of an orator who spoke 'most exquisitely well;' he was an
+able diplomatist, and probably no man of the time took a wider interest
+in public affairs. In a corrupt age, too, he appears to have been
+politically incorruptible: 'I call corruption,' he writes, 'the taking
+of a sixpence more than the just and known salary of your employment
+under any pretence whatsoever.' The reform of the Calendar, in which he
+was assisted by two great mathematicians, Bradley and the Earl of
+Macclesfield, is also one of his honourable claims to remembrance.
+
+On the other hand, Chesterfield, whom George II. called 'a tea-table
+scoundrel,' was an inveterate gambler, he mistook vice for virtue,
+practised dissimulation as an art, and studied men's weaknesses in order
+that he might flatter them. One of the chief ends of man, in the Earl's
+opinion, was to shine in society; we need not therefore wonder that
+Johnson, with his sturdy honesty, revolted from Chesterfield's
+insincerity, and we have to thank the Earl's character for, perhaps, the
+noblest piece of invective in the language. If, however, he neglected
+Johnson at the time when his help would have been of service, he
+appreciated the society of men of letters, and took his part among the
+wits of the age. 'I used,' he tells his son, 'to think myself in company
+as much above me when I was with Mr. Addison and Mr. Pope as if I had
+been with all the princes in Europe.'
+
+As an essayist, although Chesterfield cannot compete with Addison or
+Steele, he is far from contemptible, and his twenty-three papers in the
+_World_ (1753-1756) may still be read with pleasure. His literary
+reputation is based upon the _Letters_ (1774)[56] to his illegitimate
+son written for the purpose of making him a fine gentleman, but the
+young man had no aptitude for the part. His father offered him 'a
+present of the Graces,' and he despised the gift. The _Letters_, which
+Johnson denounced in language better fitted for his day than for ours,
+abound in worldly sagacity and wise counsels; the best that can be said
+of them from a moral point of view is that they show the extremely low
+standpoint of the writer. He is honestly desirous of benefiting his son
+and advancing his interest in life, and so far as morality will do this
+it is earnestly inculcated. 'A real man of fashion,' he says, 'observes
+decency; at least neither borrows nor affects vices; and, if he
+unfortunately has any, he gratifies them with choice, delicacy and
+secrecy.' He observes that an intrigue with a woman of fashion is an
+amusement which a man of sense and decency may pursue with a proper
+regard for his character; gallantry without debauchery being 'the
+elegant pleasure of a rational being.'
+
+Chesterfield's son, who was educated for a diplomatist, is told that the
+art of pleasing is more necessary in his profession than perhaps in any
+other. 'Make your court particularly, and show distinguished attentions
+to such men and women as are best at Court, highest in the fashion and
+in the opinion of the public; speak advantageously of them behind their
+backs, in companies who you have reason to believe will tell them
+again.'
+
+The necessity for dissimulation, constantly enjoined by his father was
+not forgotten by Philip Stanhope. So effectually did he conceal his
+marriage that the Earl was not aware of it until after his son's death.
+
+[Sidenote: George Lyttelton (1708-1773).]
+
+George Lyttelton, afterwards Lord Lyttelton, has a place among the poets
+in the collections of Anderson and Chalmers. Some of his best verses
+were written when a school-boy at Eton, and are worthy of a clever
+school-boy. The _Monody_ on his wife's death has the merit of sincere
+feeling, expressed in one or two passages poetically. In 1747 he
+published his _Dissertation on the Conversion of St. Paul_, 'a
+treatise,' says Dr. Johnson, 'to which infidelity has never been able to
+fabricate a specious answer.' He made himself conspicuous in parliament
+as an opponent of Walpole, and after the fall of that minister was
+appointed one of the Lords of the Treasury. In 1760 Lyttelton published
+his _Dialogues of the Dead_, a volume for which he owes much to Fenelon.
+This was followed a few years later by a History of Henry II. in three
+volumes, upon which great labour was expended. He is said to have had
+the whole history printed twice over, and many sheets four or five
+times, an amusement which cost him L1,000. The work is praised by Mr. J.
+R. Green as 'a full and sober account of the time.'
+
+Lyttelton died at Hagley Park in his sixty-fourth year. Close to Hagley,
+Shenstone had his little estate of the Leasowes, and the poet is said to
+have cherished the absurd fancy that Lord Lyttelton was envious of its
+beauty. He is now chiefly remembered as the patron of Thomson, whom he
+called 'one of the best and most beloved' of his friends.
+
+[Sidenote: Joseph Spence (1698-1768).]
+
+Joseph Spence, a warm friend and admirer of Pope in the poet's later
+life, had the happy peculiarity of keeping free from the party
+animosities of the time. His course throughout was that of a gentleman,
+and to him we owe the little volume of _Anecdotes_ which every student
+of Pope has learnt to value. Spence had much of Boswell's curiosity and
+hero-worship, but there is neither insight into character in his pages,
+nor any trace of the dramatic skill which makes Boswell's narrative so
+delightful. At the same time there is every indication that he strove
+to give the sayings of the poet, as far as possible, in his own words.
+Johnson and Warton saw the _Anecdotes_ in manuscript, but strange to
+say, the collection was not published until 1820, when two separate
+editions appeared simultaneously. The publication by Spence in 1727 of
+_An Essay on Pope's Translation of Homer's Odyssey_ led to an
+acquaintance which soon became intimate between the poet and his critic.
+Apart from literature, they had more than one point of interest in
+common. Like Pope, Spence was devoted to his mother, and like Pope he
+had a passion for landscape gardening. His mild virtues and engaging
+disposition are said to be portrayed in the _Tales of the Genii_, under
+the character of Fincal the Dervise of the Groves. In 1747 he published
+his _Polymetis, an Enquiry into the agreement between the Works of the
+Roman Poets and the Remains of Ancient Artists_. Under the _nom de
+plume_ of Sir Harry Beaumont, Spence produced a volume of _Moralities or
+Essays, Letters, Fables and Translations_ (1753), and in the following
+year an account of the blind poet Blacklock. For a learned tailor,
+Thomas Hill by name, he also performed a similarly kind office,
+comparing him in _A Parallel in the Manner of Plutarch_ with the famous
+linguist Magliabecchi. Spence was made Professor of Poetry at Oxford in
+1728, and held the post for ten years. His end was a sad one. He was
+accidentally drowned in a canal in the garden which he had loved so
+well.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[49] _Daniel Defoe: his Life and recently discovered Writings, extending
+from 1716 to 1729._ By William Lee. 3 vols.
+
+[50] Lee's _Defoe_, vol. i., p. 85. Of Defoe's fertility and capacity
+for work there cannot be a question; but the biographer's stupendous
+catalogue of his publications--254 in number--contains many which are
+ascribed to him solely on what Mr. Lee regards as internal evidence.
+
+[51] _English Men of Letters--Daniel Defoe._ By William Minto. P. 170.
+
+[52] See note on page 248.
+
+[53] There can be no doubt, I think, despite Mr. Lee's arguments, that
+the work is as much a fiction as any other historical novel. That it may
+be based upon some authentic document is highly probable, although it is
+not necessary to agree with his biographer, that 'to claim for Defoe the
+authorship of the _Cavalier_, as a work of pure fiction, would be
+equivalent to a claim of almost superhuman genius.'
+
+[54] Ward's _History of English Dramatic Literature_, vol. ii., p. 597.
+
+[55] _Four Centuries of English Letters_, edited and arranged by W.
+Baptiste Scoones, p. 214.
+
+[56] These _Letters_ were not published until after the earl's death,
+but many of them belong, chronologically, to our period. The first
+letter of the series was written in 1738.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+FRANCIS ATTERBURY--LORD SHAFTESBURY--BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE--LORD
+    BOLINGBROKE--BISHOP BERKELEY--WILLIAM LAW--BISHOP
+    BUTLER--BISHOP WARBURTON.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Francis Atterbury (1662-1732).]
+
+During the first half of the eighteenth century the position held by
+Bishop Atterbury was one of high eminence. Addison ranked him with the
+most illustrious geniuses of his age; Pope said he was one of the
+greatest men in polite learning the nation ever possessed; Doddridge
+called him the glory of English orators; and Johnson said that for style
+his sermons are among the best.
+
+Unfortunately Atterbury's literary gifts, like his oratory, lack the
+merit of permanence, and his sermons, more conspicuous for eloquence
+than for weightiness of matter, although extremely popular at the time,
+have long ceased to be read. His prominence among the Queen Anne
+wits,--and he was admired by them all,--is a sufficient reason for
+saying a few words about him in these pages.
+
+He was born in 1662, and, like Prior, educated at Westminster under the
+famous Dr. Busby. Thence he went to Christ Church, Oxford, where he
+gained a good reputation. He undertook the tutorship of the Hon. C.
+Boyle, a young man of more spirit than judgment, who had the audacity to
+enter the lists with Bentley in a matter of scholarship. For this rash
+deed Atterbury must be held responsible. Sir William Temple had
+published a foolish but eloquently written essay in defence of the
+ancient writers in comparison with the modern. In this essay he praises
+warmly the _Letters of Phalaris_. Of these letters Boyle, with the help
+of Atterbury and other members of Christ Church, published a new edition
+to satisfy the demand caused by Temple's essay. Bentley, roused to reply
+by a remark of Boyle in his preface, proved that the _Letters_ were not
+only spurious but contemptible. Under his pupil's name Atterbury replied
+to Bentley's _Dissertations_, and to the discussion, as the reader will
+remember, Swift added wit if not argument.
+
+For the moment Boyle's, or rather Atterbury's success, was great, for
+wit and rhetoric are powerful persuasives. The authors, too, had the
+Christ Church men to back them, the arch-critic having treated them with
+contempt. Atterbury's share in the work, as he tells Boyle, "consisted
+in writing more than half the book, in reviewing a great part of the
+rest, and in transcribing the whole." His _Examination of Dr. Bentley's
+Dissertations_ (1698) is a brilliant piece of work, and 'deserves the
+praise,' says Macaulay, 'whatever that praise may be worth, of being the
+best book ever written by any man on the wrong side of a question of
+which he was profoundly ignorant.' Having taken holy orders, Atterbury
+became a court preacher, and ample clerical honours fell to his share.
+In 1700 he published a book entitled, _The Rights, Powers, and
+Privileges of an English Convocation Stated and Vindicated_, which was
+warmly applauded by High Churchmen. In 1701 he was appointed Archdeacon
+of Totness, and afterwards Prebend of Exeter. He became the favourite
+chaplain of Queen Anne, and when Prince George died proved the power of
+his eloquence by representing 'his unassuming virtues in such high
+relief that his widow could not help feeling her irreparable loss.'
+
+Atterbury was made successively Dean of Carlisle and of Christ Church,
+and in 1713 succeeded Sprat as Dean of Westminster and Bishop of
+Rochester. Before making Swift's acquaintance he recommended his friend
+Trelawney, Bishop of Exeter, to read the _Tale of a Tub_, a book which
+is to be valued, 'in spite of its profaneness,' as 'an original in its
+kind, full of wit, humour, good sense, and learning.' Atterbury's taste
+for literature was not always so discriminative. He advised Pope, as has
+been already stated, to 'polish' _Samson Agonistes_, declared that all
+verses should have instruction at the bottom of them, and told the poet,
+as though he had discovered a merit, that his poetry was 'all over
+morality from the beginning to the end of it.' He ventured occasionally
+into the verse-making field himself, and wrote a song to Silvia, in
+which, after admitting that he had loved before as men worship strange
+deities, he adds:
+
+    'My heart, 'tis true, has often ranged,
+      Like bees on gaudy flowers,
+    And many a thousand loves has changed,
+      Till it was fixed on yours.
+
+    'But, Silvia, when I saw those eyes,
+      'Twas soon determined there;
+    Stars might as well forsake the skies,
+      And vanish into air.
+
+    'When I from this great rule do err,
+      New beauties to adore,
+    May I again turn wanderer,
+      And never settle more.'
+
+The close friendship between Atterbury and Pope did honour to both men,
+and when Pope went to London he would 'lie at the deanery.' There,
+unknown to his friend, the bishop carried on his Jacobite intrigues,
+and there may still be seen, in a residence made famous by more than one
+great name, a secret room in which Atterbury concealed his treasonable
+correspondence. The poet did not believe that his friend was guilty, but
+it has been well known since the publication of the Stuart papers, more
+than forty years ago, that the splendid defence made by Atterbury at his
+trial in the House of Lords was based upon a falsehood. For years the
+bishop appears to have corresponded, under feigned names and by the help
+of ciphers, with 'the king over the water;' but the plot which led to
+his imprisonment and ultimate exile was not discovered until 1722, when
+he was arrested for high treason. At his trial he called God to witness
+his innocence; and when Pope took leave of him in the Tower he told the
+poet he would allow him to call his sentence a just one if he should
+ever find that he had dealings with the Pretender in his exile. Pope
+gave evidence at his trial, and, as he told Spence, lost his
+self-possession and made two or three blunders.
+
+Atterbury was exiled in June, 1723. On reaching Calais he heard that
+Bolingbroke had just arrived there on his way to England, having had a
+royal pardon. 'Then I am exchanged,' he said.
+
+The pathetic story of his banishment, and of his devoted daughter's
+illness and voyage to the south of France, where after a union of a few
+hours, she died in her father's arms, is full of the most touching
+details, and may be read in Atterbury's correspondence. 'She is gone,'
+the bishop wrote, 'and I must follow her. When I do, may my latter end
+be like hers! It was my business to have taught her to die; instead of
+it, she has taught me.' Like Fielding's account of his _Voyage to
+Lisbon_, the letters give a picture of the time, and of travelling
+discomforts and difficulties of which we, in these more fortunate days,
+know nothing. The bishop, who did not long survive his daughter, died in
+1732, but before the end came he defended himself admirably from the
+accusation of Oldmixon, a libeller who stands in the pillory of the
+_Dunciad_, that he had helped to garble Clarendon's _History_. The body
+was carried to England and privately buried by the side of his daughter
+in Westminster Abbey. The eloquence of Atterbury's sermons--there are
+four volumes of them in print--has not secured to them a lasting place
+in literature, but they are distinguished by purity of style, and have
+enough of _unction_ to make them highly effective as pulpit discourses.
+In book form, too, they were for a long time popular, and reached an
+eighth edition about thirty years after the bishop's death. The eloquent
+sermon on the death of Lady Cutts endows the lady with such an array of
+virtues, that one is inclined to wonder how so many rare qualities could
+have been exhibited in so brief a life:
+
+    'She excelled in all the characters that belonged to her, and
+    was in a great measure equal to all the obligations that she lay
+    under. She was devout without superstition; strict, without ill
+    humour; good-natured, without weakness; cheerful, without
+    levity; regular, without affectation. She was to her husband the
+    best of wives, the most agreeable of companions, and most
+    faithful of friends; to her servants the best of mistresses; to
+    her relations extremely respectful; to her inferiors very
+    obliging; and by all that knew her, either nearly or at a
+    distance, she was reckoned and confessed to be one of the best
+    of women. And yet all this goodness and all this excellence was
+    bounded within the compass of eighteen years and as many days;
+    for no longer was she allowed to live among us. She was snatched
+    out of the world as soon almost as she had made her appearance
+    in it, like a jewel of high price just shown a little, and then
+    put up again, and we were deprived of her by that time we had
+    learnt to value her. But circles may be complete though small;
+    the perfection of life doth not consist in the length of it.'
+
+As a friend of literature and of men of letters, Atterbury claims the
+student's recognition, and the five volumes of his correspondence
+deserve to be consulted.
+
+[Sidenote: Anthony, third Lord Shaftesbury (1671-1713).]
+
+'I will tell you,' writes the poet Gray, 'how Lord Shaftesbury came to
+be a philosopher in vogue: first, he was a lord; secondly, he was as
+vain as any of his readers; thirdly, men are very prone to believe what
+they do not understand; fourthly, they will believe anything at all
+provided they are under no obligation to believe it; fifthly, they love
+to take a new road, even when that road leads nowhere; sixthly, he was
+reckoned a fine writer, and seemed always to mean more than he said.
+Would you have any more reasons? An interval of above forty years has
+pretty well destroyed the charm.'
+
+One hundred and thirty-five years have gone by since Gray wrote his
+estimate of Lord Shaftesbury, whose _Characteristics of Men, Manners,
+Opinions, Times_ (1711) passed through several editions in the last
+century. The first volume consists of: _A Letter concerning Enthusiasm_,
+_An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour_ and _Advice to an Author_;
+Vol. ii. contains _An Inquiry concerning Virtue and Merit_ (1699), and
+_The Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody_ (1709), and Vol. iii. contains
+_Miscellaneous Reflections_ and the _Judgments of Hercules_.
+
+Shaftesbury was a Deist, and while professing to honour the Christian
+faith, which he terms 'our holy religion,' exercises his wit and
+casuistry and command of English to undermine it. Pope, who shows in the
+_Essay on Man_ that he had read the _Characteristics_, said that to his
+knowledge 'the work had done more harm to revealed religion in England
+than all the works of infidelity,' a judgment which may seem
+extravagant, for Shaftesbury is too vague and rhetorical greatly to
+influence thoughtful readers, and too much of a 'virtuoso,' to use his
+own words, for readers of another class; yet the fact that the work
+passed, as we have said, through several editions, shows that the author
+had a considerable public to whom he could appeal. Moreover, it is clear
+that what Mr. Balfour calls 'the shallow optimism' of his creed was not
+deemed so inconsiderable then as it now appears, or Berkeley would not
+have deemed it necessary to controvert his arguments in the third
+Dialogue of his _Alciphron_. Like Berkeley, Shaftesbury occasionally
+makes use of the dialogue very effectively, but he has not the bishop's
+incisiveness. His style, though often faulty, and giving one the
+impression that the author is affected, and wishes to say fine things,
+is at its best fresh and lucid. The reader will observe that whatever be
+the topic Shaftesbury professes to discuss, his one aim is to assert his
+principles as a free-thinking and free-speaking philosopher. His
+inferences, his illustrations, his criticisms, and exaltation of the
+'moral sense,' are all so many underhanded blows at the faith which he
+never openly opposes.
+
+Thus his essay on the _Freedom of Wit and Humour_ is chiefly written in
+defence of raillery in the discussion of serious subjects, when managed
+'with good breeding,' and for 'a liberty in decent language to question
+everything' amongst gentlemen and friends. He regards ridicule as the
+antidote to enthusiasm, believes in the harmony and perfection of
+nature, and considers that evil only exists in our ignorance. Mr. Leslie
+Stephen, whose impartiality in estimating an author like Shaftesbury
+will not be questioned, calls him a wearisome and perplexed writer,
+whose rhetoric is flimsy, but who has 'a true vigour and originality
+which redeems him from contempt.'
+
+Judged by his influence on the age Shaftesbury's place in the history of
+literature and of philosophy is an important one. Seed springs up
+quickly when the soil is prepared for it, and Shaftesbury by his belief
+in the perfectibility of human nature through the aid of culture,
+appealed, as Mandeville also did from a lower and opposite platform, to
+the views current in polite society. According to Shaftesbury men have a
+natural instinct for virtue, and the sense of what is beautiful enables
+the virtuoso to reject what is evil and to cleave to what is good. Let a
+man once see that to be wicked is to be miserable, and virtue will be
+dear for its own sake apart from the fear of punishment or the hope of
+reward. He found salvation for the world in a cultivated taste, but had
+no gospel for the men whose tastes were not cultivated.
+
+Voltaire sneered at the optimism of the _Essay on Man_ and of the
+_Characteristics_. 'Shaftesbury,' he says, 'who made the fable
+fashionable, was a very unhappy man. I have seen Bolingbroke a prey to
+vexation and rage, and Pope, whom he induced to put this sorry jest into
+verse, was as much to be pitied as any man I have ever known; mis-shapen
+in body, dissatisfied in mind, always ill, always a burden to himself,
+and harassed by a hundred enemies to his very last moment.'
+
+[Sidenote: Bernard de Mandeville (1670?-1733).]
+
+Bernard de Mandeville gained much notoriety by his _Fable of the Bees,
+or Private Vices, Public Benefits_ (1723). The book opens with a poem in
+doggrel verse called _The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves turned honest_, the
+purport of which is to show that as the bees became virtuous, they
+ceased to be successful. He closes with the moral that
+
+    'To enjoy the world's conveniences,
+    Be famed in war, yet live in ease,
+    Without great vices is a vain
+    Utopia, seated in the brain.
+    Fraud, Luxury, and Pride must live,
+    While we the benefits receive.'
+
+In the prose which follows the fable, Mandeville may at least claim the
+credit of being outspoken, and he does not scruple to say that modesty
+is a sham and that what seems like virtue is nothing but self-love. 'I
+often,' he says, 'compare the virtues of good men to your large china
+jars; they make a fine show, but look into a thousand of them, and you
+will find nothing in them but dust and cobwebs.'
+
+While declaring that he is far from encouraging vice, he regards it as
+essential to the well-being of society. The degradation of the race
+excites his amusement, and the fact that he cannot see a way of escape
+from it, causes no regret. Shaftesbury's arguments excited the mirth of
+a man who believed neither in present nor future good 'Two systems,' he
+says, 'cannot be more opposite than his lordship's and mine. His
+notions, I confess, are generous and refined. They are a high compliment
+to human kind, and capable, by the help of a little enthusiasm, of
+inspiring us with the most noble sentiments concerning the dignity of
+our exalted nature. What pity it is that they are not true.'
+
+The author of the _Fable of the Bees_ writes coarsely for coarse
+readers, and the arguments by which he supports his graceless theory
+merit the infamy generally awarded to them.[57] The book was attacked by
+Warburton and Law, and with much force and humour by Berkeley, in the
+second Dialogue of _Alciphron_. But the bishop, to use a homely phrase,
+does not hit the right nail on the head. Instead of arguing that virtue
+and goodness are realities, while evil, being unreal and antagonistic to
+man's nature, is an enemy to be fought against and conquered, Berkeley
+takes a lower ground, and is content to show in his reply to Mandeville
+that virtue is more profitable to a state than vice. He annihilates many
+of Mandeville's arguments in a masterly style, but it was left to the
+author of the _Serious Call_ to strike at the root of Mandeville's
+fallacy, and to show how the seat of virtue, if I may apply Hooker's
+noble words with regard to law, 'is the bosom of God, her voice the
+harmony of the world; all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the
+very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from
+her power.'
+
+[Sidenote: Lord Bolingbroke (1678-1751).]
+
+The life of Henry St. John was a mass of contradictions. He was a
+brilliant politician who affected to be a wise statesman, a traitor to
+his country while pretending to be a patriot, an orator whose lips
+distilled honied phrases which his actions belied, a man of insatiable
+ambition who masked as a philosopher, a profligate without shame, a
+faithless friend, and an unscrupulous opponent. Blessed with every charm
+of manner, features, and voice, with a taste for literature and a large
+faculty of acquisition, he was a slave to the meanest vices. A Secretary
+of State at thirty-two, no man probably ever entered upon public life
+with brighter prospects, and the secret of all his failures was due to
+the want of character. 'Few people,' says Lord Hervey, 'ever believed
+him without being deceived or trusted him without being betrayed; he was
+one to whom prosperity was no advantage, and adversity no instruction.'
+
+It is said that his genius as an orator was of a high order and this we
+can believe the more readily since the style of his works is distinctly
+oratorical. In speech so much depends upon voice and manner that it is
+possible for a shallow thinker to be an extremely attractive speaker;
+Bolingbroke's speeches have not been preserved, and we may therefore
+continue, if we please, to hold with Pitt, that they are the most
+desirable of all the lost fragments of literature; his writings, far
+more showy than solid, do not convey a lofty impression of intellectual
+power. Obvious truths and well-worn truisms are uttered in high-sounding
+words, but in no department of thought can it be said that Bolingbroke
+breaks new ground. Much that he wrote was for the day and died with it,
+and if his more ambitious efforts, written with an eye to posterity,
+cannot justly be described as unreadable, they contain comparatively
+little which makes them worthy to be read.
+
+His defence of his conduct in _A Letter to Sir William Windham_, written
+in 1717, but not published until after the author's death, though
+worthless as a defence, is a fine piece of special pleading in
+Bolingbroke's best style. It could deceive no one acquainted with the
+part played by the author before the death of Queen Anne, and afterwards
+in exile, but it afforded him an opportunity for attacking his former
+colleague, Oxford, with all the weapons available by an unscrupulous and
+powerful assailant. He declares in this letter that he preferred exile
+rather than to make common cause with the man whom he abhorred. Writing
+of Oxford as a colleague in the government of the country he observes in
+a skilfully turned passage:
+
+    'The ocean which environs us is an emblem of our government; and
+    the pilot and the minister are in similar circumstances. It
+    seldom happens that either of them can steer a direct course,
+    and they both arrive at their port by means which frequently
+    seem to carry them from it. But as the work advances the conduct
+    of him who leads it on with real abilities clears up, the
+    appearing inconsistencies are reconciled, and when it is once
+    consummated, the whole shows itself so uniform, so plain, and so
+    natural, that every dabbler in politics will be apt to think he
+    could have done the same. But on the other hand the man who
+    proposes no such object, who substitutes artifice in the place
+    of ability, who, instead of leading parties and governing
+    accidents, is eternally agitated backwards and forwards by both,
+    who begins every day something new, and carries nothing on to
+    perfection, may impose awhile on the world: but a little sooner
+    or a little later the mystery will be revealed, and nothing will
+    be found to be couched under it but a thread of pitiful
+    expedients, the ultimate end of which never extended farther
+    than living from day to day. Which of these pictures resembles
+    Oxford most you will determine.'
+
+It has been said with somewhat daring exaggeration, that Burke never
+produced anything nobler than this passage, and the writer regards the
+whole composition of the _Letter to Windham_ as almost faultless.[58]
+
+That it is Bolingbroke's masterpiece may be readily admitted, but in
+this _Letter_, as elsewhere, the merits of Bolingbroke's style are those
+of the popular orator who conceals repetitions, contradictory
+statements, and emptiness of thought under a dazzling display of
+rhetoric. That he had splendid gifts and exhibited an extraordinary
+ingenuity of resource was acknowledged by friend and foe. At one time
+taking a distinguished part in European affairs, at another artfully
+intriguing, sometimes posing as a moralist and philosopher while a slave
+to debauchery, and at other times affecting a love of retirement while a
+slave to ambition--Bolingbroke acted a part which made him one of the
+most conspicuous figures of the time. He knew how to fascinate men of
+greater genius than he possessed, and how to guide men intellectually
+his superiors. The witchcraft of his wit and the charm of his manners no
+longer disturb the judgment. As a statesman Bolingbroke is now
+comparatively despised, as a man of letters he is generally regarded as
+a brilliant pretender, and if his name survives in the history of
+literature it is chiefly due to the friendship of Pope. Unfortunately
+the memory of this celebrated friendship is associated with one of the
+most ignoble acts of Bolingbroke's life. When Pope lay dying,
+Bolingbroke wept over his friend exclaiming, 'O great God, what is man!'
+and Spence relates that upon telling his lordship how Pope whenever he
+was sensible said something kindly of his friends as if his humanity
+outlasted his understanding, Bolingbroke replied, '"It has so! I never
+in my life knew a man that had so tender a heart for his particular
+friends or a more general friendship for mankind. I have known him these
+thirty years, and value myself more for that man's love than"--sinking
+his head and losing himself in tears.' His sorrow was speedily changed
+to anger. Pope, no doubt in admiration of his friend's genius, had
+privately printed 1,500 copies of his _Patriot King_, one of
+Bolingbroke's ablest but most sophistical works. The philosopher had
+only allowed a few copies to be printed for his friends, and the
+discovery of Pope's conduct roused his indignation. In 1749 he put a
+corrected copy of the work into Mallet's hands for publication with an
+advertisement in which Pope is treated with contempt. He had not the
+courage to assail the memory of his friend openly, and hired an
+unprincipled man to do it. The poet had acted trickily, after his wonted
+habit, though in all likelihood with the design of doing Bolingbroke a
+service. It was a fault to be forgiven by a friend, but Bolingbroke,
+after nursing his anger for five years, gave vent to it in this
+contemptible and underhand way. He died two years afterwards, and in
+1754 the posthumous publication of Bolingbroke's _Philosophical
+Writings_ by Mallet, aroused a storm of indignation in the country,
+which his debauchery and political immorality had failed to excite.
+Johnson's saying on the occasion is well-known:
+
+'Sir, he was a scoundrel and a coward; a scoundrel for charging a
+blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward because he had not
+resolution to fire it off himself, but left half-a-crown to a beggarly
+Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death.'
+
+The most noteworthy estimate of Bolingbroke's character made in our day
+comes from the pen of Mr. John Morley,[59] who describes as follows his
+position as a man of letters. 'He handled the great and difficult
+instrument of written language with such freedom and copiousness, such
+vivacity and ease, that in spite of much literary foppery and falsetto,
+he ranks in all that musicians call execution, only below the three or
+four highest masters of English prose. Yet of all the characters in our
+history Bolingbroke must be pronounced to be most of a charlatan; of all
+the writing in our literature, his is the hollowest, the flashiest, the
+most insincere.' This is true. By his 'execution,' consummate though it
+be, he is unable to conceal his insincerity and shallowness.
+'Bolingbroke,' said Lord Shelburne, was 'all surface,' and in that
+sentence his character is written.
+
+'People seem to think,' said Carlyle, 'that a style can be put off or
+put on, not like a skin, but like a coat. Is not a skin verily a product
+and close kinsfellow of all that lies under it,--exact type of the
+nature of the beast, not to be plucked off without flaying and death?'
+
+Two years after the publication of the _Philosophical Writings_, Edmund
+Burke, then a young man of twenty-four, published _A Vindication of
+Natural Society_, in a _Letter to Lord----. By a late noble writer_, in
+which Lord Bolingbroke's style is imitated, and his arguments against
+revealed religion applied to exhibit 'the miseries and evils arising to
+mankind from every species of Artificial Society.' So close is the
+imitation of Bolingbroke's style and mode of argument in this piece of
+irony, that it was for a time believed to be a genuine production, and
+Mallet found it necessary to disavow it publicly.
+
+Of Bolingbroke's Works, the _Dissertation on Parties_ appeared in 1735.
+_Letters on Patriotism_, and _Idea of a Patriot King_, in 1749; _Letters
+on the Study of History_, in 1752; _Letter to Sir W. Windham_, 1753, and
+the _Philosophical Writings_, as already stated, in 1754.
+Chronologically, therefore, he would belong to the Handbook which deals
+with the latter half of the century, were it not that his most important
+works were posthumous, and that Bolingbroke's intimate relations with
+Pope place him among the most conspicuous figures belonging to Pope's
+age.
+
+[Sidenote: George Berkeley (1685-1753).]
+
+Among the men of high intellect who flourished in the age of Pope,
+George Berkeley is one of the most distinguished. Born in 1685 of poor
+parents, in a cottage near Dysert Castle, in Kilkenny, he went up to
+Trinity College, Dublin, in 1700, and there, first as student, and
+afterwards as tutor, he remained for thirteen years. In the course of
+them he was ordained, and gained a fellowship. In 1709 he published his
+_Essay on Vision_, and in the following year the _Principles of Human
+Knowledge_, works which thus early made him famous as a philosopher, and
+a puzzle to many who failed to understand his 'new principle' with
+regard to the existence of matter.
+
+In 1712 Berkeley visited England, probably for the first time, and was
+introduced to the London wits. Already in these youthful days there was
+in him much of that magic power which some men exercise unconsciously
+and irresistibly. Swift felt the spell, called Berkeley a great
+philosopher, and spoke of him to all the Ministers; while Atterbury,
+upon being asked what he thought of him, exclaimed: 'So much
+understanding, so much knowledge, so much innocence, and such humility,
+I did not think had been the portion of any but angels till I saw this
+gentleman.' An incident occurred, it is conjectured during the course of
+this visit, which led to memorable results. He dined once with Swift at
+Mrs. Vanhomrigh's, and met her daughter Hester. Many years later,
+_Vanessa_ destroyed the will she had made in Swift's favour, and left
+half of her property to Berkeley. While in London the future bishop was
+warmly welcomed by Steele, and wrote several essays for him in the
+_Guardian_ against the Freethinkers, and especially against Anthony
+Collins (1676-1729), whose arguments in his _Discourse on Freethinking_
+(1713) are ridiculed in the _Scriblerus Memoirs_. Collins, it may be
+observed here, wrote a treatise several years later on the _Grounds of
+the Christian Religion_ (1724) which called forth thirty-five answers.
+During this visit Berkeley also published one of his most original
+works, _Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous_, a book marked by that
+consummate beauty of style for which he is distinguished.
+
+In November, 1713, the Earl of Peterborough was sent on an embassage to
+the King of Sicily, and on Swift's recommendation took Berkeley with him
+as his chaplain and secretary. Ten months were spent on this occasion in
+France and Italy. Another continental tour followed, in the course of
+which Berkeley wrote to Arbuthnot of his ascent of Vesuvius, and to Pope
+of his life at Naples. Five years were spent abroad, and he returned to
+England to learn of the failure of the South Sea Scheme. In his _Essay
+towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain_ (1721), the main argument
+is the obvious one, that national salvation is only to be secured by
+individual uprightness. He deplores 'the trifling vanity of apparel'
+which we have learned from France, advocates the revival of sumptuary
+laws, considers that we are 'doomed to be undone' by luxury, and by the
+want of public spirit, and declares that 'neither Venice nor Paris, nor
+any other town in any part of the world ever knew such an expensive
+ruinous folly as our masquerade.'
+
+In the summer of this year he was again in London, and Pope asked him to
+spend a week in his 'Tusculum.' One promotion followed another until
+Berkeley became Dean of Derry, with an income of from L1,500 to L2,000 a
+year. He did not hold this dignified position long, having conceived the
+magnificent but Utopian idea of founding a Missionary College in the
+Bermudas--the 'Summer Isles' celebrated in the verse of Waller and of
+Marvell--for the conversion of America.
+
+And now Berkeley exhibited his amazing power of influencing other men.
+The members of the Scriblerus Club laughed at the Dean's project, but so
+powerful was his eloquence, that 'those who came to scoff remained to
+subscribe.' Moreover, with Sir Robert Walpole as Prime Minister, he
+actually obtained a grant from the State of L20,000 in order to carry
+out the project, the king gave a charter, and to crown all, Sir Robert
+put his own name down for L200 on the list of subscribers. 'The scheme,'
+says Mr. Balfour, 'seems now so impracticable that we may well wonder
+how any single person, let alone the representatives of a whole nation,
+could be found to support it. In order that religion and learning might
+flourish in America, the seeds of them were to be cast in some rocky
+islets severed from America by nearly six hundred miles of stormy ocean.
+In order that the inhabitants of the mainland and of the West Indian
+colonies might equally benefit by the new university, it was to be
+placed in such a position that neither could conveniently reach it.'[60]
+Berkeley, who had recently married, left England for Rhode Island, where
+he stayed for about three years and wrote _Alciphron_ (1732), in which
+he attacks the freethinkers under the title of _Minute Philosophers_.
+Then on learning from Walpole that the promised money 'would most
+undoubtedly be paid as soon as suits public convenience' which would be
+never, he returned to England, and through the Queen's influence was
+made Bishop of Cloyne. In that diocese eighteen years of his life were
+spent. In the course of them he published the _Querist_ (1735-1737), an
+_Essay on the Social State of Ireland_ (1744), and, in the same year,
+_Siris_, which contains the bishop's famous recipe for the use of tar
+water followed by much philosophical disquisition. The remedy, which was
+afterwards praised by the poet Dyer in _The Fleece_, became instantly
+popular. 'We are now mad about the water,' Horace Walpole wrote; 'the
+book contains every subject from tar water to the Trinity; however, all
+the women read it, and understand it no more than if it were
+intelligible.' Editions of _Siris_ followed each other in rapid
+succession, and it was translated into French and German. The work is
+that of an enthusiast, and it should be read not for its argument, but
+for its wealth of suggestiveness, and for what Mr. Balfour calls 'a
+certain quality of moral elevation and speculative diffidence alien both
+to the literature and the life of the eighteenth century.' Berkeley had
+himself the profoundest faith in the panacea which he advocated. 'From
+my representing tar water,' he writes, 'as good for so many things,
+some, perhaps, many conclude it is good for nothing. But charity
+obligeth me to say what I know, and what I think, howsoever it may be
+taken. Men may conjecture and object as they please, but I appeal to
+time and experience.'
+
+In his latter days Berkeley, feeling his health failing, desired to
+resign his bishopric and retire to Oxford, and there--while still bishop
+of Cloyne, for the king would not accept his resignation--the
+philosopher, who was blest, to use Shakespeare's fine epithet, with a
+'tender-hefted nature,' passed away in 1753, leaving behind him one of
+the most fragrant of memories.
+
+That Berkeley was a philosophical thinker from his earliest manhood is
+evident from his _Commonplace Book_ published for the first time in the
+Clarendon Press edition of his works (vol. iv., pp. 419-502).
+
+He delighted in recondite thought as much as most young men delight in
+action, and as a philosopher he is said to have commenced his studies
+with Locke, whose famous _Essay_ appeared in 1690. Of Plato, too,
+Berkeley was an ardent admirer, and the spirit of Plato pervades his
+works. His _Essay towards a New Theory of Vision_ contains some
+intimations of the famous metaphysical theory which was developed a
+little later in the _Treatise on Human Knowledge_.
+
+A good deal of foolish ridicule was excited by this book. Berkeley was
+supposed to maintain the absurd paradox that sensible things do not
+exist at all. The reader will remember how Dr. Johnson undertook to
+refute the postulate by striking his foot against a stone, while James
+Beattie (1735-1803), the poet and moral philosopher, in a volume for
+which he was rewarded with a pension of L200 a year, denounced
+Berkeley's philosophy as 'scandalously absurd.' 'If,' he writes, 'I
+were permitted to propose one clownish question, I would fain ask ...
+Where is the harm of my believing that if I were to fall down yonder
+precipice and break my neck, I should be no more a man of this world? My
+neck, Sir, may be an idea to you, but to me it is a reality, and a very
+important one too. Where is the harm of my believing that if in this
+severe weather I were to neglect to throw (what you call) the idea of a
+coat over the ideas of my shoulders, the idea of cold would produce the
+idea of such pain and disorder as might possibly terminate in my real
+death? What great offence shall I commit against God or man, church or
+state, philosophy or common sense if I continue to believe that material
+food will nourish me, though the idea of it will not, that the real sun
+will warm and enlighten me, though the liveliest idea of him will do
+neither; and that if I would obtain here peace of mind and
+self-approbation, I must not only form ideas of compassion, justice and
+generosity, but also really exert those virtues in external
+performance?'[61]
+
+Beattie continues in this foolish strain to throw contempt upon a system
+which he had not taken the trouble to understand, and upon one of the
+sanest and noblest of English philosophers, and he does so without a
+thought that the absurdity is due to his own ignorance and not to the
+theory of Berkeley. The author of the _Minstrel_ was an honest man and a
+respectable poet, but he prided himself too much on what he called
+common sense, and failed to see that in the search after truth other and
+even higher faculties may be also needed. Moreover, Berkeley, so far
+from being an enemy to common sense, endeavours, as he says, to
+vindicate it, although in so doing, he 'may perhaps be obliged to use
+some _ambages_ and ways of speech not common.' A significant passage may
+be quoted from the _Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous_ (1713)
+in illustration of his method and style so far indeed as a short extract
+can illustrate an argument sustained by a long course of reasoning.
+
+    '_Phil._ As I am no sceptic with regard to the nature of things,
+    so neither am I as to their existence. That a thing should be
+    really perceived by my senses, and at the same time not really
+    exist is to me a plain contradiction; since I cannot prescind or
+    abstract even in thought, the existence of a sensible thing from
+    its being perceived. Wood, stones, fire, water, flesh, iron, and
+    the like things, which I name and discourse of, are things that
+    I know. And I should not have known them but that I perceived
+    them by my senses; and things perceived by the senses are
+    immediately perceived; and things immediately perceived are
+    ideas; and ideas cannot exist without the mind; their existence
+    therefore consists in being perceived; when therefore they are
+    actually perceived there can be no doubt of their existence....
+    I might as well doubt of my own being, as of the being of those
+    things I actually see and feel.
+
+    '_Hyl._ Not so fast, _Philonous_; you say you cannot conceive
+    how sensible things should exist without the mind. Do you not?
+
+    '_Phil._ I do.
+
+    '_Hyl._ Supposing you were annihilated, cannot you conceive it
+    possible that things perceivable by sense may still exist?
+
+    '_Phil._ I can; but then it must be in another mind. When I deny
+    sensible things an existence out of the mind, I do not mean my
+    mind in particular, but all minds. Now, it is plain they have an
+    existence exterior to my mind; since I find them by experience
+    to be independent of it. There is therefore some other mind
+    wherein they exist, during the intervals between the times of my
+    perceiving them; as likewise they did before my birth, and
+    would do after my supposed annihilation. And as the same is true
+    with regard to all other finite created spirits, it necessarily
+    follows there is an _omnipresent, eternal Mind_, which knows and
+    comprehends all things, and exhibits them to our view in such a
+    manner, and according to such rules, as He Himself hath
+    ordained, and are by us termed the _Laws of Nature_.'
+
+    'Truth is the cry of all,' says Berkeley in the final paragraph
+    of _Siris_, 'but the game of a few. Certainly, where it is the
+    chief passion, it doth not give way to vulgar cares and views,
+    nor is it contented with a little ardour, active perhaps to
+    pursue, but not so fit to weigh and revise. He that would make a
+    real progress in knowledge, must dedicate his age as well as
+    youth, the latter growth as well as firstfruits at the altar of
+    truth.'
+
+Elsewhere in this famous treatise he writes:
+
+    'It cannot be denied that with respect to the universe of things
+    we in this mortal state are like men educated in Plato's cave,
+    looking on shadows with our backs turned to the light. But
+    though our light be dim and our situation bad, yet if the best
+    use be made of both, perhaps something may be seen. Proclus, in
+    his commentary on the theology of Plato, observes there are two
+    sorts of philosophers. The one placed body first in the order of
+    beings, and made the faculty of thinking depend thereupon,
+    supposing that the principles of all things are corporeal; that
+    body most really or principally exists, and all other things in
+    a secondary sense and by virtue of that. Others making all
+    corporeal things to be dependent upon soul or mind, think this
+    to exist in the first place, and primary senses and the being of
+    bodies to be altogether derived from, and presuppose that of the
+    mind.'
+
+This was Berkeley's creed, and his great aim throughout is to prove the
+phenomenal nature of the things of sense, or in other words the
+non-existence of independent matter. He makes, he says, not the least
+question that the things we see and touch really exist, but what he does
+question is the existence of matter apart from its perception to the
+mind. Hobbes said that the body accounted for the mind, and that matter
+was the deepest thing in the universe, while to Berkeley the only true
+reality consists in what is spiritual and eternal.
+
+'The great idealist,' says an able writer, 'certainly never denied the
+existence of matter in the sense in which Johnson understood it. As the
+touched, the seen, the heard, the smelled, the tasted, he admitted and
+maintained its existence as readily and completely as the most
+illiterate and unsophisticated of mankind,' and he adds that the
+peculiar endowment for which Berkeley was distinguished 'far beyond his
+predecessors and contemporaries, and far beyond almost every philosopher
+who has succeeded him, was the eye he had _for facts_, and the singular
+pertinacity with which he refused to be dislodged from his hold upon
+them.'[62]
+
+Pope's age produced a few great masters of style, and among them
+Berkeley holds an undisputed place. He succeeded, too, in the most
+difficult department of intellectual labour, since to express abstruse
+thought in language as beautiful as it is clear is the rarest of gifts.
+
+'His works are beyond dispute the finest models of philosophic style
+since Cicero. Perhaps they surpass those of the orator, in the wonderful
+art by which the fullest light is thrown on the most minute and
+evanescent parts of the most subtle of human conceptions.'[63]
+
+[Sidenote: William Law (1686-1761).]
+
+William Law was born in 1686 at King's Cliffe in Northamptonshire, and
+entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge, as a Sizar in 1705. He obtained a
+Fellowship, and received holy orders in 1711, but having made a speech
+offensive to the heads of houses, he was degraded. Law believed in the
+divine right of kings, and on the death of Queen Anne, declared his
+principles as a non-juror. In 1717 he published his first controversial
+work, _Three Letters to the Bishop of Bangor_; Hoadly, the famous
+bishop, having, in his opponent's judgment, uttered lax and
+latitudinarian views with regard to the Church of which he was one of
+the chief pastors. These _Letters_ have been highly praised for wit as
+well as for argument, and Dean Hook, writing of the Bangorian
+Controversy in his _Church Dictionary_, states that 'Law's _Letters_
+have never been answered and may, indeed, be regarded as unanswerable.'
+Law was also the most powerful assailant of Warburton's _Divine
+Legation_, which he opposed with a burning zeal that was not always
+wise. But as a controversialist he was an infinitely stronger man than
+his opponent, and unlike Warburton, he never debased controversy by
+scurrility, which the bishop generally found a more potent weapon than
+argument.
+
+On the publication, in 1723, of Dr. Mandeville's _Fable of the Bees_, it
+was vigorously attacked by Law. In this masterly pamphlet, instead of
+attempting to refute the physician by showing that virtue is more
+profitable to the State than vice, and that, therefore, private vices
+are not public benefits, Law takes a higher ground, and asserts that
+morality is not a question of profit and loss, but of conscience.
+Mandeville maintains that man is a mere animal governed by his passions;
+his opponent, on the other hand, argues that man is created in the image
+of God, that virtue 'is a law to which even the divine nature is
+subject,' and that human nature is fitted to rise to the angels, while
+Mandeville would lower it to the brutes.
+
+John Sterling, writing to F. D. Maurice of the first section of Law's
+remarks, says: 'I have never seen in our language the elementary
+grounds of a rational ideal philosophy, as opposed to empiricism, stated
+with nearly the same clearness, simplicity, and force,' and it was at
+Sterling's suggestion that Maurice published a new edition of Law's
+argument with an introductory essay (1844).
+
+The following passage from the _Remarks on the Fable of the Bees_ will
+illustrate Law's method as a polemic:
+
+    'Deists and freethinkers are generally considered as
+    unbelievers; but upon examination they will appear to be men of
+    the most resigned and implicit faith in the world; they would
+    believe _transubstantiation_, but that it implies a believing in
+    God; for they never resign their reason, but when it is to yield
+    to something that opposes salvation. For the Deist's creed has
+    as many articles as the Christian's, and requires a much greater
+    suspension of our reason to believe them. So that if to believe
+    things upon no authority, or without any reason, be an argument
+    of credulity, the freethinker will appear to be the most easy,
+    credulous creature alive. In the first place, he is to believe
+    almost all the same articles to be false which the Christian
+    believes to be true.
+
+    'Now, it may easily be shown that it requires stronger acts of
+    faith to believe these articles to be false, than to believe
+    them to be true. For, taking faith to be an assent of the mind
+    to some proposition, of which we have no certain knowledge, it
+    will appear that the Deist's faith is much stronger, and has
+    more of credulity in it, than the Christian's. For instance, the
+    Christian believes the resurrection of the dead, because he
+    finds it supported by such evidence and authority as cannot
+    possibly be higher, supposing the thing was true; and he does no
+    more violence to his reason in believing it, than in supposing
+    that God may intend to do some things, which the reason of man
+    cannot conceive how they will be effected.
+
+    'On the contrary, the Deist believes there will be no
+    resurrection. And how great is his faith, for he pretends to no
+    evidence or authority to support it; it is a pure naked assent
+    of his mind to what he does not know to be true, and of which
+    nobody has, or can give him, any full assurance. So that the
+    difference between a Christian and a Deist does not consist in
+    this, that the one assents to things unknown, and the other does
+    not; but in this, that the Christian assents to things unknown
+    on account of evidence; the other assents to things unknown
+    without any evidence at all. Which shows that the Christian is
+    the rational believer and the Deist the blind bigot.'
+
+It is probable that Law, like other writers on the orthodox side, did
+not sufficiently take into account the service rendered by the Deists in
+arousing a spirit of inquiry. Free-thinking is right thinking, and 'it
+was a result of the Deistic controversy, which went far to make up many
+evils in it, that in the end it widened and enlarged Christian
+thought.'[64]
+
+The author's next and weakest work, _On the Unlawfulness of Stage
+Entertainments_ (1726), is mentioned elsewhere.[65]
+
+In the same year he published _Christian Perfection_, a profoundly
+earnest but puritanically narrow work, in which our earthly life is
+regarded simply as the road to another. 'There is nothing that deserves
+a serious thought,' he writes, 'but how to get out of the world and make
+it a right passage to our eternal state.' No man ever practised what he
+preached with more sincerity and persistency than William Law, but it
+can hardly be doubted that he narrowed the range of his influence by the
+views he expressed with regard to culture and to all human learning. He
+forgot that, without the logic, the wit, the irony, the singular force
+and lucidity of style displayed in his own writings, he would have
+lost the power as a religious teacher which he was so eager to exercise.
+
+Literature _qua_ literature Law regarded with contempt, and he is said
+to have looked upon the study even of Milton as waste of time. Yet his
+biographer states what seems likely enough, considering the fine
+qualities of Law's own writings, that 'no author was ever a favourite
+with him, unless he was a man of literary merit.'
+
+In 1727, and probably before that date, Law held the position of tutor
+to Edward Gibbon, whose famous son, the historian, in his
+_Autobiography_, gives to him the high praise of having left in the
+family 'the reputation of a worthy and pious man, who believed all that
+he professed, and practised all that he enjoined.'
+
+Law accompanied his pupil to Cambridge, and it is conjectured that
+during this residence at the university he wrote what Gibbon justly
+called his 'master work,' _A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life_
+(1729), the most impressive book of its class produced in the eighteenth
+century. The historian's father was a man of feeble character. He left
+Cambridge without a degree, and went on his travels, the tutor meanwhile
+remaining in the family house at Putney, where he seems to have gathered
+round him a number of disciples.
+
+The _Serious Call_ had an immediate and strong influence on many
+thoughtful men, and Law's book stimulated in no common measure the
+religious life of the country. John Wesley spoke of it as a treatise
+hardly to be excelled in the English tongue 'either for beauty of
+expression, or for justness and depth of thought.' Whitefield, Venn, and
+Thomas Scott, the commentator, acknowledged their indebtedness to the
+work, and Dr. Johnson, speaking of his youthful days, said: 'I became a
+sort of lax _talker_ against religion, for I did not much _think_
+against it; and this lasted till I went to Oxford, when I took up Law's
+_Serious Call to a Holy Life_, expecting to find it a dull book (as such
+books generally are), but I found Law quite an over-match for me; and
+this was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest.' The first Lord
+Lyttelton, the historian and friend of Thomson, is said to have taken up
+the book one night at bed-time, and to have read it through before he
+went to bed; but, perhaps, the most unimpeachable evidence in its favour
+comes from the pen of Gibbon, who writes: 'Mr. Law's precepts are rigid,
+but they are founded on the Gospel. His satire is sharp, but it is drawn
+from the knowledge of human life, and many of his portraits are not
+unworthy of the pen of La Bruyere. If he finds a spark of piety in his
+reader's mind he will soon kindle it to a flame.'
+
+Law's art as a portrait painter will be seen in the following sketch of
+Flavia:
+
+    '_Flavia_ would be a miracle of piety if she was but half so
+    careful of her soul as she is of her body. The rising of a
+    _pimple_ on her face, the sting of a gnat, will make her keep
+    her room two or three days, and she thinks they are very rash
+    people that do not take care of things in time. This makes her
+    so over careful of her health that she never thinks she is well
+    enough, and so over indulgent that she never can be really well.
+    So that it costs her a great deal in sleeping draughts and
+    waking draughts, in spirits for the head, in drops for the
+    nerves, in cordials for the stomach, and in saffron for her tea.
+
+    'If you visit _Flavia_ on the Sunday, you will always meet good
+    company, you will know what is doing in the world, you will hear
+    the last lampoon, be told who wrote it, and who is meant by
+    every name that is in it. You will hear what plays were acted
+    that week, which is the finest song in the opera, who was
+    intolerable at the last assembly, and what games are most in
+    fashion. _Flavia_ thinks they are atheists who play at cards on
+    the Sunday, but she will tell you the nicety of all the games,
+    what cards she held, how she played them, and the history of all
+    that happened at play, as soon as she comes from church. If you
+    would know who is rude and ill-natured, who is vain and foppish,
+    who lives too high and who is in debt; if you would know what is
+    the quarrel at a certain house, or who and who are in love; if
+    you would know how late Belinda comes home at night, what
+    clothes she has bought, how she loves compliments, and what a
+    long story she told at such a place; if you would know how cross
+    Lucius is to his wife, what ill-natured things he says to her,
+    when nobody hears him; if you would know how they hate one
+    another in their hearts though they appear so kind in public;
+    you must visit _Flavia_ on the Sunday. But still she has so
+    great a regard for the holiness of the Sunday, that she has
+    turned a poor old widow out of her house as a _profane wretch_,
+    for having been found once mending her clothes on the Sunday
+    night.'
+
+Between the years 1733-37, owing to his acquaintance with the writings
+of the famous mystic, Jacob Boehme, Law became a mystic himself. The
+'blessed Jacob' as he calls him exercised an influence which colours all
+his later writings and lasted till his death. In 1740 he retired to his
+native village and to solitude; but after a while two wealthy and devout
+ladies, one of them a widow, the other the historian's aunt, Miss Hester
+Gibbon, joined him in his retreat and devoted to charitable objects
+their labours and their fortunes. 'Out of a joint income of not less
+than three thousand pounds a year, only about three hundred pounds were
+spent upon the frugal expenses of the household and the simple personal
+wants of the three inhabitants. The whole of the remainder was spent
+upon the poor.'[66] Report says, let us hope it may be scandal, that
+after the master's death the love of earthly vanities revived in two of
+his pupils. His favourite niece had a new dress every month, and Miss
+Gibbon 'appeared resplendent in yellow stockings.' This is not the place
+to follow Law's self-denying career, neither are we concerned with the
+volumes which contain his later views. Admirably written though they be,
+these works do not belong to the field of literature. Law lived in
+vigour both of mind and body to a good old age, and died in 1761.
+
+[Sidenote: Joseph Butler (1692-1752).]
+
+Joseph Butler, whose _Sermons_ (1726), and _Analogy of Religion Natural
+and Revealed to the Constitution and Course of Nature_ (1736), are among
+the highest contributions to theology produced in the last century,
+called the imagination 'a forward, delusive faculty,' and he could have
+boasted that it was a faculty of which no trace is to be found in his
+works. Moreover, he is generally regarded as wholly destitute of style,
+and in a sense this is true, for Butler is so intent upon what he has to
+say that he cares little how he says it. His sense of beauty if he
+possessed it, was absorbed in a supreme allegiance to truth, and his
+life was that of a Christian philosopher intent upon one object. His
+sermons, preached at the Rolls Chapel, which contain the germ of his
+philosophy, are too closely packed with argument and too recondite in
+thought to fit them for pulpit discourses. The _Analogy_, which occupied
+seven years of Butler's life, is better known and more generally
+interesting. 'There is,' he says, 'a much more exact correspondence
+between the natural and the moral world than we are apt to take notice
+of.' His aim is to show that the difficulties which meet us in
+Revelation are to be found also in nature, that as our happiness or
+misery in this world largely depends upon conduct, so it is reasonable
+to suppose, apart from what Revelation teaches, that we are also in a
+state of probation with regard to a future life. As youth is an
+education for mature age, so may the whole of our earthly life be an
+education for a future existence.
+
+    'And if we were not able at all to discern how or in what way
+    the present life could be our preparation for another, this
+    would be no objection against the credibility of its being so.
+    For we do not discern how food and sleep contribute to the
+    growth of the body; nor could have any thought that they would
+    before we had experience. Nor do children at all think on the
+    one hand that the sports and exercises, to which they are so
+    much addicted, contribute to their health and growth; nor, on
+    the other, of the necessity which there is for their being
+    restrained in them; nor are they capable of understanding the
+    use of many parts of discipline, which, nevertheless, they must
+    be made to go through in order to qualify them for the business
+    of mature age. Were we not able, then, to discover in what
+    respects the present life could form us for a future one, yet
+    nothing would be more supposable than that it might, in some
+    respects or other, from the general analogy of Providence. And
+    this, for aught I see, might reasonably be said, even though we
+    should not take in the consideration of God's moral government
+    over the world. But, take in this consideration, and
+    consequently, that the character of virtue and piety is a
+    necessary qualification for the future state, and then we may
+    distinctly see how and in what respects the present life may be
+    a preparation for it.
+
+Butler's style is uniform throughout, and if it have no other merit, may
+be praised for honesty. It is wholly free from the artifices of the
+rhetorician; if it is wanting in charm, it is never weak; if it is
+sometimes obscure, it must be remembered that the author does not write
+for readers who find it a trouble to think. The bishop's obscurity was
+not due to negligence. 'Confusion and perplexity in writing,' he says,
+'is indeed without excuse; because anyone may, if he pleases, know
+whether he understands and sees through what he is about; and it is
+unpardonable for a man to lay his thoughts before others when he is
+conscious that he himself does not know whereabouts he is, or how the
+matter before him stands. It is coming abroad in disorder, which he
+ought to be dissatisfied to find himself in at home.'
+
+Butler weighed his thoughts rather than his words in an age when many
+distinguished writers were tempted to regard form as of more consequence
+than substance. It must be admitted, however, that if the ideal of fine
+literature be the expression of beautiful and richly suggestive thoughts
+in a style elevated by the imagination, and by a sense of rhythmical
+harmony, Bishop Butler's place is not among men of letters. His profound
+sense of the seriousness of life limited his range; but as a thinker,
+what he lost in versatility he probably gained in depth. The _Analogy_
+is a striking instance of a great work wholly without imagination, while
+full of the intellectual life which sustains the student's attention.
+There is not a dull page in the book, or one in which the author's
+meaning cannot be grasped by thoughtful readers. The work is full of
+weighty sayings on the power of conscience, the rule of right which a
+man has within him, the force of habit, the necessity of action in
+relation to belief, and the uselessness of passive impressions. It has
+been said that the defect of the eighteenth century theology 'was not in
+having too much good sense, but in having nothing besides,' and the
+straining after good sense, so prominent in Pope's age, affected alike,
+men of letters, philosophers, and theologians. The virtue was carried to
+excess and is conspicuous in Butler. He has his weaknesses both as a
+philosopher and a theologian, but the reader of the _Analogy_ and of the
+three sermons on Human Nature, will be conscious that he is in the
+presence of a great mind.
+
+[Sidenote: William Warburton (1698-1779).]
+
+William Warburton, Pope's commentator, was born at Newark-upon-Trent in
+1698, and died as Bishop of Gloucester in 1779. The main argument of his
+principal work, _The Divine Legation of Moses_ (1738-41), is based upon
+the astounding paradox that the legation of Moses must have been divine
+because he never invoked the promises or threatenings of a future state.
+The book is remarkable for its arrogance and lack of 'sweet
+reasonableness.' It claims no attention from the student of English
+literature, neither would Warburton himself were it not for his
+association with Pope. Allusion has been already made to Crousaz's
+hostile criticism of the _Essay on Man_ (1737) on the ground that it led
+to fatalism, and was destructive of the foundations of natural religion.
+Warburton, who had previously denounced the 'rank atheism' of the poem,
+now endeavoured to defend it, and how effectually he did so in Pope's
+judgment is seen in his grateful acknowledgment of the critic's labours.
+'I know I meant just what you explain,' he wrote, 'but I did not explain
+my own meaning as well as you. You understand me as well as I do myself,
+but you express me better than I could express myself.'
+
+Dr. Conyers Middleton's estimate of what Warburton had done for Pope is
+more accurate: 'You have evinced the orthodoxy of Mr. Pope's
+principles,' he says, 'but, like the old commentators on his _Homer_,
+will be thought, perhaps, in some places to have provided a meaning for
+him that he himself never dreamt of.'[67]
+
+The poet and Warburton met for the first time in 1740, and the
+bookseller, Dodsley, who was present at the interview, was astonished at
+the compliments which Pope lavished on his apologist. Henceforth,
+until the poet's death, Warburton, who, according to Bishop Hurd, 'found
+an image of himself in his new acquaintance,' became his counsellor and
+supporter, and among other achievements added, as Ricardus Aristarchus,
+to the confusion of the _Dunciad_. Ultimately, as Pope's annotator, he
+produced much laborious and comparatively worthless criticism, and
+contrived by his immense fighting qualities as a critic and polemic to
+make a considerable noise in the world. One incident in the friendship
+of the poet and of the divine is worth recording. In 1741 Pope and
+Warburton were at Oxford together, and while there the Vice-Chancellor
+offered to confer on the poet the degree of D.C.L., and on Warburton
+that of D.D. Some hesitation, however, on the part of the university
+having occurred with regard to the latter, Pope wrote to his friend
+saying, 'As for mine I will die before I receive one, in an art I am
+ignorant of, at a place where there remains any scruple of bestowing one
+on you, in a science of which you are so great a master. In short I will
+be doctored with you, or not at all.'
+
+Warburton's stupendous self-assertion concealed to some extent his heavy
+style and poverty of thought. His aim was to startle by paradoxes, since
+he could not convince by argument. No one could call an opponent names
+in the Billingsgate style more effectively, and every man who ventured
+to differ from him was either a knave or a fool. 'Warburton's stock
+argument,' it has been said, 'is a threat to cudgel anyone who disputes
+his opinion.' He was a laborious student, and the mass of work he
+accomplished exhibits his robust energy, but he has left nothing which
+lives in literature or in theology. He was, however, a man of various
+acquisitions, and won, for that reason, the praise of Dr. Johnson. 'The
+table is always full, sir. He brings things from the north and the
+south and from every quarter. In his _Divine Legation_ you are always
+entertained. He carries you round and round without carrying you forward
+to the point, but then you have no wish to be carried forward.'
+
+Bentley's more concise description of Warburton's attainments deserves
+to be recorded. He was, he says, 'a man of monstrous appetite, but bad
+digestion.'
+
+Warburton's _Shakespeare_ appeared in 1747, his _Pope_ in 1751. It
+cannot be said that either poet has cause to be grateful to his
+commentator. Of his _Shakespeare_ a few words may be appropriately said
+here. In this pretentious and untrustworthy edition, Warburton accuses
+Theobald of plagiarism, treats him with contempt, and then uses his text
+to print from. In his Preface he declares that his own Notes 'take in
+the whole compass of Criticism,' and he professes to restore the poet's
+genuine Text. Yet, as the editors of the _Cambridge Shakespeare_
+observe, there is no trace, so far as they have discovered, 'of his
+having collated for himself either the earlier Folios or any of the
+Quartos.' Warburton professed to observe the severe canons of literal
+criticism, and this suggested the title to Thomas Edwards of a volume in
+which the critic's editorial pretensions are attacked with some humour
+and much justice.[68]
+
+We may add that Bishop Hurd, Warburton's most intimate friend, edited
+his works in seven volumes (1788), and six years later, by way of
+preface to a new edition, published an _Account of the Life, Writings,
+and Character of the Author_.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[57] Readers who remember Mr. Browning's estimate of 'sage Mandeville'
+in his _Parleyings with Certain Persons_ may deem this criticism unjust;
+but the De Mandeville who speaks in that poem is the creation of the
+poet's imagination, or rather he is Mr. Browning himself.
+
+[58] _Bolingbroke: a Historical Study_, p. 133. By J. Churton Collins.
+
+[59] _Walpole_, p. 79. By John Morley. Macmillan.
+
+[60] _Works of George Berkeley._ Edited by George Sampson. With
+introduction by the Rt. Hon. Arthur J. Balfour, M.P. Vol. i., p. xxxi
+(London, 1897).
+
+[61] _An Essay on Truth_, 2nd edit., p. 298. 1771.
+
+[62] _Blackwood's Magazine_, June, 1842.
+
+[63] Sir James Macintosh, _Encyclopaedia Britannica_.
+
+[64] _The English Church and its Bishops._ By Charles J. Abbey. Vol. i.,
+p. 236.
+
+[65] See p. 194.
+
+[66] _The Life and Opinions of the Rev. William Law, M.A._ By J. H.
+Overton, M.A. P. 243.
+
+[67] Middleton's _Miscellaneous Works_, vol. i., p. 402.
+
+[68] The first edition of Edwards's work was entitled _Supplement_ to
+Mr. Warburton's edition of _Shakespeare_, 1747. The third edition (1750)
+was called _The Canons of Criticism and Glossary_ by Thomas Edwards. Of
+this volume seven editions were published. Edwards, who was born in
+1699, died in 1757.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX OF MINOR POETS AND PROSE WRITERS.
+
+
+JOHN ARMSTRONG (1709-1779), a Scotchman by birth, practised in London as
+a physician after some surgical experience in the navy. Believing any
+subject suitable for poetry, he wrote in blank verse, reminding one of
+Thomson, _The Art of Preserving Health_ (1744), a poem containing some
+powerful passages, and many which are better fitted for a medical
+treatise than for poetry. An earlier and licentious poem _The Economy of
+Love_, which injured him in his profession, was 'revised and corrected
+by the author' in 1768.
+
+If bulk were a sign of merit SIR RICHARD BLACKMORE (1650-1729) would not
+rank with the minor poets. He wrote several long and wearisome epics,
+his best work in Dr. Johnson's judgment being _The Creation_ (1712),
+which was praised by Addison in the _Spectator_ as 'one of the most
+useful and noble productions in our English verse,' a judgment the
+modern reader is not likely to endorse.
+
+HENRY BROOKE (1706-1783), an Irishman, was the author of a poem entitled
+_Universal Beauty_ (1735). Four years later he published _Gustavus
+Vasa_, a tragedy, which was not allowed to be acted, the sentiments
+being too liberal for the government. His _Fool of Quality_ (1766) a
+novel in five volumes, delighted John Wesley, and in our day, Charles
+Kingsley, who praises its 'broad and genial humanity.' Brooke was a
+follower of William Law, whose mysticism is to be seen in the story.
+
+WILLIAM BROOME (1689-1745) is chiefly known from his association with
+Pope in the translation of the _Odyssey_, of which enough has been said
+elsewhere (p. 38). His name suggested the following epigram to Henley:
+
+    'Pope came off clean with Homer; but they say
+    _Broome_ went before and kindly swept the way.'
+
+He entered holy orders, had two livings in Suffolk and one in Norfolk,
+and married a wealthy widow. His verses are mechanically correct, but
+are empty of poetry.
+
+JOHN BYROM (1691-1763), the friend and disciple of William Law, the
+author of the _Serious Call_, is best remembered for his system of
+shorthand. In a characteristic, copious, and not very attractive
+journal, he describes, for the consolation of his fellow mortals, how he
+makes resolutions and breaks them. Byrom wrote rhyme with ease and on
+subjects with which poetry has nothing to do. His most successful
+achievement was a pastoral, _Colin and Phoebe_, which appeared in the
+_Spectator_ (Vol. viii., No. 603). It was written in honour of the
+daughter of Dr. Bentley, Master of Trinity, 'not,' it has been said,
+'because he wished to win her affections, but because he desired to
+secure her father's interest for the Fellowship for which he was a
+candidate.' The plan was successful. The one verse of Byrom's that every
+one has read is the happy epigram:
+
+    'God bless the King!--I mean the faith's defender--
+    God bless (no harm in blessing!) the Pretender!
+    But who Pretender is, or who is King--
+    God bless us all!--that's quite another thing.'
+
+SAMUEL CLARKE (1675-1729), a man of large attainments in science and
+divinity, was the favourite theologian of Queen Caroline, who admired
+his latitudinarian views, and delighted in his conversation. His works,
+edited by Bishop Hoadly, were published in 1738 in four folio volumes.
+In 1704 he delivered the Boyle lectures on _The Being and Attributes of
+God_, and in 1705 _On Natural and Revealed Religion_. His _Scripture
+Doctrine of the Trinity_ (1712) was condemned by convocation. In defence
+of Sir Isaac Newton, Clarke had a controversy with Leibnitz, and having
+published the correspondence dedicated it to the Queen. His sermons, Mr.
+Leslie Stephen says, are 'for the most part not sermons at all, but
+lectures upon metaphysics.' In Addison's judgment Clarke was one of the
+most accurate, learned, and judicious writers the age had produced.
+
+ELIJAH FENTON (1683-1730) wrote poems and _Mariamne_ a tragedy, in
+which, according to his friend Broome, 'great Sophocles revives and
+reappears.' It was acted with applause, and brought nearly one thousand
+pounds to its author. His name is now chiefly known as having assisted
+Pope in his translation of the _Odyssey_.
+
+RICHARD GLOVER (1712-1785), the son of a London merchant, was himself a
+merchant of high reputation in the city. He also 'cultivated the Muses,'
+and his _Leonidas_ (1737), an elaborate poem in blank verse, preferred
+by some critics of the day to _Paradise Lost_, passed through several
+editions and was praised by Fielding and by Lord Chatham. Power is
+visible in this epic, which displays also a large amount of knowledge,
+but the salt of genius is wanting, and the poem, despite many estimable
+qualities, is now forgotten. _Leonidas_ was followed by _Boadicea_
+(1758), and _The Atheniad_, published after his death in 1788. Glover
+was a politician as well as a verseman. His party feeling probably
+inspired _Admiral Hosier's Ghost_ (1739), a ballad still remembered and
+preserved in anthologies.
+
+MATTHEW GREEN (1696-1737) is the author of _The Spleen_, an original and
+brightly written poem. _The Grotto_, printed but not published in 1732,
+is also marked by freshness of treatment. Green's poems, written in
+octosyllabic metre, were published after his death.
+
+JAMES HAMMOND (1710-1742) produced many forlorn elegies on a lady who
+appears to have scorned him, and who lived in 'maiden meditation' for
+nearly forty years after the poet's death. His love is said to have
+affected his mind for a time. 'Sure Hammond has no right,' says
+Shenstone, 'to the least inventive merit. I do not think that there is a
+single thought in his elegies of any eminence that is not literally
+translated.'
+
+NATHANIEL HOOKE (1690-1763), the author of a _Roman History_, is better
+known as the editor of _An Account of the conduct of the Dowager Duchess
+of Marlborough, from her first coming to Court in the year 1710, in a
+letter from herself to Lord ---- in 1742_. The duchess is said to have
+dictated this letter from her bed, and to have been so eager for its
+completion that she insisted on Hooke's not leaving the house till he
+had finished it. He was munificently rewarded for his labour by a
+present of L5,000. It was Hooke, a zealous Roman Catholic, who, when
+Pope was dying, asked him if he should not send for a priest, and
+received the poet's hearty thanks for putting him in mind of it.
+
+JOHN HUGHES (1677-1719) was the author of poems, an opera, a masque,
+several translations, and a tragedy, _The Siege of Damascus_, which was
+well received, and kept its place on the stage for some years. He died
+on the first night's performance of the play. Several articles in the
+_Tatler_ and _Spectator_ are from his pen. In 1715 he published an
+edition of Spenser in six volumes. Hughes received warm praise from
+Steele, and enjoyed also the friendship of Addison.
+
+CONYERS MIDDLETON (1683-1750) is now chiefly known for an extravagantly
+eulogistic life of _Cicero_ (1741), in which, as Macaulay observes, he
+'resorted to the most disingenuous shifts, to unpardonable distortions
+and suppressions of facts.' The book is written in a forcible and lively
+style. A man of considerable learning, Middleton was a violent
+controversialist, who liked better to attack and to defend than to dwell
+in the serene atmosphere of literature or of practical divinity. He
+assailed the famous Richard Bentley with such rancour that he had to
+apologize and was fined L50 by the Court of King's Bench. Middleton was
+a doctor of divinity, but his controversial works, while never directly
+attacking the chief tenets of the religion he professed, lean far more
+to the side of the Deists than to the orthodox creed, and, indeed, it
+would not be uncharitable to class him among them. He appears, like
+Swift, to have chiefly regarded the Christian religion as an institution
+of service to the stability of the State. Of the _Miscellaneous Works_
+which were published after his death in five volumes, the most elaborate
+and the most provocative of disputation is _A Free Inquiry into the
+Miraculous Powers which are supposed to have subsisted in the Christian
+Church through several successive centuries_ (1749). Middleton was
+educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1734 was elected
+librarian of the University.
+
+RICHARD SAVAGE (1698-1743), whose fate is one of the most melancholy in
+the annals of versemen, lives in the admirable though neither impartial
+nor wholly accurate biography of Dr. Johnson. In 1719 he produced _Love
+in a Veil_, a comedy from the Spanish; and in 1723 his tragedy _Sir
+Thomas Overbury_ was acted, but with little success. In the same year he
+published _The Bastard_, a poem which is said to have driven his mother
+out of society. _The Wanderer_, in five cantos, appeared in 1729, and
+was regarded by the author as his masterpiece. It has some vigorous
+lines and several descriptive passages that are not conventional. Savage
+died in prison at Bristol, a city which recalls the equally painful
+story of Chatterton.
+
+LEWIS THEOBALD (1688-1744), the original hero of the _Dunciad_, was a
+dramatist and translator, but is chiefly known as the author of
+_Shakespeare Restored; or specimens of blunders committed or unamended
+in Pope's edition of the poet_ (1726). This was followed two years later
+by _Proposals for Publishing Emendations and Remarks on Shakespeare_,
+and in 1733 by his edition of the dramatist in seven volumes. 'Theobald
+as an editor,' say the editors of the _Cambridge Shakespeare_, 'is
+incomparably superior to his predecessors and to his immediate successor
+Warburton, although the latter had the advantage of working on his
+materials. He was the first to recall a multitude of readings of the
+first Folio unquestionably right, but unnoticed by previous editors.
+Many most brilliant emendations ... are due to him.'
+
+WILLIAM WALSH (1663-1708) has chronologically little claim to be noticed
+here, for his poems were published before the beginning of the century,
+but he is to be remembered as the early friend and wise counsellor of
+Pope, and also as the author, I believe, of the only English sonnet
+between Milton's in 1658, and Gray's, on Richard West, in 1742.
+
+ANNE FINCH, Countess of Winchelsea (1660-1720), published a volume of
+verse in 1713 under the title of _Miscellany Poems on Several Occasions,
+Written by a Lady_. The book contains a _Nocturnal Reverie_, which has
+some lines showing a close and faithful observation of rural sounds and
+sights, as for example:
+
+    'When the loosed horse, now as his pasture leads,
+    Comes slowly grazing through the adjoining meads,
+    Whose stealing pace and lengthened shade we fear,
+    Till torn-up forage in his teeth we hear;
+    When nibbling sheep at large pursue their food,
+    And unmolested kine rechew the cud;
+    When curlews cry beneath the village walls,
+    And to her straggling brood the partridge calls.'
+
+The _Nocturnal Reverie_, however, is an exception to the general
+character of Lady Winchelsea's poems, which consist chiefly of odes
+(including the inevitable Pindaric), fables, songs, affectionate
+addresses to her husband, poetical epistles, and a tragedy,
+_Aristomenes; or the Royal Shepherd_. The _Petition for an Absolute
+Retreat_ is one of the best pieces in the volume. It displays great
+facility in versification, and a love of country delights.
+
+THOMAS YALDEN (1670-1736), born in Exeter, and educated at Magdalen
+College, Oxford, entered into holy orders (1711), and was appointed
+lecturer of moral philosophy. 'Of his poems,' writes Dr. Johnson, 'many
+are of that irregular kind which, when he formed his poetical character,
+was supposed to be Pindaric.' Pindarics were indeed the bane of the age.
+Every minor poet, no matter however feeble his poetical wings might be,
+endeavoured to fly with Pindar. Like Gay, Yalden tried his skill as a
+writer of fables.
+
+    NOTE.
+
+    _Mrs. Veal's Ghost_ (see pp. 186-187). A curious discovery, made
+    by Mr. G. A. Aitken (see _Nineteenth Century_, January, 1895),
+    makes it certain, he thinks, that 'the whole narrative is
+    literally true.' He even hopes that the receipt for scouring
+    Mrs. Veal's gown may some day be found. Mr. Aitken seems to
+    infer that Defoe's other tales will also turn out to be true
+    histories, but Defoe avers, with all the seriousness he expends
+    on Mrs. Veal, that he witnessed the great Plague of London,
+    which it is needless to say he did not.
+
+
+
+
+CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.
+
+
+=1667.=       =Swift born.=
+=1672.=       =Steele born.=
+=1672.=       =Addison born.=
+ 1674.        Milton died.
+=1688.=       =Gay born.=
+=1688.=       =Pope born.=
+ 1688.        Bunyan died.
+ 1690.        Locke's _Essay Concerning Human Understanding_.
+ 1694.        Voltaire born.
+ 1699.        Racine died.
+=1700.=       =Thomson born.=
+=1700.=       =Dryden died.=
+ 1700.        Fenelon's _Telemaque_.
+ 1703.        John Wesley born.
+ 1704.        Locke died.
+=1704.=       =Addison's= _Campaign_.
+=1704.=       =Swift's= _Tale of a Tub_ and _Battle of the Books_.
+ 1707.        Fielding born.
+ 1709.        Johnson born.
+=1709.=       =Pope's= _Pastorals_.
+=1709-1711.=  _The Tatler._
+=1710.=       =Berkeley's= _Principles of Human Knowledge_.
+=1711.=       =Pope's= _Essay on Criticism_.
+1711-1712,}   _The Spectator._
+and 1714. }
+ 1711.        Hume born.
+=1712.=       =Pope's= _Rape of the Lock_.
+ 1712.        Rousseau born.
+=1713.=       =Addison's= _Cato_.
+ 1713.        Sterne born.
+=1714.=       =Mandeville's= _Fable of the Bees_.
+=1715.=       =Gay's= _Trivia_.
+=1715-1720.=  =Pope's= _Translation of Homer's Iliad_.
+ 1715.        Wycherley died.
+=1718.=       =Prior's= _Poems on Several Occasions_ =(folio)=.
+=1719-1720.=  =Defoe's= _Robinson Crusoe_ =(first part)=.
+=1719.=       =Addison died.=
+=1721.=       =Prior died.=
+ 1721.        Smollett born.
+=1723-1725.=  =Pope's= _Translation of Homer's Odyssey_.
+=1724.=       =Swift's= _Drapier's Letters_.
+ 1724.        Kant born.
+ 1724.        Klopstock born.
+=1725-1730.=  =Thomson's= _Seasons_.
+=1725.=       =Ramsay's= _Gentle Shepherd_.
+=1725.=       =Young's= _Universal Passion_.
+=1726.=       =Swift's= _Gulliver's Travels_.
+=1727.=       =Gay's= _Fables_.
+=1728.=       =Pope's= _Dunciad_.
+=1728.=       =Gay's= _Beggar's Opera_.
+ 1728.        Goldsmith born.
+=1729.=       =Law's= _Serious Call_.
+ 1729.        Burke born.
+ 1729.        Lessing born.
+=1729.=       =Steele died.=
+=1731.=       =Defoe died.=
+ 1731.        Cowper born.
+=1732-1735.=  =Pope's= _Moral Essays_.
+=1732-1734.=  =Pope's= _Essay on Man_.
+=1732.=       =Gay died.=
+=1733-1737.=  =Pope's= _Imitations of Horace_.
+=1735.=       =Pope's= _Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot_.
+=1736.=       =Butler's= _Analogy of Religion_.
+ 1737.        Gibbon born.
+=1738.=       =Hume's= _Treatise of Human Nature_.
+=1740.=       =Cibber's= _Apology for his Life_.
+ 1740.        Richardson's _Pamela_.
+ 1742.        Fielding's _Joseph Andrews_.
+=1742.=       =Pope's= _Dunciad_ =(fourth book added)=.
+=1742.=       =Young's= _Night Thoughts_.
+=1743.=       =Blair's= _Grave_.
+=1744.=       =Akenside's= _Pleasures of Imagination_.
+=1744.=       =Pope died.=
+=1745.=       =Swift died.=
+=1748.=       =Thomson died.=
+ 1748.        Hume's _Inquiry concerning Human Understanding_.
+ 1748.        Richardson's _Clarissa Harlowe_.
+ 1748.        Smollett's _Roderick Random_.
+ 1749.        Goethe born.
+ 1749.        Fielding's _Tom Jones_.
+
+
+ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WRITERS
+
+ADDISON, JOSEPH                         1672-1719
+AKENSIDE, MARK                          1721-1770
+ARBUTHNOT, JOHN                         1667-1735
+ARMSTRONG, JOHN                         1709-1779
+ATTERBURY, FRANCIS                      1662-1732
+BENTLEY, RICHARD                        1662-1742
+BERKELEY, GEORGE                        1685-1753
+BINNING, LORD                           1696-1732
+BLACKMORE, SIR RICHARD                  1650-1729
+BLAIR, ROBERT                           1699-1746
+BOLINGBROKE, LORD                       1678-1751
+BOYLE, CHARLES                          1676-1731
+BROOKE, HENRY                           1706-1783
+BROOME, WILLIAM                         1689-1745
+BUTLER, JOSEPH                          1692-1752
+BYROM, JOHN                             1691-1763
+CHESTERFIELD, LORD                      1694-1773
+CIBBER, COLLEY                          1671-1757
+CLARKE, SAMUEL                          1675-1729
+COLLINS, ANTHONY                        1676-1729
+CRAWFORD, ROBERT                       1695?-1732
+DEFOE, DANIEL                           1661-1731
+DENNIS, JOHN                          1657-1733-4
+DORSET, EARL OF                       1637-1705-6
+DYER, JOHN                             1698?-1758
+EDWARDS, THOMAS                         1699-1757
+FENTON, ELIJAH                          1683-1730
+GARTH, SIR SAMUEL                    1660-1717-18
+GAY, JOHN                               1685-1732
+GLOVER, RICHARD                         1712-1785
+GREEN, MATTHEW                          1696-1737
+HALIFAX, CHARLES MONTAGUE, EARL OF      1661-1715
+HAMILTON, WILLIAM (OF BANGOUR)          1704-1754
+HAMMOND, JAMES                          1710-1742
+HILL, AARON                             1684-1749
+HOOKE, NATHANIEL                        1690-1763
+HUGHES, JOHN                            1677-1719
+KING, ARCHBISHOP                        1650-1729
+LAW, WILLIAM                            1686-1761
+LILLO, GEORGE                           1693-1739
+LYTTELTON, GEORGE, LORD                 1708-1773
+MALLET, DAVID                           1700-1765
+MANDEVILLE, BERNARD DE                 1670?-1733
+MIDDLETON, CONYERS                      1683-1750
+MONTAGU, LADY MARY WORTLEY              1689-1762
+PARNELL, THOMAS                         1679-1718
+PHILIPS, AMBROSE                        1671-1749
+PHILIPS, JOHN                           1676-1708
+POPE, ALEXANDER                         1688-1744
+PRIOR, MATTHEW                          1664-1721
+RAMSAY, ALLAN                           1686-1758
+ROWE, NICHOLAS                          1673-1718
+SAVAGE, RICHARD                         1698-1743
+SHAFTESBURY, LORD                       1671-1713
+SHENSTONE, WILLIAM                      1714-1764
+SOMERVILLE, WILLIAM                     1692-1742
+SPENCE, JOSEPH                          1698-1768
+STEELE, SIR RICHARD                     1672-1729
+SWIFT, JONATHAN                         1667-1745
+THEOBALD, LEWIS                         1688-1744
+THOMSON, JAMES                          1700-1748
+TICKELL, THOMAS                         1686-1740
+WALSH, WILLIAM                          1663-1708
+WARBURTON, WILLIAM                      1698-1779
+WARDLAW, LADY                           1677-1727
+WATTS, ISAAC                            1674-1748
+WESLEY, CHARLES                         1708-1788
+WINCHELSEA, COUNTESS OF                 1660-1720
+YALDEN, THOMAS                          1670-1736
+YOUNG, EDWARD                           1684-1765
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+Addison, Joseph, 4, 5, 15, 16, 19, 20, 35, 59, 62, 125-136, 145, 146.
+
+_Addison, Address to Mr._, 112.
+
+_Admiral Hosier's Ghost_, 244.
+
+_Agamemnon_, 88.
+
+Akenside, Mark, 117.
+
+_Alciphron_, 216, 224.
+
+_Alfred, Masque of_, 88, 119.
+
+_Alma_, 67, 71.
+
+_Ambitious Step-mother, the_, 103.
+
+_Amyntor and Theodora_, 119.
+
+_Analogy of Religion_, 236.
+
+_Appius and Virginia_, 191, 193.
+
+Arbuthnot, John, 45, 49, 175-179.
+
+_Arbuthnot, Epistle to Dr._, 59.
+
+Armstrong, John, 242.
+
+_Art of Political Lying, the_, 177.
+
+_Art of Preserving Health, the_, 242.
+
+_Atheniad, the_, 244.
+
+Atterbury, Bishop, 45, 70, 207-212.
+
+Atticus, character of, 59.
+
+Augustan Age, origin of the term, 10.
+
+
+_Baucis and Philemon_, 157.
+
+_Bangor, three Letters to the Bishop of_, 230.
+
+Bangorian Controversy, the, 9.
+
+_Bathos, treatise on the_, 39.
+
+Bathurst, Lord, 46, 49.
+
+_Battle of Blenheim, the_, 192.
+
+_Battle of the Books, the_, 160.
+
+_Beggar's Opera, the_, 73, 74.
+
+Bentley, Richard, 36, 48, 160, 207, 208, 243.
+
+_Bentley's Dissertations, Examination of_, 208.
+
+Berkeley, Bishop, 46, 215, 221-229.
+
+Bickerstaff, Isaac, 161;
+  _Lucubrations of_ 140, 141.
+
+Binning, Lord, 121.
+
+_Black-eyed Susan_, 74.
+
+Blackmore, Sir Richard, 47, 242.
+
+Blair, Robert, 84.
+
+_Blenheim_, 101.
+
+Blount, Martha and Teresa, 44, 56.
+
+_Boadicea_, 244.
+
+Boehme, Jacob, 235.
+
+Boileau and Pope compared, 4, 47;
+  his _Art Poetique_, 29.
+
+Bolingbroke, Lord, 8, 44, 51, 52, 59, 216-221.
+
+Boyle, Charles, 160, 207, 208.
+
+_Braes of Yarrow, the_, 121.
+
+Bribery, prevalence of, 19.
+
+_Britannia_ (Thomson's), 87;
+  (Mallet's), 119.
+
+Brooke, Henry, 242.
+
+Broome, William, 38, 243.
+
+_Brothers, the_, 79.
+
+Buckingham, Duke of, 57, 70.
+
+_Busiris_, 79.
+
+Butler, Bishop, 236.
+
+Byrom, John, 243.
+
+
+_Cadenus and Vanessa_, 154, 165.
+
+_Campaign, the_, 126.
+
+_Captain Singleton_, 188.
+
+_Careless Husband, the_, 196, 197.
+
+Caroline, Queen, 9.
+
+_Castle of Indolence, the_, 93.
+
+_Cato_, 128, _et seq._
+
+Chandos, Duke of, 57.
+
+_Characteristics of Men, Manners, etc._, 19, 52, 212.
+
+Charke, Mrs., _Narrative of her Life_, 11.
+
+_Chase, the_, 112.
+
+Chesterfield, Lord, 202-204.
+
+_Chit-Chat_, 144.
+
+_Christian Hero, the_, 137.
+
+_Christianity, argument against abolishing_, 161.
+
+_Christian Perfection_, 232.
+
+_Christian Religion, Grounds of the_, 222.
+
+Cibber, Colley, 48, 196-198;
+  _Apology for the Life of_, 198.
+
+_Cider_, 101.
+
+Clarke, Dr. Samuel, 9, 243.
+
+_Colin and Lucy_, 110.
+
+_Colin and Phoebe_, 243.
+
+Collier, Jeremy, 137.
+
+Collins, Anthony, 222.
+
+_Colonel Jack_, 187, 188.
+
+_Conscious Lovers, the_, 137.
+
+_Contentment, Hymn to_, 107.
+
+_Conversion of St. Paul, Dissertation on the_, 205.
+
+_Coriolanus_, 88.
+
+_Country Mouse and City Mouse, the_, 66.
+
+_Country Walk, the_, 114.
+
+Craggs, James, 45, 56.
+
+Crawford, Robert, 121.
+
+_Creation, the_, 242.
+
+_Crisis, the_, 143, 144.
+
+_Criticism, the Essay on_, 29, 191.
+
+_Criticism in Poetry, grounds of_, 192.
+
+Crousaz, M., 54, 238.
+
+Cruelty of the age, 18.
+
+Curll, Edmund, 42.
+
+
+Defoe, Daniel, 180-191.
+
+Delany, Mrs., _Life and Correspondence of_, 12, 164.
+
+Dennis, John, 191-196.
+
+_Dialogues of the Dead_, 205.
+
+_Dispensary, the_, 96.
+
+_Distrest Mother, the_, 98.
+
+_Divine Legation of Moses, the_, 230, 239.
+
+Dorset, Earl of, 65.
+
+_Drapier's Letters_, 170.
+
+Drelincourt's _Christian's Defence, etc._, 187.
+
+Dryden, John, death of, 1;
+  and Pope, 28, 58.
+
+_Dryden, Ode to_, 193.
+
+_Drummer, the_, 134.
+
+Drunkenness, prevalence of, 17.
+
+Duelling, 13.
+
+_Dunciad, the_, 39, 48, _et seq._, 240.
+
+Dyer, John, 113, 224.
+
+
+_Edward and Eleanora_, 88.
+
+Edwards, Thomas, 241.
+
+_Edwin and Emma_, 118.
+
+_Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady_, 33.
+
+_Eloisa to Abelard_, 33.
+
+_Elvira_, 119.
+
+_English Convocation, Rights, Powers and Privileges of_, 208.
+
+_Englishman, the_, 144.
+
+_English Poets, Account of the greatest_, 131.
+
+_Epistle to a Friend in Town_, 114.
+
+_Epistles of Phalaris, Dissertations on the_, 160, 208.
+
+_Essay on Man, the_, 51, 238.
+
+_Eurydice_, 119.
+
+Eusden, Lawrence, 47.
+
+_Evergreen, the_, 120.
+
+_Examiner, the_, 162.
+
+_Excursion, the_, 118.
+
+
+_Fable of the Bees, the_, 214, 230;
+  _Remarks on the_, 231.
+
+_Fables_ (Gay's), 73.
+
+_Fair Penitent, the_, 103.
+
+_Fatal Curiosity, the_, 138.
+
+Fenton, Elijah, 38, 244.
+
+_Fleece, the_, 113, 224.
+
+_Fool of Quality, the_, 243.
+
+_Force of Religion, the_, 78.
+
+_Freedom of Wit and Humour, the_, 213.
+
+_Freeholder, the_, 132.
+
+_Freethinking, Discourse on_, 222.
+
+French Literature, influence of, 3, 4, 5.
+
+French Customs, 14.
+
+_Funeral, the_, 137.
+
+
+Gambling, 21, 22.
+
+Garth, Sir Samuel, 96.
+
+Gay, John, 40, 49, 72-76.
+
+_Gentle Shepherd, the_, 120.
+
+_George Barnwell_, 138.
+
+_Gideon_, 104.
+
+Glover, Richard, 244.
+
+_God, the Being and Attributes of_, 244.
+
+Granville, George, Lord Lansdowne, 40.
+
+_Grave, the_, 84.
+
+Green, Matthew, 245.
+
+_Grongar Hill_, 113.
+
+_Grotto, the_, 244.
+
+_Grub Street Journal, the_, 51.
+
+_Grumbling Hive, the_, 214.
+
+_Guardian, the_, 125, 142.
+
+_Gulliver's Travels_, 167.
+
+_Gustavus Vasa_, 243.
+
+
+Halifax, Montague, Earl of, 65, 66.
+
+Hamilton, William, of Bangour, 121.
+
+Hammond, James, 245.
+
+_Health, an Eclogue_, 108.
+
+_Henry and Emma_, 67.
+
+_Hermit, the_, 107.
+
+Hervey, Lord, 47, 59, 61.
+
+Hill, Aaron, 104-106, 195.
+
+Hoadly, Bishop, 9, 230.
+
+Homer, Pope's Translation of, 34, _et seq._, 206, 243, 244.
+  Tickell's translation, 35, 111.
+
+Hooke, Nathaniel, 245.
+
+Horace, _Ars Poetica_, 29.
+
+_Horace, Imitations from_, 55, 59, 60.
+
+Hughes, John, 40, 245.
+
+_Human Knowledge, Treatise on_, 221, 225.
+
+_Hylas and Philonous, Dialogue between_, 222, 227.
+
+_Hymn to Contentment_, 107.
+
+_Hymn to the Naiads_, 118.
+
+
+_Imperium Pelagi_, 76.
+
+_Instalment, the_, 79.
+
+_Iphigenia_, 193.
+
+_Italy, Letter from_, 131.
+
+_Italy, Remarks on Several Parts of_, 126.
+
+
+_Jane Shore_, 103.
+
+_John Bull, History of_, 177.
+
+Johnson, Esther, 152, 164, 166, 172.
+
+_Judgment Day, the_, 104.
+
+_Judgment of Hercules, the_, 116.
+
+
+_Kensington Gardens_, 111.
+
+King, _on the Origin of Evil_, 52.
+
+
+_Lady Jane Grey_, 103.
+
+_Lansdowne, Epistle to Lord_, 77.
+
+_Last Day, the_, 77.
+
+Law, William, 194, 230-236, 243.
+
+_Law, Elegy in Memory of William_, 85.
+
+Leibnitz, _Essais de Theodicee_, 52.
+
+_Leonidas_, 244.
+
+_Liberty Asserted_, 193.
+
+Lillo, George, 138.
+
+_Love in a Veil_, 246.
+
+_Lover, the_, 144.
+
+_Love's Last Shift_, 196.
+
+_Lying Lover, the_, 137.
+
+Lyttelton, George, Lord, 204.
+
+
+Mallet, David, 88, 118, 219, 220.
+
+_Man, Allegory on_, 107.
+
+Mandeville, Bernard de, 214, 230.
+
+_Mariamne_, 244.
+
+Marlborough, Duchess of, 13, 57.
+
+_Marlborough, Duchess of, Account of the Conduct of_, 245.
+
+Marriages in the Fleet, 11, 12.
+
+_Mathematical Learning, Essay on the Usefulness of_, 175.
+
+_Memoirs of a Cavalier_, 188.
+
+_Merope_, 106.
+
+Middleton, Conyers, 246.
+
+_Modest Proposal, etc._, 172, 184.
+
+Mohocks, the, 11.
+
+_Moll Flanders_, 188, 190.
+
+Montagu, Lady M. W., 14, 42, 44, 57, 198-202.
+
+Montague, Charles, Earl of Halifax, 65, 66.
+
+_Monument, the_, 192.
+
+_Moral Essays, the_, 55, _et seq._
+
+_Moralties or Essays, Letters, etc._, 206.
+
+_Mrs. Veal, Apparition of_, 186.
+
+
+_Namur, Taking of_, 70.
+
+_Night Piece on Death_, 107, 108.
+
+_Night Thoughts_, 76, 81.
+
+_Northern Star, the_, 104.
+
+
+_Ocean_, 76.
+
+_Ode on St. Cecilia's day_, 40.
+
+Opera, Italian, 127.
+
+Oxford, Harley, Earl of, 49.
+
+
+_Parallel in the Manner of Plutarch_, 206.
+
+Parnell, Thomas, 107.
+
+_Parties, Dissertation on_, 221.
+
+Partridge, John, 161.
+
+Party feeling, excess of, 19, 20.
+
+_Pastoral Ballad_, 116.
+
+_Pastorals_ (Pope's), 29, 191;
+  (Philips'), 98.
+
+_Patriotism, Letters on_, 221.
+
+_Patriot King, the_, 219, 221.
+
+Patronage of Literature, 5, 6.
+
+_Peace of Ryswick, the_, 126.
+
+_Persian Tales, the_, 100.
+
+Peterborough, Earl of, 45.
+
+_Phalaris, Dissertation on the Epistle of_, 160, 208.
+
+Philips, Ambrose, 11, 98.
+
+Philips, John, 101.
+
+_Plague, History of the_, 189.
+
+_Pleasures of Imagination, the_, 117.
+
+_Plot and No Plot, a_, 193.
+
+_Poetry, Rhapsody on_, 157.
+
+_Polly_, 74.
+
+_Polymetis_, 206.
+
+Pope, Alexander, a representative poet, 27;
+  his life, 28-64;
+  and Dennis, 191, 195;
+  and Cibber, 96;
+  and Lady M. W. Montagu, 14, 42, 44, 57, 199;
+  and Spence, 205;
+  and Arbuthnot, 209.
+
+_Pope, Epistle to_, 81.
+
+_Pope's Translation of Homer_, Spence's Essay on, 206.
+
+Pope, Mrs., 44, 59.
+
+Prior, Matthew, 5, 65-72.
+
+_Progress of Wit, the_, 105.
+
+_Projects, Essay on_, 182.
+
+_Prospect of Peace, the_, 109.
+
+_Public Spirit of the Whigs, the_, 143.
+
+
+_Querist, the_, 224.
+
+
+Ramsay, Allan, 120.
+
+_Rape of the Lock, the_, 31.
+
+_Reader, the_, 144.
+
+Religion, Condition of, 9.
+
+_Religion, Natural and Revealed_, 244.
+
+_Religious Courtship, the_, 189.
+
+_Remarks on Several Parts of Italy_, 126.
+
+_Revenge, the_, 79.
+
+_Review, the_ (Defoe's), 185.
+
+_Rise of Women, the_, 108.
+
+_Robinson Crusoe_, 180, 187, 189.
+
+_Rosamond_, 128.
+
+Roscommon's _Essay on Translated Verse_, 29.
+
+Rowe, Nicholas, 102.
+
+_Roxana_, 188, 189.
+
+_Royal Convert, the_, 103.
+
+_Ruin of Great Britain, Essay towards Preventing the_, 223.
+
+_Ruins of Rome, the_, 115.
+
+_Rule Britannia_, 95.
+
+
+Savage, Richard, 246.
+
+_Schoolmistress, the_, 115, 116.
+
+_Scriblerus, Martin, Memoirs of_, 178, 222.
+
+_Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, the_, 244.
+
+_Seasons, the_, 86, 87, 88-92.
+
+_Sentiments of a Church of England Man_, 162.
+
+_Serious Call_, 216, 233.
+
+Shaftesbury, Lord, 19, 52, 212-215.
+
+Shakespeare, Pope and Theobald's Editions of, 39;
+  Rowe's Edition, 132;
+  Warburton's Edition, 241.
+
+Sheffield, John, Earl of, 29, 40.
+
+Shenstone, William, 115, 205.
+
+_Shepherd's Week, the_, 73.
+
+_Shortest Way with Dissenters, the_, 184.
+
+_Siege of Damascus, the_, 245.
+
+_Siris_, 224, 228.
+
+_Sir Thomas Overbury_, 246.
+
+Social Condition of the time, 10.
+
+_Social State of Ireland, Essay on the_, 224.
+
+_Solomon_, 67, 71.
+
+Somerville, William, 40, 112.
+
+_Sophonisba_, 87.
+
+South Sea Company, the, 21.
+
+_Spectator, the_, 11, 14, 16, 19, 20, 98, 117, 125, 127, 128, 141, 142.
+
+Spence, Joseph, 59, 205.
+
+_Spleen, the_, 244.
+
+_Splendid Shilling, the_, 101.
+
+_Stage defended from Scripture, etc., the_, 194.
+
+_Stage Entertainments, Absolute Unlawfulness of_, 194, 232.
+
+Steele, Sir Richard, 125, 136-150.
+
+_Stella, Journal to_, 164, 166.
+
+_Study of History, Letters on the_, 221.
+
+Swift, Jonathan, 34, 42, 44, 48, 49, 50, 51, 62, 151-175.
+
+_Swift, on the Death of Dr._, 154.
+
+
+_Tale of a Tub, the_, 153, 158, 209.
+
+_Tales of the Genii_, 206.
+
+_Tamerlane_, 103.
+
+_Tancred and Sigismunda_, 88.
+
+_Tatler, the_, 125, 140, 148, 162.
+
+_Tea Table, the_, 144.
+
+_Tea Table Miscellany, the_, 120.
+
+Temple, Sir William, 152, 160, 208.
+
+_Temple of Fame, the_, 33.
+
+_Tender Husband, the_, 137.
+
+_Theatre, the_, 144.
+
+Theobald, Lewis, 39, 47, 48.
+
+_Theory of Vision, Essay towards a new_, 221, 225.
+
+Thomson, James, 44, 47, 85-95.
+
+Tickell, Thomas, 35, 109-111, 135.
+
+_Tour through Great Britain_, 190.
+
+_Town Talk_, 144.
+
+_Trivia_, 11, 73.
+
+_True Born Englishman, the_, 184.
+
+Trumbull, Sir William, 29, 34.
+
+
+_Ulysses_, 103.
+
+_Ungrateful Nanny_, 121.
+
+_Universal Passion_, 80.
+
+
+Vanhomrigh, Hester, 164, 222.
+
+_Verbal Criticism_, 118.
+
+Vida's _Scacchia Ludus_, 32.
+
+_Vision of Mirza, the_, 146.
+
+_Voltaire_, 5, 41.
+
+
+Walpole, Sir Robert, 6, 8, 21, 41, 79.
+
+Walsh, William, 28, 247.
+
+_Wanderer, the_, 247.
+
+Warburton, Bishop, 55, 56, 62, 230, 239-241.
+
+Wardlaw, Lady, 120.
+
+Warton, Joseph, 63.
+
+Watts, Isaac, 131.
+
+_Welcome from Greece, a_, 75.
+
+Welsted, Leonard, 47.
+
+Wesley, Charles, 131.
+
+Wesley, John, 67.
+
+_Whig Examiner, the_, 162.
+
+_William and Margaret_, 118.
+
+Winchelsea, Countess of, 247.
+
+_Windham, Sir W., Letter to_, 217, 221.
+
+_Windsor Forest_, 30.
+
+Women, position of, 14, 15.
+
+Wood's Halfpence, 169, 170.
+
+_World, the_, 203.
+
+Wycherley, William, 28.
+
+
+Yalden, Thomas, 248.
+
+Young, Edward, 15, 76-83.
+
+
+_Zara_, 106.
+
+
+
+
+HANDBOOKS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
+
+
+EDITED BY PROFESSOR HALES
+
+"The admirable series of handbooks edited by Professor Hales is rapidly
+taking shape as one of the best histories of our literature that are at
+the disposal of the student.... [When complete] there is little doubt
+that we shall have a history of English literature which, holding a
+middle course between the rapid general survey and the minute
+examination of particular periods, will long remain a standard
+work."--_Manchester Guardian._
+
+_Crown 8vo, 5s. net each._
+
+THE AGE OF ALFRED (664-1154). By F. J. SNELL, M.A.
+
+THE AGE OF CHAUCER (1346-1400). By F. J. SNELL, M.A., with an
+    Introduction by PROFESSOR HALES. 3rd edition.
+
+THE AGE OF TRANSITION (1400-1580). By F. J. SNELL, M.A. In 2 vols.
+    Vol. I.: The Poets. Vol. II.: The Dramatists and Prose Writers.
+    With an Introduction by PROFESSOR HALES. 3rd edition.
+
+THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE (1579-1631). By THOMAS SECCOMBE and J. W.
+    ALLEN. In 2 vols. Vol. I.: Poetry and Prose, with an
+    Introduction by PROFESSOR HALES. Vol. II: Drama. 7th edition.
+
+THE AGE OF MILTON (1632-1660). By the REV. J. H. B. MASTERMAN, M.A.,
+    with an Introduction, etc., by J. BASS MULLINGER, M.A. 8th
+    edition.
+
+THE AGE OF DRYDEN (1660-1700). By RICHARD GARNETT, C.B., LL.D. 8th
+    edition.
+
+THE AGE OF POPE (1700-1744). By JOHN DENNIS. 11th edition.
+
+THE AGE OF JOHNSON (1744-1798). By THOMAS SECCOMBE. 7th edition.
+
+THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH (1798-1832). By PROFESSOR C. H. HERFORD,
+    Litt.D. 12th edition.
+
+THE AGE OF TENNYSON (1830-1870). By PROFESSOR HUGH WALKER, M.A. 9th
+    edition.
+
+
+OPINIONS OF THE PRESS
+
+
+THE AGE OF CHAUCER
+
+"This little monograph may lay fair claim to be regarded as complete,
+acute, stimulating, and scholarly."--_School World._
+
+"The book is thoroughly up-to-date, an important consideration in
+dealing with Middle English literature, and does not lose itself in too
+minute a consideration of those works which are only of philological and
+not of literary value. The accounts of the W. Midland alliterative
+poetry, of the development of prose, and the work of the poet Gower, are
+specially good. The treatment of Chaucer is thorough and
+scholarly."--_University Correspondent._
+
+"An admirable handbook, dealing in a lucid style and in a highly
+critical spirit with one of the most important periods in the history of
+English literature."--_Westminster Review._
+
+
+THE AGE OF DRYDEN
+
+"This scholarly little volume from the learned pen of Dr. Garnett....
+Within the limits of his space Dr. Garnett surveys the several
+departments of literature in this period with singular comprehensiveness,
+broad sympathy, and fine critical sagacity."--_Times._
+
+"The series which Professor Hales is editing aims at being that very
+difficult and important something between the text-book for schools and
+the gracefully allusive literary essay. Dr. Garnett has done his part of
+the work admirably. Most readable is his book, written with a fine sense
+of proportion, and containing many independent judgements, yet even, so
+far as minor names and dates and facts are concerned, complete enough
+for all save a searcher after minutiae."--_Bookman._
+
+"Though planned on the scale of the manual, this book is actually the
+first attempt worth naming to grasp in one separate review the
+literature of the last forty years of the seventeenth century, a time
+which, as Dr. Garnett well says, 'with all its defects, had a faculty
+for producing masterpieces.' Dr. Garnett's name is a warrant for his
+acquaintance not only with the masterpieces but with much besides, and
+with more than all that need be named in the kind of survey he
+undertakes."--_Manchester Guardian._
+
+
+THE AGE OF POPE
+
+"A 'handbook' is scarcely a fair description of so readable and
+companionable a volume, which aims not only at giving accurate
+information, but at directing the reader's steps 'through a country
+exhaustless in variety and interest.'"--_Spectator._
+
+"The biographical portion of Mr. Dennis's book is really admirable. The
+accuracy of the details and the knowledge exhibited by the author of the
+social and political life of the period show how thoroughly he has
+mastered his subject."--_Westminster Review._
+
+"Mr. Dennis writes freely and simply, and with a thorough knowledge of
+the period with which he deals, and goes straight to the point without
+revelling in circumambient fancies. The result of this is that in 250
+pages of good print we have as concise a history of Queen Anne
+literature as we could wish."--_Cambridge Review._
+
+"An excellent little volume."--_Athenaeum._
+
+
+THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE
+
+"Both volumes are excellently done, with knowledge, judgement, and a
+pleasant touch of vivacity. It is no easy matter to make a text-book
+both informing and readable; but here the feat is accomplished. I have
+read 'The Age of Shakespeare' with unflagging interest and pleasure....
+Everywhere one has the restful sensation of dealing with men of
+competent scholarship and sound critical instinct. Especially valuable,
+to my thinking, is the chronological table of the chief publications of
+each year from 1579 to 1630."--Mr. William Archer in the _Morning
+Leader_.
+
+"These two volumes are, in short, a notable accession to the useful
+series to which they belong, and they constitute a luminous aid to the
+interpretation alike of the scope and quality of the literary activity
+which has rendered the 'Age of Shakespeare' classic in the annals of
+English literature."--_Standard._
+
+"The book is a well-informed and well-connected and intelligent
+exposition of its subject. It is more than a mere handbook. It is a
+_history_, though on a small scale."--_Journal of Education._
+
+
+THE AGE OF MILTON
+
+"A very readable and serviceable manual of English literature during the
+central years of the seventeenth century."--_Glasgow Herald._
+
+"Mr. Masterman has written a book which combines the preciseness of a
+text-book with the fullness of thought of a monograph. Indeed, this
+compact little work will be studied with as much earnestness by the
+student as it will be read with pleasure by the lover of _belles
+lettres_.... We lay down the book delighted with what we have
+read."--_Birmingham Daily Gazette._
+
+"A work which reflects the utmost credit on its author ... luminous and
+at the same time impartial."--_Westminster Review._
+
+"This excellent epitome ... very happily indicates the golden afterglow
+of the Elizabethan sun."--_Daily Chronicle._
+
+
+THE AGE OF JOHNSON
+
+"The uniform excellence of Mr. Seccombe's manual of English literary
+history from 1748 to 1798 affords scarcely any opening for detailed
+criticism. Little can be said, except that everything is just as it
+ought to be: the arrangement perfect, the length of the notices justly
+proportioned, the literary judgements sound and illuminating; while the
+main purpose of conveying information is kept so steadily in view that,
+while the book is worthy of a place in the library, the student could
+desire no better guide for an examination."--_Bookman._
+
+"He has knowledge, he is eminently careful, and, best of all in a
+handbook-maker of this kind, he is judicial. We like Mr. Seccombe's
+arrangement. There is a capital introduction, solid and grave rather
+than brilliant, on which the student may stand in confidence before he
+dives off into the stream of his tutor's survey. Briefly, we have here a
+thorough, almost encyclopaedic, review of a great literary
+period--stimulating to the younger student, and to his elder refreshing
+by its perception."--_Outlook._
+
+"This book is one of the best of its kind, and we heartily recommend it
+to our readers."--_Journal of Education._
+
+"The young student could not read a better book to get a comprehensive
+and yet detailed account of the literary history of the latter half of
+the eighteenth century."--_Morning Post._
+
+
+THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH
+
+"It is an admirable little work all the way through and one which the
+ripest students of the period may read with interest and
+profit."--_Guardian._
+
+"The desiderated text-book of the period 1798 to 1830 A.D. is no longer
+to seek. More than that, it has been written by the one Englishman most
+competent to deal with it. Whatever Professor Herford does he does well;
+but he has given us nothing at once so good and so helpful as this
+book."--_University Correspondent._
+
+"The introductory essay on Romanticism in our literature is an admirable
+piece of work, full of suggestive thought, but Professor Herford is at
+his best--and a very fine best it is--in his brief summaries of the
+lives and works of individual writers. His Cobbett, his Lamb, and
+others that might be instanced, are veritable gems of biographical and
+critical compression presented with true literary finish."--_Literary
+World._
+
+"A book which is remarkable for freshness and distinction of style,
+philosophic grasp of first principles, and critical insight.... When we
+add that the book is also conspicuous for delicacy of literary
+appreciation and ripe judgement, both of men and movements, we have said
+enough to show that we consider its claims are unusual."--_Speaker._
+
+
+THE AGE OF TENNYSON
+
+"A capital little handbook of modern English literature."--_Times._
+
+"An instructive and readable manual ... an admirable first text-book on
+the subject."--_Scotsman._
+
+"Professor Walker has done his allotted task with singular skill,
+wonderful judiciousness, critical insight, adequate knowledge and
+mastery of facts, keen discernment of qualities and effectiveness of
+grouping.... We have read no review of the whole of the Tennysonian age
+so genuinely fresh in matter, method, style, critical canons, and
+selectedness of phrase. As a small book on a great subject, it is a
+special treasure."--_Educational News._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+UNIFORM WITH THE HANDBOOKS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
+
+_Fourth Edition Enlarged. 725 pages. Small Crown 8vo. 6s. net._
+
+INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE
+
+BY
+
+HENRY S. PANCOAST
+
+"Seems to me to fulfil better, on the whole, than any other
+'Introduction' known to me, the real requirements of such a book as
+distinguished from a 'Sketch' or a 'Summary.' It rightly does not
+attempt to be cyclopaedic, but isolates a number of figures of
+first-rate importance, and deals with these in a very attractive way.
+The directions for reading are also excellent."--Professor C. H.
+HERFORD, Litt.D.
+
+LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
+YORK HOUSE, PORTUGAL STREET, W.C.
+
+
+LITERATURE OF THE AGE OF POPE.
+
+PUBLISHED BY
+
+G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
+
+=ADDISON'S= WORKS. With the Notes of Bishop Hurd, a short Memoir,
+    and a Portrait of Addison after G. Kneller, and 8 Plates of
+    Medals and Coins. Edited by H. G. Bohn. 6 vols. Small post 8vo.
+    3_s._ 6_d._ each.                        [_Bohn's Standard Library._
+
+    This is the most complete edition of Addison's Works ever
+    issued. It contains much new matter, and upwards of 100 Letters
+    not before published. A very full Index (108 pages) is appended
+    to the 6th vol.
+
+Vol. I.--Plays--Poems--Poemata--Dialogues on Medals--Remarks on Italy.
+
+    II.--Tatler and Spectator.
+
+   III.--Spectator.                                     [_Out of print._
+
+    IV.--Spectator--Guardian--Lover--State of the War--Trial of Count
+         Tariff--Whig Examiner--Freeholder.
+
+     V.--Freeholder--Christian Religion--Drummer, or Haunted
+         House--Various short Pieces hitherto unpublished--Letters.
+
+    VI.--Letters--Poems--Translations--Official Documents--Addisoniana.
+
+THE MISCELLANEOUS WORKS OF ADDISON. Edited by the late A.
+    Guthkelch, M.A. 2 vols. Vol. I, Poems and Plays. Vol. II,
+    Prose. Large Post 8vo, 10_s._ 6_d._ net each.
+
+=BERKELEY'S= WORKS. Edited by George Sampson. With a Biographical
+    Introduction by the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, M.P. 3 vols. Small
+    post 8vo. 6_s._ each.               [_Bohn's Philosophical Library._
+
+=BUTLER'S= ANALOGY OF RELIGION, Natural and Revealed, to the
+    Constitution and Course of Nature; together with Two
+    Dissertations on Personal Identity and on the Nature of Virtue,
+    and Fifteen Sermons. Edited, with Analytical Introductions,
+    Explanatory Notes, a short Memoir, and a Portrait. Small post
+    8vo. 6_s._                               [_Bohn's Standard Library._
+
+=DEFOE'S= NOVELS and MISCELLANEOUS WORKS. With Prefaces and Notes,
+    including those attributed to Sir W. Scott. 7 vols. Small post
+    8vo. 6_s._ each.                         [_Bohn's Standard Library._
+
+Vol. I.--Life, Adventures and Piracies of Capt. Singleton, and Life of
+         Colonel Jack. With Portrait of Defoe.          [_Out of print._
+
+    II.--Memoirs of a Cavalier, Memoirs of Captain Carleton, Dickory
+         Cronke, &c.
+
+   III.--Life of Moll Flanders, and the History of the Devil.
+                                                        [_Out of print._
+
+    IV.--Roxana, or the Fortunate Mistress; and Life of Mrs. Christian
+         Davies.                                        [_Out of print._
+
+     V.--History of the Great Plague of London, 1665 (to which is added
+         the Fire of London, 1666, by an anonymous writer)--The Storm
+         (1703)--and the True-born Englishman.          [_Out of print._
+
+    VI.--Life and Adventures of Duncan Campbell--New Voyage round the
+         World, and Tracts relating to the Hanoverian Accession.
+
+   VII.--Robinson Crusoe. With a Short Biographical Account of Defoe.
+
+=MONTAGU=, THE LETTERS AND WORKS OF LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU.
+    Edited by her great-grandson, Lord Wharncliffe, with Additions
+    and Corrections derived from Original Manuscripts, Illustrative
+    Notes, and a Memoir by W. Moy Thomas. New edition, revised,
+    with 5 Portraits. 2 vols. Small post 8vo. 6_s._ each.
+                                                 [_Vol. I out of print._
+                                             [_Bohn's Standard Library._
+
+=PARNELL'S= POETICAL WORKS. Edited, with Memoir, by G. A. Aitken.
+    Fcap. 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._ net.                       [_Aldine Edition._
+
+=POPE'S= POETICAL WORKS. Edited by G. R. Dennis, with Memoir by John
+    Dennis. 3 vols. Fcap. 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._ net each.
+                                                      [_Aldine Edition._
+
+---- HOMER'S ILIAD. With Introduction and Notes by the Rev. J. S.
+    Watson, M.A. Illustrated by the entire Series of Flaxman's
+    Designs. Small post 8vo. 6_s._
+
+---- HOMER'S ODYSSEY. With Introduction and Notes by the Rev. J. S.
+    Watson, M.A. With the entire Series of Flaxman's Designs. Small
+    post 8vo. 6_s._
+
+---- LIFE OF POPE, including many of his Letters. By Robert
+    Carruthers. With numerous Illustrations. Small post 8vo. 6_s._
+
+=PRIOR'S= POETICAL WORKS. Edited, with Memoir, by Reginald Brimley
+    Johnson. 2 vols. Fcap. 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._ net each.
+                                                      [_Aldine Edition._
+
+=SWIFT'S= PROSE WORKS. Edited by Temple Scott. With a Biographical
+    Introduction by the Right Hon. W. E. H. Lecky, M.P., and a
+    Bibliography by the Editor. With Portraits and other
+    Illustrations. 12 vols. Small post 8vo. 6_s._ each.
+                                             [_Bohn's Standard Library._
+
+   Vol. I.--Edited by Temple Scott. With a Biographical Introduction by
+            the Right Hon. W. E. H. Lecky, M.P. Containing:--A Tale of a
+            Tub, The Battle of the Books, and other early works. With
+            _Portrait_ and Facsimiles.
+
+       II.--The Journal to Stella. Edited by Frederick Ryland, M.A. With
+            _2 Portraits of Stella_, and a Facsimile of one of the
+            Letters.
+
+III. & IV.--Writings on Religion and the Church. Edited by Temple Scott.
+            With Portraits and Facsimiles of title-pages.
+
+        V.--Historical and Political Tracts (English). Edited by Temple
+            Scott. With Portrait and Facsimiles of title-pages.
+
+       VI.--The Drapier's Letters. Edited by Temple Scott. With
+            Portrait, reproduction of Wood's Coinage, and Facsimiles of
+            title-pages.
+
+      VII.--Historical and Political Tracts (Irish). Edited by Temple
+            Scott. With Portrait and Facsimiles of title-pages.
+
+     VIII.--Gulliver's Travels. Edited by G. Ravenscroft Dennis. With
+            the original Portrait and Maps.
+
+       IX.--Contributions to the 'Examiner,' 'Tatler,' 'Spectator,' etc.
+            Edited by Temple Scott.
+
+        X.--Historical Writings. Edited by Temple Scott. With Portrait.
+
+       XI.--Literary Essays. Edited by Temple Scott. With Portrait.
+
+      XII.--Index and Bibliography.
+
+POEMS. Edited by W. Ernst Browning. 2 vols. 6_s._
+
+=SWIFT'S= POETICAL WORKS. Edited, with Memoir, by the Rev. John
+    Mitford, M.A. Fcap. 8vo. 3 vols. 3_s._ 6_d._ net each.
+                                 [_Aldine Edition. Vol. I out of print._
+
+LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
+YORK HOUSE, PORTUGAL STREET, KINGSWAY, W.C.
+
+
+PRINTED BY
+
+THE LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS, LIMITED
+
+LONDON AND NORWICH
+
+
+TRANSCRIBERS' NOTES
+
+General: Corrections to punctuation have not been individually noted.
+
+General: Bold text in the original is marked with ==. Italic text is
+marked with __
+
+Pages 57, 159: Variable hyphenation of death-bed as in the original.
+
+Pages 222, 232, 257: Variable hyphenation of Free(-)thinking as in the
+original.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Age of Pope, by John Dennis
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Age of Pope, by John Dennis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Age of Pope
+       (1700-1744)
+
+Author: John Dennis
+
+Release Date: November 7, 2009 [EBook #30421]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AGE OF POPE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Brownfox and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team at https://www.pgdp.net
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+
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+
+
+HANDBOOKS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
+
+EDITED BY PROFESSOR HALES.
+
+_Crown 8vo, 5s. net each._
+
+
+THE AGE OF ALFRED (664-1154). By F. J. SNELL, M.A.
+
+THE AGE OF CHAUCER (1346-1400). By F. J. SNELL, M.A. With an
+    Introduction by Professor HALES. _3rd Edition, revised._
+
+THE AGE OF TRANSITION (1400-1580). By F. J. SNELL, M.A. 2 vols. Vol. I.
+    The Poets. Vol. II. The Dramatists and Prose Writers. With an
+    Introduction by Professor HALES. _3rd Edition._
+
+THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE (1579-1631). By THOMAS SECCOMBE and J. W. ALLEN.
+    With an Introduction by Professor HALES. 2 vols. Vol. I. Poetry and
+    Prose. Vol. II. The Drama. _8th Edition, revised._
+
+THE AGE OF MILTON (1632-1660). By the Rev. J. H. B. MASTERMAN, M.A. With
+    Introduction, etc., by J. BASS MULLINGER, M.A. _8th Edition,
+    revised._
+
+THE AGE OF DRYDEN (1660-1700). By R. GARNETT, C.B., LL.D. _8th Edition._
+
+THE AGE OF POPE (1700-1748). By JOHN DENNIS. _11th Edition._
+
+THE AGE OF JOHNSON (1748-1798). By THOMAS SECCOMBE. _7th Edition,
+    revised._
+
+THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH (1698-1832) By Professor C. H. HERFORD, Litt.D.
+    _12th Edition._
+
+THE AGE OF TENNYSON (1830-1870). By Professor HUGH WALKER. _9th
+    Edition._
+
+LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
+
+
+
+
+HANDBOOKS
+
+OF
+
+ENGLISH LITERATURE
+
+EDITED BY PROFESSOR HALES
+
+THE AGE OF POPE
+
+
+
+
+LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS LTD.
+
+PORTUGAL STREET, KINGSWAY, W.C.
+
+CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL & CO.
+
+NEW YORK: HARCOURT BRACE & CO.
+
+BOMBAY: A. H. WHEELER & CO.
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+AGE OF POPE
+
+(1700-1744)
+
+BY
+
+JOHN DENNIS
+
+AUTHOR OF "STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE" ETC.
+
+_ELEVENTH EDITION_
+
+[Illustration]
+
+LONDON
+G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
+1921
+
+
+
+
+First Published, 1894.
+
+Reprinted, 1896, 1899, 1901, 1906, 1908, 1909,
+           1913, 1917, 1918, 1921.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The _Age of Pope_ is designed to form one of a series of Handbooks,
+edited by Professor Hales, which it is hoped will be of service to
+students who love literature for its own sake, instead of regarding it
+merely as a branch of knowledge required by examiners. The period
+covered by this volume, which has had the great advantage of Professor
+Hales's personal care and revision, may be described roughly as lying
+between 1700, the year in which Dryden died, and 1744, the date of
+Pope's death.
+
+I believe that no work of the class will be of real value which gives
+what may be called literary statistics, and has nothing more to offer.
+Historical facts and figures have their uses, and are, indeed,
+indispensable; but it is possible to gain the most accurate knowledge of
+a literary period and to be totally unimpressed by the influences which
+a love of literature inspires. The first object of a guide is to give
+accurate information; his second and larger object is to direct the
+reader's steps through a country exhaustless in variety and interest. If
+once a passion be awakened for the study of our noble literature the
+student will learn to reject what is meretricious, and will turn
+instinctively to what is worthiest. In the pursuit he may leave his
+guide far behind him; but none the less will he be grateful to the
+pioneer who started him on his travels.
+
+If the _Age of Pope_ proves of help in this way the wishes of the writer
+will be satisfied. It has been my endeavour in all cases to acknowledge
+the debt I owe to the authors who have made this period their study; but
+it is possible that a familiar acquaintance with their writings may have
+led me occasionally to mistake the matter thus assimilated for original
+criticism. If, therefore--to quote the phrase of Pope's enemy and my
+namesake--I have sometimes borrowed another man's 'thunder,' the fault
+of having 'made a sinner of my memory' may prove the reader's gain, and
+will, I hope, be forgiven.
+
+J. D.
+
+HAMPSTEAD,
+_August, 1894_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+INTRODUCTION                                                          1
+
+
+                          PART I. THE POETS.
+
+CHAP.
+
+  I. ALEXANDER POPE                                                  27
+
+ II. MATTHEW PRIOR--JOHN GAY--EDWARD YOUNG--ROBERT BLAIR--JAMES
+     THOMSON                                                         65
+
+III. SIR SAMUEL GARTH--AMBROSE PHILIPS--JOHN PHILIPS--NICHOLAS
+     ROWE--AARON HILL--THOMAS PARNELL--THOMAS TICKELL--WILLIAM
+     SOMERVILLE--JOHN DYER--WILLIAM SHENSTONE--MARK AKENSIDE--DAVID
+     MALLET--SCOTTISH SONG-WRITERS                                   96
+
+
+                      PART II. THE PROSE WRITERS.
+
+ IV. JOSEPH ADDISON--SIR RICHARD STEELE                             125
+
+  V. JONATHAN SWIFT--JOHN ARBUTHNOT                                 151
+
+ VI. DANIEL DEFOE--JOHN DENNIS--COLLEY CIBBER--LADY MARY WORTLEY
+     MONTAGU--EARL OF CHESTERFIELD--LORD LYTTELTON--JOSEPH SPENCE   180
+
+VII. FRANCIS ATTERBURY--LORD SHAFTESBURY--BERNARD DE
+     MANDEVILLE--LORD BOLINGBROKE--GEORGE BERKELEY--WILLIAM
+     LAW--JOSEPH BUTLER--WILLIAM WARBURTON                          207
+
+INDEX OF MINOR POETS AND PROSE WRITERS                              242
+
+CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE                                                 249
+
+ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WRITERS                                        253
+
+INDEX                                                               255
+
+
+
+
+THE AGE OF POPE.
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+I.
+
+The death of John Dryden, on the first of May, 1700, closed a period of
+no small significance in the history of English literature. His faults
+were many, both as a man and as a poet, but he belongs to the race of
+the giants, and the impress of greatness is stamped upon his works. No
+student of Dryden can fail to mark the force and sweep of an intellect
+impatient of restraint. His 'long-resounding march' reminds us of a
+turbulent river that overflows its banks, and if order and perfection of
+art are sometimes wanting in his verse, there is never the lack of
+power. Unfortunately many of the best years of his life were devoted to
+a craft in which he was working against the grain. His dramas, with one
+or two noble exceptions, are comparative failures, and in them he too
+often
+
+    'Profaned the God-given strength, and marred the lofty line.'
+
+In two prominent respects his influence on his successors is of no
+slight significance. As a satirist Pope acknowledged the master he was
+unable to excel, and so did many of the eighteenth century versemen, who
+appear to have looked upon satire as the beginning and the end of
+poetry. Moreover Dryden may be regarded, without much exaggeration, as
+the father of modern prose. Nothing can be more lucid than his style,
+which is at once bright and strong, idiomatic and direct. He knows
+precisely what he has to say, and says it in the simplest words. It is
+the form and not the substance of Dryden's prose to which attention is
+drawn here. There is a splendour of imagery, a largeness of thought, and
+a grasp of language in the prose of Hooker, of Jeremy Taylor, and of
+Milton which is beyond the reach of Dryden, but he has the merit of
+using a simple form of English free from prolonged periods and classical
+constructions, and fitted therefore for common use. The wealthy baggage
+of the prose Elizabethans and their immediate successors was too
+cumbersome for ordinary travel; Dryden's riches are less massive, but
+they can be easily carried, and are always ready for service.
+
+In these respects he is the literary herald of a century which, in the
+earlier half at least, is remarkable in the use it makes of our mother
+tongue for the exercise of common sense. The Revolution of 1688 produced
+a change in English politics scarcely more remarkable than the change
+that took place a little later in English literature and is to be seen
+in the poets and wits who are known familiarly as the Queen Anne men. It
+will be obvious to the most superficial student that the gulf which
+separates the literary period, closing with the death of Milton in 1674,
+from the first half of the eighteenth century, is infinitely wider than
+that which divides us from the splendid band of poets and prose writers
+who made the first twenty years of the present century so famous. There
+is, for example, scarcely more than fifty years between the publication
+of Herrick's _Hesperides_ and of Addison's _Campaign_, between the _Holy
+Living_ of Taylor and the _Tatler_ of Steele, and less than fifty years
+between _Samson Agonistes_, which Bishop Atterbury asked Pope to polish,
+and the poems of Prior. Yet in that short space not only is the form of
+verse changed but also the spirit.
+
+Speaking broadly, and allowing for exceptions, the literary merits of
+the Queen Anne time are due to invention, fancy, and wit, to a genius
+for satire exhibited in verse and prose, to a regard for correctness of
+form and to the sensitive avoidance of extremes. The poets of the period
+are for the most part without enthusiasm, without passion, and without
+the 'fine madness' which, as Drayton says, should possess a poet's
+brain. Wit takes precedence of imagination, nature is concealed by
+artifice, and the delight afforded by these writers is not due to
+imaginative sensibility. Not even in the consummate genius of Pope is
+there aught of the magical charm which fascinates us in a Wordsworth and
+a Keats, in a Coleridge and a Shelley. The prose of the age, masterly
+though it be, stands also on a comparatively low level. There is much in
+it to attract, but little to inspire.
+
+The difference between the Elizabethan and Jacobean authors, and the
+authors of the Queen Anne period cannot be accounted for by any single
+cause. The student will observe that while the inspiration is less, the
+technical skill is greater. There are passages in Addison which no
+seventeenth century author could have written; there are couplets in
+Pope beyond the reach of Cowley, and that even Dryden could not rival.
+In these respects the eighteenth century was indebted to the growing
+influence of French literature, to which the taste of Charles II. had in
+some degree contributed. One notable expression of this taste may be
+seen in the tragedies in rhyme that were for a time in vogue, of which
+the plots were borrowed from French romances. These colossal fictions,
+stupendous in length and heroic in style, delighted the young English
+ladies of the seventeenth century, and were not out of favour in the
+eighteenth, for Pope gave a copy of the _Grand Cyrus_ to Martha Blount.
+
+The return, as in Addison's _Cato_, to the classical unities, so
+faithfully preserved in the French drama, was another indication of an
+influence from which our literature has never been wholly free. That
+importations so alien to the spirit of English poetry should tend to the
+degeneration of the national drama was inevitable. For a time, however,
+the study of French models, both in the drama and in other departments
+of literature, may have been productive of benefit. Frenchmen knew
+before we did, how to say what they wanted to say in a lucid style.
+Dryden, who was open to every kind of influence, bad as well as good,
+caught a little of their fine tact and consummate workmanship without
+lessening his own originality; so also did Pope, who, if he was
+considerably indebted to Boileau, infinitely excelled him. That, in M.
+Taine's judgment, would have been no great difficulty. 'In Boileau,' he
+writes, 'there are, as a rule, two kinds of verse, as was said by a man
+of wit (M. Guillaume Guizot); most of which seem to be those of a sharp
+school-boy in the third class; the rest those of a good school-boy in
+the upper division.' And Mr. Swinburne, who holds a similar opinion of
+the famous French critic's merit, observes, that while Pope is the
+finest, Boileau is 'the dullest craftsman of their age and school.'[1]
+
+With the author of the _Lutrin_ Addison, unlike Pope, was personally
+acquainted. Boileau praised his Latin verses, and although his range was
+limited, like that of all critics lacking imagination, Addison, then a
+comparatively youthful scholar, was no doubt flattered by his
+compliments and learnt some lessons in his school. Prior, who acquired a
+mastery of the language, was also sensitive to French influence, and
+shows how it affected him by irony and satire. It would be difficult to
+estimate with any measure of accuracy the effect of French literature on
+the Queen Anne authors. There is no question that they were considerably
+attracted by it, but its sway was, I think, never strong enough to
+produce mere imitative art. While the most illustrious of these men
+acknowledged some measure of fealty to our 'sweet enemy France,' they
+were not enslaved by her, and French literature was but one of several
+influences which affected the literary character of the age. If
+Englishmen owed a debt to France the obligation was reciprocal. Voltaire
+affords a prominent illustration of the power wielded by our literature.
+He imitated Addison, he imitated, or caught suggestions from Swift, he
+borrowed largely from Vanbrugh, and although, in his judgment of English
+authors, he made many critical blunders, they were due to a want of
+taste rather than to a want of knowledge.
+
+A striking contrast will be seen between the position of literary men in
+the reign of Queen Anne and under her Hanoverian successors. Literature
+was not thriving in the healthiest of ways in the earlier period, but
+from the commercial point of view it was singularly prosperous. Through
+its means men like Addison and Prior rose to some of the highest offices
+in the service of their country. Tickell became Under-Secretary of
+State. Steele held three or four official posts, and if he did not
+prosper like some men of less mark, had no one but himself to blame.
+Rowe, the author of the _Fair Penitent_, was for three years of Anne's
+reign Under-Secretary, and John Hughes, the friend of Addison, who is
+poet enough to have had his story told by Johnson, had 'a situation of
+great profit' as Secretary to the Commissions of the Peace. Prizes of
+greater or less value fell to some men whose abilities were not more
+than respectable, but under Walpole and the monarch whom he served
+literature was disregarded, and the Minister was content to make use of
+hireling writers for whatever dirty work he required; spending in this
+way, it is said, £50,000 in ten years.
+
+It was far better in the long run for men of letters to be free from the
+servility of patronage, but there was a wearisome time, as Johnson and
+Goldsmith knew to their cost, during which authors lost their freedom in
+another way, and became the slaves of the booksellers. It is pleasant to
+observe that the last noteworthy act of patronage in the century was one
+that did honour to the patron without lessening the dignity and
+independence of the recipient. Literature owes much to the noblest of
+political philosophers for discovering and fostering the genius of one
+of the most original of English poets, and every reader of Crabbe will
+do honour to the generous friendship of Edmund Burke.
+
+
+II.
+
+The lowest stage in our national history was reached in the Restoration
+period. The idealists, who had aimed at marks it was not given to man to
+reach, were superseded by men with no ideal, whether in politics or
+religion. The extreme rigidity in morals enjoined by State authority in
+Cromwell's days, when theological pedantry discovered sin in what had
+hitherto been regarded as innocent, led, among the unsaintly mass of
+the people, to a hypocrisy even more corrupting than open vice, and the
+advent of the most publicly dissolute of English kings opened the
+floodgates of iniquity. The unbridled vice of the time is displayed in
+the Restoration dramatists, in the Grammont memoirs, in the diary of
+Pepys, and also in that of the admirable John Evelyn, 'faithful among
+the faithless.' Charles II. was considered good-natured because his
+manners, unlike those of his father, were sociable, and unrestrained by
+Court etiquette. Londoners liked a monarch who fed ducks in St. James's
+Park before breakfast; but an easy temper did not prevent the king from
+sanctioning the most unjust and cruel laws, and it allowed him to sell
+Dunkirk and basely to accept a pension from France. The corruption of
+the age pervaded politics as well as society, and the self-sacrificing
+spirit which is the salt of a nation's life seemed for the time extinct
+among public men.
+
+When Dutch men-of-war appeared at the Nore the confusion was great, but
+there were few resources and few signs of energy in the men to whom the
+people looked for guidance. A man conversant with affairs expressed to
+Pepys his opinion that nothing could be done with 'a lazy Prince, no
+Council, no money, no reputation at home or abroad,' and Pepys also
+gives the damning statement which is in harmony with all we know of the
+king, that he 'took ten times more care and pains in making friends
+between my Lady Castlemaine and Mrs. Stewart, when they have fallen out,
+than ever he did to save his kingdom.'
+
+There was nothing in the brief reign of James, a reign for ever made
+infamous by the atrocious cruelty of Jeffreys, that calls for comment
+here, but the Revolution, despite the undoubted advantages it brought
+with it, among which must be mentioned the abolition of the censorship
+of the press, brought also an element of discord and of political
+degradation. The change was a good one for the country, but it caused a
+large number of influential men to renounce on oath opinions which they
+secretly held, and it led, as every reader of history knows, to an
+unparalleled amount of double-dealing on the part of statesmen, which
+began with the accession of William and Mary and did not end until the
+last hopes of the Jacobites were defeated in 1746. The loss of principle
+among statesmen, and the bitterness of faction, which seemed to increase
+in proportion as the patriotic spirit declined, had a baleful influence
+on the latter days of the seventeenth century and on the entire period
+covered by the age of Pope. The low tone of the age is to be seen in the
+almost universal corruption which prevailed, in the scandalous
+tergiversation of Bolingbroke, and in the contempt for political
+principle openly avowed by Walpole, who, as Mr. Lecky observes, 'was
+altogether incapable of appreciating as an element of political
+calculation the force which moral sentiments exercise upon mankind.'[2]
+
+The enthusiasm and strong passions of the first half of the seventeenth
+century, which had been crushed by the Restoration, were exchanged for a
+state of apathy that led to self-seeking in politics and to scepticism
+in religion. There was a strong profession of morality in words, but in
+conduct the most open immorality prevailed. Virtue was commended in the
+bulk of the churches, while Christianity, which gives a new life and aim
+to virtue, was practically ignored, and the principles of the Deists,
+whose opinions occupied much attention at the time, were scarcely more
+alien to the Christian revelation than the views often advocated in the
+national pulpits. The religion of Christ seems to have been regarded as
+little more than a useful kind of cement which held society together.
+The good sense advocated so constantly by Pope in poetry was also
+considered the principal requisite in the pulpit, and the careful
+avoidance of religious emotion in the earlier years of the century led
+to the fervid and too often ill-regulated enthusiasm that prevailed in
+the days of Whitefield and Wesley. At the same time there appears to
+have been no lack of religious controversy. 'The Church in danger' was a
+strong cry then, as it is still. The enormous excitement caused in 1709
+by Sacheverell's sermon in St. Paul's Cathedral advocating passive
+obedience, denouncing toleration, and aspersing the Revolution
+settlement, forms a striking chapter in the reign of Queen Anne.
+Extraordinary interest was also felt in the Bangorian controversy raised
+by Bishop Hoadly, who, in a sermon preached before the king (1717), took
+a latitudinarian view of episcopal authority, and objected to the entire
+system of the High Church party.
+
+Queen Caroline, whose keen intellect was allied to a coarseness which
+makes her a representative of the age, was considerably attracted by
+theological discussion. She obtained a bishopric for Berkeley,
+recommended Walpole to read Butler's _Analogy_, which was at one time
+her daily companion at the breakfast-table, and made the preferment of
+its author one of her last requests to the king. She liked well to
+reason with Dr. Samuel Clarke, 'of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and
+Fate,' and wished to make him Archbishop of Canterbury, but was told
+that he was not sufficiently orthodox. Theology was not disregarded
+under the first and second Georges; it was only religion that had fallen
+into disrepute. The law itself was calculated to excite contempt for the
+most solemn of religious services. 'I was early,' Swift writes to
+Stella, 'with the Secretary (Bolingbroke), but he was gone to his
+devotions and to receive the sacrament. Several rakes did the same. It
+was not for piety, but for employment, according to Act of Parliament.'
+
+A glance at some additional features in the social condition of the age
+will enable us to understand better the character of its literature.
+
+
+III.
+
+It is a platitude to say that authors are as much affected as other men
+by the atmosphere which they breathe. Now and then a consummate man of
+genius seems to stand so much above his age as for all high purposes of
+art to be untouched by it. Like Milton as a poet, though not as a prose
+writer, his 'soul is like a star and dwells apart;' but in general,
+imaginative writers, are intensely affected by the society from which
+they draw many of their intellectual resources. In the so-called
+'Augustan age'[3] this influence would have been felt more strongly than
+in ours, since the range of men of letters was generally restricted to
+what was called the Town. They wrote for the critics in the
+coffee-houses, for the noblemen from whom they expected patronage, and
+for the political party they were pledged to support.
+
+England during the first half of the eighteenth century was in many
+respects uncivilized. London was at that time separated from the country
+by roads that were often impassable and always dangerous. Travellers had
+to protect themselves as they best could from the attacks of highwaymen,
+who infested every thoroughfare leading from the metropolis, while the
+narrow area of the city was guarded by watchmen scarcely better fitted
+for its protection than Dogberry and Verges. Readers of the _Spectator_
+will remember how when Sir Roger de Coverley went to the play, his
+servants 'provided themselves with good oaken plants' to protect their
+master from the Mohocks, a set of dissolute young men, who, for sheer
+amusement, inflicted the most terrible punishments on their victims.
+Swift tells Stella how he came home early from his walk in the Park to
+avoid 'a race of rakes that play the devil about this town every night,
+and slit people's noses,' and he adds, as if party were at the root of
+every mischief in the country, that they were all Whigs. 'Who has not
+trembled at the Mohock's name?' is Gay's exclamation in his _Trivia_;
+and in that curious poem he also warns the citizens not to venture
+across Lincoln's Inn Fields in the evening. Colley Cibber's brazen-faced
+daughter, Mrs. Charke, in the _Narrative_ of her life, describes also
+with sufficient precision the dangers of London after dark.
+
+The infliction of personal injury was not confined to the desperadoes of
+the streets. Men of letters were in danger of chastisement from the
+poets or politicians whom they criticised or vilified. De Foe often
+mentions attempts upon his person. Pope, too, was threatened with a rod
+by Ambrose Philips, which was hung up for his chastisement in Button's
+Coffee-house; and at a later period, when his satires had stirred up a
+nest of hornets, the poet was in the habit of carrying pistols, and
+taking a large dog for his companion when walking out at Twickenham.
+
+Weddings within the liberties of the Fleet by sham clergymen, or
+clergymen confined for debt, were the source of numberless evils. Every
+kind of deception was practised, and the victims once in the clutches of
+their reverend captors had to pay heavily for the illegal ceremony.
+Ladies were trepanned into matrimony, and Smollett in his _History_
+observes, that the Fleet parsons encouraged every kind of villainy. It
+is astonishing that so great an evil in the heart of London should have
+been allowed to exist so long, and it was not until the Marriage Act of
+Lord Hardwicke in 1753, which required the publication of banns, that
+the Fleet marriages ceased. On the day before the Act came into
+operation three hundred marriages are said to have taken place.[4]
+
+Marriages of a more lawful kind were generally conducted on business
+principles. Young women were expected to accept the husband selected for
+them by their parents or guardians, and the main object considered was
+to gain a good settlement. It was for this that Mary Granville, who is
+better known as Mrs. Delany, was sacrificed at seventeen to a gouty old
+man of sixty, and when he died she was expected to marry again with the
+same object in view. Mrs. Delany detested, with good cause, the
+commercial estimate of matrimony. Writing, in 1739, to Lady
+Throckmorton, she says, 'Miss Campbell is to be married to-morrow to my
+Lord Bruce. Her father can give her no fortune; she is very pretty,
+modest, well-behaved, and just eighteen, has two thousand a year
+jointure, and four hundred pin-money; _they say_ he is cross, covetous,
+and threescore years old, and this unsuitable match is the _admiration
+of the old and the envy of the young_! For my part I _pity her_, for if
+she has any notion of social pleasures that arise from true esteem and
+sensible conversation, how miserable must she be.'[5]
+
+Girls dowered with beauty or with fortune were not always suffered to
+marry in this humdrum fashion. Abduction was by no means an imaginary
+peril. Mrs. Delany tells the story of a lady in Ireland, from whom she
+received the relation, who was entrapped in her uncle's house, carried
+off by four men in masks, and treated in the most brutal manner. And in
+1711 the Duke of Newcastle, having become acquainted with a design for
+carrying off his daughter by force, was compelled to ask for a guard of
+dragoons.
+
+Duelling, against which Steele, De Foe, and Fielding inveighed with
+courage and good sense, was a danger to which every gentleman was liable
+who wore a sword. Bullies were ready to provoke a quarrel, the slightest
+cause of offence was magnified into an affair of honour, and the lives
+of several of the most distinguished men of the century were imperilled
+in this way. 'A gentleman,' Lord Chesterfield writes, 'is every man who,
+with a tolerable suit of clothes, a sword by his side, and a watch and
+snuffbox in his pockets, asserts himself to be a gentleman, swears with
+energy that he will be treated as such, and that he will cut the throat
+of any man who presumes to say the contrary.'
+
+The foolish and evil custom died out slowly in this kingdom. Even a
+great moralist like Dr. Johnson had something to say in its defence, and
+Sir Walter Scott, who might well have laughed to scorn any imputation of
+cowardice, was prepared to accept a challenge in his old age for a
+statement he had made in his _Life of Napoleon_.
+
+Ladies had a different but equally doubtful mode of asserting their
+gentility. On one occasion the Duchess of Marlborough called on a lawyer
+without leaving her name. 'I could not make out who she was,' said the
+clerk afterwards, 'but she swore so dreadfully that she must be a lady
+of quality.'
+
+There was a fashion which our wits followed at this time that was not
+of English growth, namely, the tone of gallantry in which they addressed
+ladies, no matter whether single or married. Their compliments seemed
+like downright love-making, and that frequently of a coarse kind, but
+such expressions meant nothing, and were understood to be a mere
+exercise of skill. Pope used them in writing to Judith Cowper, whom he
+professes to worship as much as any female saint in heaven; and in much
+ampler measure when addressing Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, but neither
+lady would have taken this amatory politeness seriously. Thus he writes
+after an evening spent in Lady Mary's society: 'Books have lost their
+effect upon me; and I was convinced since I saw you, that there is
+something more powerful than philosophy, and since I heard you, that
+there is one alive wiser than all the sages.' He tells her that he hates
+all other women for her sake; that none but her guardian angels can have
+her more constantly in mind; and that the sun has more reason to be
+proud of raising her spirits 'than of raising all the plants and
+ripening all the minerals in the earth.' He will fly to her in Italy at
+the least notice and 'from thence,' he adds, 'how far you might draw me
+and I might run after you, I no more know than the spouse in the song of
+Solomon.'
+
+This was the foible of an age in which women were addressed as though
+they were totally devoid of understanding; and Pope, as might have been
+expected, carried the folly to excess.
+
+Against another French custom Addison protests in the _Spectator_,
+namely, that of women of rank receiving gentlemen visitors in their
+bedrooms. He objects also to other foreign habits introduced by
+'travelled ladies,' and fears that the peace, however much to be
+desired, may cause the importation of a number of French fopperies. But
+the proneness to follow the lead of France in matters of fashion is a
+folly not confined to the belles and beaux of the last century.
+
+If a chivalric regard for women be an indication of high civilization,
+that sign is but faintly visible in the reigns of Anne and of the first
+Georges. Sir Richard Steele paid a noble tribute to Lady Elizabeth
+Hastings when he said that to know her was a liberal education, but his
+contemporaries usually treat women as pretty triflers, better fitted to
+amuse men than to elevate them. Young takes this view in his _Satires_:
+
+    'Ladies supreme among amusements reign;
+    By nature born to soothe and entertain.
+    Their prudence in a share of folly lies;
+    Why will they be so weak as to be wise?'
+
+and Chesterfield, writing to his son, treats women with similar
+contempt.... 'A man of sense,' he says, 'only trifles with them, plays
+with them, humours and flatters them as he does with a sprightly,
+forward child; but he neither consults them about, nor trusts them with,
+serious matters, though he often makes them believe that he does both,
+which is the thing in the world that they are proud of.... No flattery
+is either too high or too low for them. They will greedily swallow the
+highest and gratefully accept of the lowest.'
+
+Nearly twenty years passed, and then Chesterfield wrote in the same
+contemptuous way of women in a letter to his godson, a 'dear little boy'
+of ten.
+
+'In company every woman is every man's superior, and must be addressed
+with respect, nay, more, with flattery, and you need not fear making it
+too strong ... it will be greedily swallowed.'
+
+Even Addison, while trying to instruct the 'Fair Sex' as he likes to
+call them, apparently regarded its members as an inferior order of
+beings. He delights to dwell upon their foibles, on their dress, and on
+the thousand little artifices practised by the flirt and the coquette.
+Here is the view the Queen Anne moralist takes of the 'female world' he
+was so eager to improve:
+
+'I have often thought there has not been sufficient pains in finding out
+proper employments and diversions for the fair ones. Their amusements
+seem contrived for them, rather as they are women, than as they are
+reasonable creatures; and are more adapted to the sex than to the
+species. The toilet is their great scene of business, and the right
+adjustment of their hair the principal employment of their lives. The
+sorting of a suit of ribands is considered a very good morning's work;
+and if they make an excursion to a mercer's or a toy-shop, so great a
+fatigue makes them unfit for anything else all the day after. Their more
+serious occupations are sewing and embroidery, and their greatest
+drudgery the preparations of jellies and sweetmeats. This I say is the
+state of ordinary women; though I know there are multitudes of those
+that move in an exalted sphere of knowledge and virtue, that join all
+the beauties of the mind to the ornaments of dress, and inspire a kind
+of awe and respect as well as of love into their male beholders.'
+
+The qualification made at the end of this description does not greatly
+lessen the significance of the earlier portion, which is Addison's
+picture, as he is careful to tell us of 'ordinary women.' Much must be
+allowed for the exaggeration of a humourist, but the frivolity of women
+is a theme upon which Addison harps continually. Indeed, were it not for
+this weakness in the 'feminine world' half his vocation as a moralist in
+the _Spectator_ would be gone, and if the general estimate in his Essays
+of the women with whom he was acquainted be to any extent a correct one,
+the derogatory language used by men of letters, and especially by
+Swift, Prior, Pope, and Chesterfield may be almost forgiven.
+
+It was the aim of Addison and Steele to represent, and in some degree to
+caricature, the follies of fashionable life in the Town. That life had
+also its vices, which, if less unblushingly displayed than under the
+'merry Monarch,' were visible enough. 'In the eighteenth century,' says
+Victor Hugo, in his epigrammatic way, 'the wife bolts out her husband.
+She shuts herself up in Eden with Satan. Adam is left outside.'
+
+Drunkenness was a habit familiar to the fine gentlemen of the town and
+to men occupying the highest position in the State. Harley went more
+than once into the queen's presence in a half-intoxicated condition;
+Carteret when Secretary of State, if Horace Walpole may be credited, was
+never sober; Bolingbroke, who practised every vice, is said to have been
+a 'four-bottle man;' and Swift found it perilous to dine with Ministers
+on account of the wine which circulated at their tables. 'Prince
+Eugene,' he writes, 'dines with the Secretary to-day with about seven or
+eight general officers or foreign Ministers. They will be all drunk I am
+sure.' Pope's frail body could not tolerate excess, and he is said to
+have hastened his end by good living. His friend Fenton 'died of a great
+chair and two bottles of port a day.' Parnell, who seems to have been in
+many respects a man of high character, is said to have shortened his
+life by intemperance; and Gay, who was cossetted like a favourite lapdog
+by the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, died from indolence and good
+living.
+
+It may be questioned whether there is a single Wit of the age who did
+not love port too well, like Addison and Fenton, or suffer from
+'carnivoracity' like Arbuthnot. Every section of English society was
+infected with the 'devil drunkenness,' and the passion for gin created
+by the encouragement of home distilleries produced a state of crime,
+misery, and disease in London and in the country which excited public
+attention. 'Small as is the place,' writes Mr. Lecky, 'which this fact
+occupies in English history, it was probably, if we consider all the
+consequences that have flowed from it, the most momentous in that of the
+eighteenth century--incomparably more so than any event in the purely
+political or military annals of the country.'[6]
+
+The cruelty of the age is seen in a contempt for the feelings of others,
+in the brutal punishments inflicted, in the amusements then popular, and
+in a general contempt for human suffering. Public executions were so
+frequent that they were disregarded; and criminals of any note, like Dr.
+Dodd, were exhibited in their cells for the gaolers' benefit prior to
+execution; mad people in Bedlam, chained in their cells, also formed one
+of the sights of London. As late as 1735 men were pressed to death who
+refused to plead on a capital charge; and women were publicly flogged,
+and were also burnt at the stake by a law that was not repealed until
+1794. Of the heads on Temple Bar, daily exposed to Johnson's eyes in his
+beloved Fleet Street, we are reminded by an apposite quotation of
+Goldsmith; and Samuel Rogers, the banker-poet, who died as recently as
+1855, remembered having seen one there in his childhood. The public
+exhibition of offenders in the pillory was not calculated to refine the
+manners of the people. It afforded a cruel entertainment to the mob, who
+may be said to have baited these poor victims as they were accustomed to
+bait bulls and bears. Every kind of offensive missile was thrown at
+them, and sometimes the strokes proved deadly.
+
+Men who could thus torture a human being were not likely to abstain
+from cruelty to the lower animals. The poets indeed protested then, as
+poets had done before, and always have done since, against the unmanly
+treatment of the dumb fellow-creatures committed to our care, but their
+voices were little heeded, and even the Prince of Wales visited
+Hockley-in-the-Hole, in disguise, to witness the torturing of bulls.
+'The gladiatorian and other sanguinary sports,' says the author of the
+_Characteristics_, 'which we allow our people, discover sufficiently our
+national taste. And the baitings and slaughters of so many sorts of
+creatures, tame as well as wild, for diversion merely, may witness the
+extraordinary inclination we have for amphitheatrical spectacles.'[7]
+
+The majesty of the law was maintained by disembowelling traitors, by
+cutting off the ears, or branding the cheeks of political offenders, and
+by the penalties inflicted on Roman Catholics, and on Protestant
+dissenters. Men who deemed themselves honourable gained power through
+bribery and intrigue. It was through a king's mistress and a heavy bribe
+that Bolingbroke was enabled to return from exile; Chesterfield
+intrigued against Newcastle with the Duchess of Yarmouth; and clergymen
+eager for promotion had no scruple in paying court to women who had lost
+their virtue.
+
+Never, unless perhaps during the Civil War, was the spirit of party more
+rampant in the country. Patriotism was a virtue more talked about than
+felt, and in the cause of faction private characters were assailed and
+libels circulated through the press. Addison, who did more than any
+other writer to humanize his age, saw the evil of the time and struck a
+blow at it with his inimitable humour. The _Spectator_ discovers, on his
+journey to Sir Roger de Coverley's house, that the knight's Toryism
+grew with the miles that separated him from London:
+
+'In all our journey from London to his house we did not so much as bait
+at a Whig inn; or if by chance the coachman stopped at a wrong place,
+one of Sir Roger's servants would ride up to his master full speed, and
+whisper to him that the master of the house was against such an one in
+the last election. This often betrayed us into hard beds and bad cheer;
+for we were not so inquisitive about the inn as the innkeeper; and
+provided our landlord's principles were sound did not take any notice of
+the staleness of his provisions. This I found still the more
+inconvenient, because the better the host was, the worse generally were
+his accommodations; the fellow knowing very well that those who were his
+friends would take up with coarse diet and hard lodging. For these
+reasons, all the while I was upon the road, I dreaded entering into an
+house of anyone that Sir Roger had applauded for an honest man.'[8]
+
+Against the party zeal of female politicians Addison indulges frequently
+in humorous sallies. He assures them that it gives an ill-natured cast
+to the eye, and flushes the cheeks worse than brandy. Party rage, he
+says, is a male vice, and is altogether repugnant 'to the softness, the
+modesty, and those other endearing qualities which are natural to the
+fair sex.'
+
+'When I have seen a pretty mouth uttering calumnies and invectives, what
+would I not have given to have stopt it? how have I been troubled to see
+some of the finest features in the world grow pale and tremble with
+party rage. Camilla is one of the greatest beauties in the British
+nation, and yet values herself more upon being the virago of one party
+than upon being the toast of both. The dear creature about a week ago
+encountered the fierce and beautiful Penthesilea across a tea-table; but
+in the height of her anger, as her hand chanced to shake with the
+earnestness of the dispute, she scalded her fingers, and spilt a dish of
+tea upon her petticoat. Had not this accident broke off the debate,
+nobody knows where it would have ended.'
+
+The coffee-houses in which men aired their wit and discussed the news of
+the day were wholly dominated by party. 'A Whig,' says De Foe, 'will no
+more go to the Cocoa Tree or Ozinda's than a Tory will be seen at the
+coffee-house of St. James's.' Swift declared that the Whig and Tory
+animosity infected even the dogs and cats. It was inevitable that it
+should also infect literature. Books were seldom judged on their merits,
+the praise or blame being generally awarded according to the political
+principles of their authors. An impartial literary journal did not exist
+in the days when Addison 'gave his little senate laws' at Button's, and
+perhaps it does not exist now, but if critical injustice be done in our
+day it is rarely owing to political causes.
+
+One of the most prominent vices of the time was gambling, which was
+largely encouraged by the public lotteries, and practised by all classes
+of the people. This evil was exhibited on a national scale by the
+establishment of the South Sea Company, which exploded in 1720, after
+creating a madness for speculation never known before or since. Even men
+who like Sir Robert Walpole kept their heads, and saw that the bubble
+would soon burst, invested in stock. Pope had his share in the
+speculation, and might, had he 'realized' in time, have been the 'lord
+of thousands;' in the end, however, he was a gainer, though not to a
+large extent. His friend Gay was less fortunate. He won £20,000, kept
+the stock too long and was reduced to beggary. The South Sea Bubble and
+the Mississippi scheme of Law which burst in the same year and ruined
+tens of thousands of French families, afford illustrations on a gigantic
+scale of the prevailing passion for speculation and for gambling.
+
+'The Duke of Devonshire lost an estate at a game of basset. The fine
+intellect of Chesterfield was thoroughly enslaved by the vice. At Bath,
+which was then the centre of English fashion, it reigned supreme; and
+the physicians even recommended it to their patients as a form of
+distraction. In the green-rooms of the theatres, as Mrs. Bellamy assures
+us, thousands were often lost and won in a single night. Among
+fashionable ladies the passion was quite as strong as among men, and the
+professor of whist and quadrille became a regular attendant at their
+levees. Miss Pelham, the daughter of the prime minister, was one of the
+most notorious gamblers of her time, and Lady Cowper speaks in her
+_Diary_ of sittings at Court, of which the lowest stake was 200 guineas.
+The public lotteries contributed very powerfully to diffuse the taste
+for gambling among all classes.'[9]
+
+One of the most powerful exponents of the dark side of the century is
+Hogarth, who makes some of its worst features live before our eyes. So
+also do the novels of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett. Differing as
+their works do in character, they have the common merit of presenting in
+indelible lines a picture of the time in its social aspects. It may have
+been, as Stuart Mill asserts, an age of strong men, but it was an age of
+coarse vices, an age wanting in the refinements and graces of life; an
+age of cruel punishments, cruel sports, and of a political corruption
+extending through all the departments of the State.
+
+But it would be a narrow view of the age to dwell wholly on its gloomier
+features, which are always the easiest to detect. If the period under
+consideration had prominent vices, it had also distinguished merits.
+Under Queen Anne and her immediate successors, home-keeping Englishmen
+had more space to breathe in than they have now, and trade was not
+demoralized by excessive competition. No attempt was made to separate
+class from class, and population was not large enough to make the battle
+of life almost hopeless in the lowest section of the community. If there
+was less refinement than among ourselves, there was far less of nervous
+susceptibility, and the country was free from the half-educated class of
+men and women who know enough to make them dissatisfied, without
+attaining to the larger knowledge which yields wisdom and content. To
+say that the age was better than our own would be to deny a thousand
+signs of material and intellectual progress, but it had fewer dangers to
+contend with, and if there was far less of wealth in the country the
+people were probably more satisfied with their lot.[10]
+
+To glance at the century as a whole does not fall within my province,
+but I may be permitted to observe that in the course of it science and
+invention made rapid strides; that under the inspiring sway of Handel
+the power of music was felt as it was never felt before; that in the
+latter half of the period the Novel, destined to be one of the noblest
+fruits of our imaginative literature, attained a robust life in the
+hands of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett; and that, with Reynolds and
+Gainsborough, with Romney and Wilson, a glorious school of landscape and
+portrait painters arose, which is still the pride of England. It will
+be remembered, too, that many of the great charitable institutions which
+make our own age illustrious, had their birth in the last. The military
+genius of England was displayed in Marlborough and in Clive, her mercy
+in John Howard, her spirit of enterprise in Cook, her self-sacrifice in
+Wesley and Whitefield, her statesmanship in Walpole, in Chatham, and in
+William Pitt. In oratory as everyone knows, the eighteenth century was
+surpassingly great, and never before or since has the country produced a
+political philosopher of the calibre of Burke. What England reaped in
+literature during the period of which Pope has been selected as the most
+striking figure, it will be my endeavour to show in the course of these
+pages.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] M. Sainte-Beuve, the greatest of French critics, frankly
+acknowledges his indebtedness to Boileau, whom he styles Louis the
+Fourteenth's 'Contrôleur Général du Parnasse.' 'S'il m'est permis de
+parler pour moi-même,' he writes, 'Boileau est un des hommes qui m'ont
+le plus occupé depuis que je fais de la critique, et avec qui j'ai le
+plus vécu en idée.'--_Causeries du Lundi_, tome sixième, p. 495.
+
+[2] Lecky's _England_, vol. i. p. 373.
+
+[3] The epithet is used in the Preface to the First Edition of Waller's
+_Posthumous Poems_, which Mr. Gosse believes was written by Atterbury,
+and he considers that this is the original occurrence of the
+phrase.--_From Shakespeare to Pope_, p. 248.
+
+[4] Messrs. Besant and Rice's novel, _The Chaplain of the Fleet_, gives
+a vivid picture of the life led in the Fleet, and also of the period.
+
+[5] _Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Delany_, vol. ii. p. 55.
+
+[6] Lecky's _England_, vol. i. p. 479.
+
+[7] Shaftesbury's _Characteristics_, vol. i. p. 270.
+
+[8] _Spectator_, No. 126.
+
+[9] Lecky's _England_, vol. i. p. 522.
+
+[10] According to Hallam the thirty years which followed the Treaty of
+Utrecht 'was the most prosperous season that England had ever
+experienced.'--_Const. Hist._ ii. 464.
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+THE POETS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ALEXANDER POPE.
+
+
+It is not unreasonable to call the period we are considering 'the Age of
+Pope.' He is the representative poet of his century. Its literary merits
+and defects are alike conspicuous in his verse, and he stands
+immeasurably above the numerous versifiers who may be said to belong to
+his school. Savage Landor has observed that there is no such thing as a
+school of poetry, and this is true in the sense that the essence of this
+divine art cannot be transmitted, but the form of the art may be, and
+Pope's style of workmanship made it readily imitable by accomplished
+craftsmen. Although he affected to call poetry an idle trade he devoted
+his whole life to its pursuit, and there are few instances in literature
+in which genius and unwearied labour have been so successfully united.
+It is to Pope's credit, that, with everything against him in the race of
+life, he attained the goal for which he started in his youth. The means
+he employed to reach it were frequently perverse and discreditable, but
+the courage with which he overcame the obstacles in his path commands
+our admiration.
+
+[Sidenote: Alexander Pope (1688-1744).]
+
+Alexander Pope was born in London on May 21st, 1688. He was the only son
+of his father, a merchant or tradesman, and a Roman Catholic at a time
+when the members of that church were proscribed by law. The boy was a
+cripple from his birth, and suffered from great bodily weakness both in
+youth and manhood. Looking back upon his life in after years he called
+it a 'long disease.' The elder Pope seems to have retired from business
+soon after his son's birth, and at Binfield, nine miles from Windsor,
+twenty-seven years of the poet's life were spent. As a 'papist' Pope was
+excluded from the Universities and from every public career, but even
+under happier circumstances his health would have condemned him to a
+secluded life. He gained some instruction from the family priest, and
+also went for a short time to school, but for the most part he was
+self-educated, and studied so severely that at seventeen his life was
+probably saved by the sound advice of Dr. Radcliffe to read less and to
+ride on horseback every day. The rhyming faculty was very early
+developed, and to use his own phrase he 'lisped in numbers.' As a boy he
+felt the magic of Spenser, whose enchanting sweetness and boundless
+wealth of imagination have been now for three hundred years a joy to
+every lover of poetry. Something, too, he learned from Waller and from
+Sandys, both of whom, but especially the former, had been of service in
+giving smoothness to the iambic distich, in which all of Pope's best
+poems are written. Dryden, however, whom when a little boy he saw at
+Will's coffee-house--'_Virgilium tantum vidi_' records the memorable
+day--was the poet whose influence he felt most powerfully. Like Gray
+several years later, he declared that he learnt versification wholly
+from his works. From 'knowing Walsh,' the best critic in the nation in
+Dryden's opinion, the youthful Pope received much friendly counsel; and
+he had another wise friend in Sir William Trumbull, formerly Secretary
+of State, who recognized his genius, and gave him as warm a friendship
+as an old man can offer to a young one. The dissolute Restoration
+dramatist, Wycherley, was also his temporary companion. The old man, if
+Pope's story be true, asked him to correct his poems, which are indeed
+beyond correction, as the youthful critic appears to have hinted, and
+the two parted company.
+
+The _Pastorals_, written, according to Pope's assertion, at the age of
+sixteen, were published in 1709, and won an amount of praise
+incomprehensible in the present day. Mr. Leslie Stephen has happily
+appraised their value in calling them 'mere school-boy exercises.' Not
+thus, however, were they regarded by the poet, or by the critics of his
+age, yet neither he nor they could have divined the rapid progress of
+his fame, and that in about six years' time he would be regarded as the
+greatest of living poets. The _Essay on Criticism_, written, it appears,
+in 1709, was published two years later, and received the highest honour
+a poem could then have. It was praised by Addison in the _Spectator_ as
+'a very fine poem,' and 'a masterpiece in its kind.' The 'kind,'
+suggested by the _Ars Poetica_ of Horace, and the _Art Poétique_ of
+Boileau--translated with Dryden's help by Sir William Soame--suited the
+current taste for criticism and argument in rhyme, which had led
+Roscommon to write an _Essay on Translated Verse_, and Sheffield an
+_Essay on Poetry_. The _Essay on Criticism_ is a marvellous production
+for a young man who had scarcely passed his maturity when it was
+published. To have written lines and couplets that live still in the
+language and are on everyone's lips is an achievement of which any poet
+might be proud, and there are at least twenty such lines or couplets in
+the poem.
+
+In 1713 _Windsor Forest_ appeared. Through the most susceptible years of
+life the poet had lived in the country, but Nature and Pope were not
+destined to become friends; he looked at her 'through the spectacles of
+books' and his description of natural objects is invariably of the
+conventional type. Although never a resident in London he was unable in
+the exercise of his art to breathe any atmosphere save that of the town,
+and might have said, in the words of Lessing to his friend Kleist, 'When
+you go to the country I go to the coffee-house.'[11]
+
+The use, or as it would be more correct to say the abuse, of classical
+mythology in the description of rural scenes had the sanction of great
+names, and Pope was not likely to reject what Spenser and Milton had
+sanctioned. Gods and goddesses therefore play a conspicuous part in his
+description of the Forest. The following lines afford a fair
+illustration of the style throughout, and the sole merit of the poem is
+the smoothness of versification in which Pope excelled.
+
+    'Not proud Olympus yields a nobler sight,
+    Though gods assembled grace his towering height,
+    Than what more humble mountains offer here,
+    When in their blessings all those gods appear.
+    See Pan with flocks, with fruits Pomona crowned,
+    Here blushing Flora paints th' enamelled ground,
+    Here Ceres' gifts in waving prospect stand,
+    And nodding tempt the joyful reaper's hand;
+    Rich Industry sits smiling on the plains,
+    And peace and plenty tell a Stuart reigns.
+
+Pope, who was never known to laugh, was a great wit, but his sense of
+humour was small, and the descent from these deities to Queen Anne
+savours not a little of bathos.
+
+In 1712 Pope had published _The Rape of the Lock_, which Addison justly
+praised as 'a delicious little thing.' At the same time he advised the
+poet not to attempt improving it, which he proposed to do, and Pope most
+unreasonably attributed this advice to jealousy. In 1714 the delightful
+poem appeared in its present form with the machinery of sylphs and
+gnomes adopted from the mysteries of the Rosicrucians. Pope styles it an
+heroi-comical poem, and judged in the light of a burlesque it is
+conceived and executed with an art that is beyond praise. Lord Petre, a
+Roman Catholic peer, had cut off a lock of Miss Arabella Fermor's hair,
+much to the indignation of her family and possibly of the young lady
+also. Pope wrote the poem to remove the discord caused by the fatal
+shears, but its publication, and two or three offensive allusions it
+contained, only served to add to Miss Fermor's annoyance. 'The
+celebrated lady herself,' the poet wrote, 'is offended, and which is
+stranger, not at herself but me. Is not this enough to make a writer
+never be tender of another's character or fame?' But Pope, whose praise
+of women is too often a libel upon them, was not as tender as he ought
+to have been of the lady's reputation.
+
+The offence felt by the heroine of the poem is now unheeded; the dainty
+art exhibited is a permanent delight, and our language can boast no more
+perfect specimen of the poetical burlesque than the _Rape of the Lock_.
+The machinery of the sylphs is managed with perfect skill, and nothing
+can be more admirable than the charge delivered by Ariel to the sylphs
+to guard Belinda from an apprehended but unknown danger. The concluding
+lines shall be quoted:
+
+    'Whatever spirit, careless of his charge,
+    His post neglects, or leaves the fair at large,
+    Shall feel sharp vengeance soon o'ertake his sins,
+    Be stopped in vials, or transfixed with pins;
+    Or plunged in lakes of bitter washes lie,
+    Or wedged, whole ages, in a bodkin's eye;
+    Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain,
+    While clogged he beats his silken wings in vain;
+    Or alum styptics, with contracting power,
+    Shrink his thin essence like a rivelled flower;
+    Or, as Ixion fixed, the wretch shall feel
+    The giddy motion of the whirling mill,
+    In fumes of burning chocolate shall glow,
+    And tremble at the sea that froths below!'
+
+Another striking portion of the poem is the description of the Spanish
+game of Ombre, imitated from Vida's _Scacchia Ludus_. 'Vida's poem,'
+says Mr. Elwin, 'is a triumph of ingenuity, when the intricacy of chess
+is considered, and the difficulty of expressing the moves in a dead
+language. Yet the original is eclipsed by Pope's more consummate
+copy.'[12]
+
+Many famous passages illustrative of Pope's art might be extracted from
+this poem, but it will suffice to give the portrait of Belinda:
+
+    'On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,
+    Which Jews might kiss and infidels adore;
+    Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose,
+    Quick as her eyes and as unfixed as those;
+    Favours to none, to all she smiles extends,
+    Oft she rejects, but never once offends.
+    Bright as the sun her eyes the gazers strike,
+    And, like the sun, they shine on all alike.
+    Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride,
+    Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide:
+    If to her share some female errors fall,
+    Look on her face and you'll forget them all.'
+
+The _Temple of Fame_, a liberal paraphrase of Chaucer's _House of Fame_,
+followed in 1715, and despite the praise of Steele, who declared that it
+had a thousand beauties, and of Dr. Johnson, who observes that every
+part is splendid, must be pronounced one of Pope's least attractive
+pieces. Two poems of the emotional and sentimental class, _Eloisa to
+Abelard_ and the _Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady_ (1717),
+are more worthy of attention. Nowhere, probably, in the language are
+finer specimens to be met with of rhetorical pathos, but poets like
+Burns, Cowper, Wordsworth, and Tennyson can touch the heart more deeply
+by a phrase or couplet than Pope is able to do by his elaborate
+representations of passion. The reader is not likely to be affected by
+the following response of Eloisa to an invitation from the spirit world:
+
+    'I come, I come! prepare your roseate bowers,
+    Celestial palms and ever-blooming flowers.
+    Thither, where sinners may have rest, I go,
+    Where flames refined in breasts seraphic glow;
+    Thou, Abelard! the last sad office pay,
+    And smooth my passage to the realms of day;
+    See my lips tremble and my eye-balls roll,
+    Suck my last breath and catch my flying soul!
+    Ah no--in sacred vestments may'st thou stand,
+    The hallowed taper trembling in thy hand,
+    Present the Cross before my lifted eye,
+    Teach me at once and learn of me to die.'
+
+The music or the fervour of the poem delighted Porson, famous for his
+Greek and his potations, and whether drunk or sober he would recite, or
+rather sing it, from the beginning to the end. The felicity of the
+versification is incontestable, but at the same time artifice is more
+visible than nature throughout the Epistle, and this is true also of
+_The Elegy_, a composition in which Pope's method of treating mournful
+topics is excellently displayed. The opening lines are suggested by Ben
+Jonson's _Elegy on the Marchioness of Winchester_, a lady whose death
+was also lamented by Milton. These we shall not quote, but take in
+preference a passage which is perhaps as graceful an expression of
+poetical rhetoric as can be found in Pope's verse.
+
+    'By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,
+    By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed,
+    By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned,
+    By strangers honoured, and by strangers mourned!
+    What though no friends in sable weeds appear,
+    Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year,
+    And bear about the mockery of woe,
+    To midnight dances and the public show?
+    What though no weeping Loves thy ashes grace,
+    Nor polished marble emulate thy face?
+    What though no sacred earth allow thee room,
+    Nor hallowed dirge be muttered o'er thy tomb?
+    Yet shall thy grave with rising flowers be drest,
+    And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast;
+    There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow,
+    There the first roses of the year shall blow;
+    While angels with their silver wings o'ershade
+    The ground, now sacred by thy reliques made.'
+
+For some years Pope had been brooding over and slowly labouring at a
+task which was destined to add greatly to his fame and also to his
+fortune.
+
+In 1708 his early friend, Sir William Trumbull, had advised him to
+translate the _Iliad_, and five years later the poet, following the
+custom of the age, invited subscriptions to the work, which was to
+appear in six volumes at the price of six guineas. About this time
+Swift, who by the aid of his powerful pen was assisting Harley and St.
+John to rule the country, made Pope's acquaintance, and ultimately
+became perhaps the most faithful of his friends. Swift, who was able to
+help everybody but himself, zealously promoted the poet's scheme, and
+was heard to say at the coffee-houses that 'the best poet in England Mr.
+Pope a Papist' had begun a translation of Homer which he should not
+print till he had a thousand guineas for him.
+
+He was not satisfied with this service, but introduced the poet to St.
+John, Atterbury, and Harley. The first volume of Pope's _Homer_ appeared
+in 1715, and in the same year Addison's friend Tickell published his
+version of the first book of the _Iliad_. Pope affected to believe that
+this was done at Addison's instigation.
+
+Already, as we have said, there had been a misunderstanding between the
+two famous wits, and Pope, whose irritable temperament led him into many
+quarrels and created a host of enemies, ceased from this time to regard
+Addison as a friend. Probably neither of them can be exempted from
+blame, and we can well believe that Addison, whose supremacy had
+formerly been uncontested, could not without some jealousy 'bear a
+brother near the throne,' but the chief interest of the estrangement to
+the literary student is the famous satire written at a later date, in
+which Addison appears under the character of Atticus.[13] It is
+necessary to add here that the whole story of the quarrel comes to us
+from Pope, who is never to be trusted, either in prose or verse, when he
+wishes to excuse himself at the expense of a rival.
+
+Pope had no cause for discontent at his position; not even the strife of
+parties stood in the way of his _Homer_, which was praised alike by Whig
+and Tory, and brought the translator a fortune. It has been calculated
+that the entire version of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, the payments for
+which covered eleven years, yielded Pope a clear profit of about £9,000,
+and it is said to have made at the same time the fortune of his
+publisher. Pope, I believe, was the first poet who, without the aid of
+patronage or of the stage, was able to live in comfort from the sale of
+his works.
+
+He knew how to value money, but fame was dearer to him than wealth, and
+of both he had now enough to satisfy his ambition. Posterity has not
+endorsed the general verdict of his contemporaries on his famous
+translation. He had to encounter indeed some severe comments, and
+Richard Bentley, the greatest classical scholar then living, must have
+vexed the sensitive poet when he told him that his version was a pretty
+poem but he must not call it Homer. By this criticism, however, as
+Matthew Arnold has observed, the work is judged in spite of all its
+power and attractiveness. Pope wants Homer's simplicity and directness,
+and his artifices of style are utterly alien to the Homeric spirit. Dr.
+Johnson quotes the judgment of critics who say that Pope's _Homer_
+'exhibits no resemblance of the original and characteristic manner of
+the Father of Poetry, as it wants his awful simplicity, his artless
+grandeur, his unaffected majesty,' and observes that this cannot be
+totally denied. He argues, however, that even in Virgil's time the
+demand for elegance had been so much increased that mere nature could be
+endured no longer, that every age improves in elegance, that if some
+Ovidian graces are, alas! not to be found in the English _Iliad_ 'to
+have added can be no great crime if nothing be taken away.' Johnson was
+not aware that to add 'poetical elegances' to the words and thoughts of
+a great poet is to destroy much of the beauty of his verse and many of
+its most striking characteristics. As well might he say that the beauty
+of a lovely woman can be enhanced by a profusion of trinkets, or that a
+Greek statue would be more worthy of admiration if it were elegantly
+dressed. Dr. Johnson says, with perfect truth, that Pope wrote for his
+own age, and it may be added that he exhibits extraordinary art in
+ministering to the taste of the age; yet it is hardly too much to affirm
+that in the exercise of his craft as a translator he is continually
+false to nature and therefore false to Homer.
+
+On the other hand his _Iliad_ if read as a story runs so smoothly, that
+the reader, and especially the young reader, is carried through the
+narrative without any sense of fatigue. It is not a little praise to say
+that it is a poem which every school-boy will read with pleasure, and in
+which every critical reader who is content to surrender his judgment for
+awhile, will find pleasure also. Mr. Courthope in his elaborate and
+masterly _Life of Pope_, which gives the coping stone to an exhaustive
+edition of the poet's works, praises a fine passage from the _Iliad_,
+which in his judgment attains perhaps the highest level of which the
+heroic couplet is capable, and 'I do not believe,' he adds, 'that any
+Englishman of taste and imagination can read the lines without feeling
+that if Pope had produced nothing but his translation of Homer, he would
+be entitled to the praise of a great original poet.'
+
+Pope's editor could not perhaps have selected a better illustration of
+his best manner than this speech of Sarpedon to Glaucus, which is
+parodied in the _Rape of the Lock_. The concluding lines shall be
+quoted.
+
+    'Could all our care elude the gloomy grave,
+    Which claims no less the fearful than the brave,
+    For lust of fame I should not vainly dare
+    In fighting fields, nor urge the soul to war,
+    But since, alas! ignoble age must come,
+    Disease, and death's inexorable doom;
+    The life which others pay let us bestow,
+    And give to fame what we to nature owe;
+    Brave though we fall, and honoured if we live,
+    Or let us glory gain, or glory give.'
+
+We may add that neither its false glitter nor Pope's inability--shared
+in great measure with every translator--to catch the spirit of the
+original, can conceal the sustained power of this brilliant work. Its
+merit is the more wonderful since the poet's knowledge of Greek was
+extremely meagre, and he is said to have been constantly indebted to
+earlier translations. Gibbon said that his _Homer_ had every merit
+except that of faithfulness to the original; and Pope, could he have
+heard it, might well have been satisfied with the verdict of Gray, a
+great scholar as well as a great poet, that no other version would ever
+equal his.
+
+All that has been hitherto said with regard to Pope and Homer relates to
+his version of the _Iliad_. On that he expended his best powers, and on
+that it is evident he bestowed infinite pains. The _Odyssey_, one of the
+most beautiful stories in the world, appears to have been taken up with
+a weary pen, and in putting it into English he sought the assistance of
+Broome and Fenton, two minor poets and Cambridge scholars. They
+translated twelve books out of the twenty-four, and so skilfully did
+they catch Pope's style that it is almost impossible to discern any
+difference between his work and theirs. The literary partnership led to
+one of Pope's discreditable manoeuvres, in which, strange to say, he
+was assisted by Broome, whom he induced to set his name to a falsehood.
+Pope as we have said, translated twelve books, while eight were allotted
+to Broome and four to Fenton. Yet he led Broome, unknown to his
+colleague, to ascribe only three books to himself and two to Fenton, and
+at the same time the poet, who confessed that he could 'equivocate
+pretty genteely,' stated the amount he had paid for Broome's eight books
+as if it had been paid for three. The story is disgraceful both to Pope
+and Broome, and why the latter should have practised such a deception is
+unaccountable. He was a beneficed clergyman and a man of wealth, so that
+he could not have lied for money even if Pope had been willing to bribe
+him. Fenton was indignant, as he well might be, but he was too lazy or
+too good-natured to expose the fraud. Broome had his deserts later on,
+but Pope, who ridiculed him in the _Dunciad_, and in his _Treatise on
+the Bathos_, was the last man in the world entitled to render them.
+
+The partnership in poetry which produced the _Odyssey_ was not a great
+literary success, and most readers will prefer the version of Cowper,
+whose blank verse, though out of harmony with the rapid movement of the
+_Iliad_ is not unfitted for the quieter beauties of the _Odyssey_.
+
+In 1721, prior to the publication of his version, the poet had agreed to
+edit an edition of Shakespeare, a task as difficult as any which a man
+of letters can undertake. Pope was not qualified to achieve it. He was
+comparatively ignorant of Elizabethan literature, the dry labours of an
+editor were not to his taste, and he lacked true sympathy with the
+genius of the poet. Failure was therefore inevitable, and Theobald, who
+has some solid merits as a commentator, found it easy to discern and to
+expose the errors of Pope. For doing so he was afterwards 'hitched' into
+the _Dunciad_, and made in the first instance its hero. The
+"Shakespeare" was published in 1725 in six volumes quarto. 'Its chief
+claim,' Mr. Courthope writes, 'to interest at the present day, is that
+it forms the immediate starting-point for the long succession of Pope's
+satires.... The vexation caused to the poet by the undoubted justice of
+many of Theobald's strictures procured for the latter the unwelcome
+honour of being recognized as the King of the Dunces, and coupled with
+Bentley's disparaging mention of the Translation of the _Iliad_ provoked
+the many contemptuous allusions to verbal criticism in Pope's later
+satires.'[14]
+
+A striking peculiarity of Pope's art may be mentioned here. He was able
+only to play on one instrument, the heroic couplet. When he attempted
+any other form of verse the result, if not total failure, was
+mediocrity. It was a daring act of Pope to suggest by his _Ode on St.
+Cecilia's Day_, a comparison with the _Alexander's Feast_ of Dryden. The
+performance is perfunctory rather than spontaneous, and the few lyrical
+efforts he attempted in addition, show no ear for music. The voice of
+song with which even the minor poets of the Elizabethan age were gifted
+was silent in England, though not in Scotland, during the first half of
+the eighteenth century, or if a faint note is occasionally heard, as in
+the lyrics of Gay, it is without the grace and joyous freedom of the
+earlier singers. Not that the lyrical form was wanting; many minor
+versifiers, like Hughes, Sheffield, Granville, and Somerville, wrote
+what they called songs, but unfortunately without an ear for singing.
+
+In this short summary and criticism of a poet's literary life it would
+be out of place to insert many biographical details, were it not that,
+in the case of Pope, the student who knows little or nothing of the man
+will fail to understand his poetry. A distinguished critic has said that
+the more we know of Pope's age the better shall we understand Pope. With
+equal truth it may be said that a familiarity with the poet's personal
+character is essential to an adequate appreciation of his genius. His
+friendships, his enmities, his mode of life at Twickenham, the entangled
+tale of his correspondence, his intrigues in the pursuit of fame, his
+constitutional infirmities, the personal character of his satires, these
+are a few of the prominent topics with which a student of the poet must
+make himself conversant. It may be well, therefore, to give the history
+in brief outline, and we have now reached the crisis in his fortunes
+which will conveniently enable us to do so.
+
+In 1716 Pope's family had removed from Binfield to Chiswick. A year
+later he lost his father, to whose memory he has left a filial tribute,
+and shortly afterwards he bought the small estate of five acres at
+Twickenham with which his name is so intimately associated. Before
+reaching the age of thirty Pope was regarded as the first of living
+poets. His income more than sufficed for all his wants. At Twickenham
+the great in intellect, and the great by birth, met around his table; he
+was welcomed by the highest society in the land, and although proud of
+his intimacy with the nobility, 'unplaced, unpensioned,' he was 'no
+man's heir or slave,' and jealously preserved his independence. 'Pope,'
+says Johnson, 'never set genius to sale, he never flattered those whom
+he did not love, or praised those whom he did not esteem,' and he was,
+we may add, in this respect a striking contrast to Dryden, who lavished
+his flatteries wholesale.
+
+With a mother to whom he was tenderly attached, with troops of friends,
+with an undisputed supremacy in the world of letters, and with a
+vocation that was the joy of his heart,--if possessions like these can
+confer happiness, Pope should have been a happy man.
+
+But his 'crazy carcass,' as the painter Jervas called it, was united to
+the most suspicious and irritable of temperaments, and the fine wine of
+his poetry was rarely free from bitterness in the cup. Pope could be a
+warm friend, but was not always a faithful one, and even women whose
+friendship he had enjoyed suffered from the venom of his satire. He was
+not a man to rise above his age, and it would be charitable to ascribe a
+portion of his grossness to it. Voltaire is said by his loose talk to
+have driven Pope's good old mother from the table at Twickenham;
+Walpole's language not only in his home at Houghton, but at Court, was
+insufferably coarse; and Pope wrote to ladies in language that must
+have disgusted modest women even in his free-speaking day. His foul
+lines on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, to whom he had formerly written in a
+most ridiculous strain of gallantry, and to whom he is said to have made
+love,[15] cannot easily be characterized in moderate language. Lady Mary
+had little delicacy herself, but the poet, who thought himself a
+gentleman, had no excuse for abusing her. Excuses indeed are not easily
+to be offered for Pope's moral defalcations. His life was a series of
+petty intrigues, trickeries, and deceptions. He could not, it has been
+said,--the conceit is borrowed from Young's _Satires_--'take his tea
+without a stratagem,' and knew how to utter the loftiest sentiments
+while acting the most contemptible of parts.
+
+The long and intricate deceptions which he practised to secure the
+publication of his letters, while so manipulating them as to enhance his
+credit, were suspected to some extent in his own age, and have been
+painfully laid bare in ours. It is an amazing story, which may be read
+at large in Mr. Dilke's _Papers of a Critic_, or in the elaborate
+narrative of Mr. Elwin in the first volume of his edition of _Pope_. It
+will be there seen how the poet compiled fictitious letters, suppressed
+passages, altered dates, manufactured letters out of other letters, and
+secretly enabled the infamous bookseller Curll to publish his
+correspondence surreptitiously in order that he might have the excuse
+for printing it himself in a more carefully prepared form. The worst
+feature of the miserable story is the poet's conduct with regard to
+Swift, his oldest and most faithful friend. On this subject the writer
+may be allowed to quote what he has said elsewhere.
+
+'Years before, Swift, who cared little for literary reputation, and
+never resorted to any artifice to promote it, had suspected Pope of a
+desire to make literary capital out of their correspondence, and the
+poet had excused himself according to his wonted fashion. After the
+publication by Curll, he begged Swift to return him his letters lest
+they should fall into the bookseller's hands. The Dean replied, no doubt
+to Pope's infinite chagrin, that they were safe in his keeping, as he
+had given strict orders in his will that his executors should burn every
+letter he might leave behind him. Afterwards he promised that Pope
+should eventually have them but declined giving them up during his
+lifetime. Hereupon Pope changed his tactics and begged that he might
+have the letters to print. The publication by Curll of two letters
+(probably another _ruse_ of Pope's) formed an additional ground for
+urging his request. All his efforts were unavailing until he obtained
+the assistance of Lord Orrery, to whom Swift was at length induced to
+deliver up the letters. There was a hiatus in the correspondence and
+Pope took advantage of this and of a blunder made by Swift, whose memory
+at the time was not to be trusted, to hint, what he dared not directly
+assert, that the bulk of the collection remained with the Dean, and that
+Swift's own letters had been returned to him. We have now irresistible
+proof that the Dublin edition of the letters was taken from an
+impression sent from England and sent by Pope. Nor was this all. The
+poet acted with still greater meanness, for he had the audacity to
+deplore the sad vanity of Swift in permitting the publication of his
+correspondence, and to declare that "no decay of body is half so
+miserable."'[16]
+
+That he had many fine qualities in spite of the littlenesses which mar
+his character one would be loath to doubt. Among his nobler traits was
+an ardent passion for literature, a courage which enabled him to face
+innumerable obstacles--'Pope,' says Mr. Swinburne, 'was as bold as a
+lion'--and a constant devotion to his parents, especially to his mother,
+who lived to a great age. There are no sincerer words in his letters
+than those which relate to Mrs. Pope. 'It is my mother only,' he once
+wrote, regretting his inability to leave home, 'that robs me of half the
+pleasure of my life, and that gives me the greatest at the same time,'
+and the lines expressing his affection for her are familiar to most
+readers. Truly does Johnson say that 'life has among its soothing and
+quiet comforts few things better to give than such a son.'
+
+Among his lady friends the dearest was Martha Blount, the younger of two
+beautiful sisters, of whom Gay sang as 'the fair-haired Martha and
+Teresa brown.' They came of an old Roman Catholic family residing at
+Mapledurham, and were little more than girls when Pope first knew them.
+With the elder sister he quarrelled, but Martha was faithful to him for
+life, and when he was dying it is said that her coming in 'gave a new
+turn of spirits or a temporary strength to him.' Swift, as we have said,
+was one of the warmest of Pope's friends, and his letters to the poet
+are by far the most attractive portion of the published correspondence.
+He visited him at Twickenham more than once, and on one occasion spent
+some months under his roof. Bolingbroke, his 'guide, philosopher, and
+friend,' who for a time lived near to him at Dawley, was a frequent
+guest, so also, in the days of their intimacy, was Lady Mary, who had a
+house at Twickenham. Thomson the poet, too, lived not far off, and was
+visited by his brother bard, whom Thomson's barber describes as 'a
+strange, ill-formed, little figure of a man,' but he adds, 'I have
+heard him and Quin and Patterson[17] talk so together that I could have
+listened to them for ever.' Arbuthnot, one of the finest wits and best
+men of his time, who, as Swift said, could do everything but walk, was
+also a faithful friend of Pope; so was Gay, and so was Bishop Atterbury,
+who, as the poet said, first taught him to think "as becomes a
+reasonable creature."
+
+James Craggs, who had been formerly Secretary of State, and was on the
+warmest terms of intimacy with the poet, resided for some time near his
+friend in order to enjoy the pleasure of his society. When in office he
+proposed to pay him a pension of £300 a year out of the secret service
+money, but Pope declined the offer. Statesmen and men of active pursuits
+cultivated the society of the poetical recluse, and Pope, whose
+compliments are monuments more enduring than marble, has recorded their
+visits to Twickenham:
+
+    'There, my retreat the best companions grace,
+    Chiefs out of war, and statesmen out of place,
+    There St. John mingles with my friendly bowl,
+    The feast of reason and the flow of soul,
+    And he whose lightning pierced the Iberian lines[18]
+    Now forms my quincunx and now ranks my vines.'
+
+Among Pope's associates was the 'blameless Bethel,'
+
+           '---- who always speaks his thought,
+    And always thinks the very thing he ought,'
+
+and Berkeley who had 'every virtue under heaven,' and Lord Bathurst who
+was unspoiled by wealth and joined
+
+    'With splendour, charity; with plenty, health;'
+
+and 'humble Allen' who
+
+    'Did good by stealth and blushed to find it fame;'
+
+and many another friend who lives in his verse and is secure of the
+immortality a poet can confer.
+
+The five volumes which contain the letters between Pope and his friends
+exhibit an interesting picture of the times and of the writers. The
+poet's own letters, as may be supposed from the thought he bestowed on
+them, are full of artifice, and composed with the most elaborate care.
+Every sentence is elaborately turned, and the ease and naturalness which
+give a charm to the letters of Cowper and of Southey are not to be found
+in Pope. His epistles are weighted with compliments and with professions
+of the most exalted morality. 'He laboured them,' says Horace Walpole,
+'as much as the _Essay on Man_, and as they were written to everybody
+they do not look as if they had been written to anybody.' Pope said
+once, what he did not mean, that he could not write agreeable letters.
+This was true; his letters are, as Charles Fox said, 'very bad,' but
+some of Pope's friends write admirably, and if there is much that can be
+skipped without loss in the correspondence, there is much which no
+student of the period can afford to neglect. 'There has accumulated,'
+says Mark Pattison, 'round Pope's poems a mass of biographical anecdote
+such as surrounds the writings of no other English author,' and not a
+little knowledge of this kind is to be gleaned from his correspondence.
+
+In the years spent at Twickenham Pope produced his most characteristic
+work. It is as a satirist that he, with one exception, excels all
+English poets, and Pope's careful workmanship often makes his satirical
+touches more attractive than Dryden's.
+
+'To attack vices in the abstract,' he said to Arbuthnot, 'without
+touching persons, may be safe fighting indeed, but it is fighting with
+shadows;' and Pope, under the plea of a detestation of vice, generally
+betrayed his contempt or hatred of the men whom he assailed. No doubt
+the critics and Grub Street hacks of the day gave him provocation. Pope,
+however, was frequently the first to take the field, and so eager was he
+to meet his foes that it would seem as if he enjoyed the conflict. Yet
+there were times when he felt acutely the assaults made upon him. 'These
+things are my diversion,' he once said, with a ghastly smile, and it was
+observed that he writhed in agony like a man undergoing an operation.
+The attacks made with these paper bullets, not only on the side of Grub
+Street but on his own, show very vividly the coarseness of London
+society. Courtesy was disregarded by men who claimed to be wits and
+scholars. Pope held, perhaps, a higher place in literature in his own
+day than Lord Tennyson has held in ours, for the best beloved of
+Laureates had noble rivals and friends who came near to him in fame,
+while Pope, until the publication of Thomson's _Seasons_, in 1730, stood
+alone in poetical reputation. Yet he was reviled in the language of
+Billingsgate, and had no scruple in using that language himself. Late in
+life Pope collected the libels made upon him and bound them in four
+volumes, but he omitted to mention the provocation which gave rise to
+many of them. Eusden, Colley Cibber, Dennis, Theobald, Blackmore, Smyth,
+and Lord Hervey are among the prominent criminals placed in Pope's
+pillory, and the student of the age may find an idle entertainment in
+tracking the poet's thorny course, while he gives an unenviable
+notoriety to names of which the larger number were 'born to be forgot.'
+
+In 1725 Swift had written to Pope advising him not to immortalize the
+names of bad poets by putting them in his verse, and Pope replied to
+this advice by saying, 'I am much the happier for finding (a better
+thing than our wits) our judgments jump in the notion that all
+scribblers should be passed by in silence.' How entirely his inclination
+got the better of his judgment was seen three years later in the
+_Dunciad_. The first three books of this famous satire were published in
+1728. It is generally regarded as Pope's masterpiece, but the accuracy
+of such an estimate is doubtful. So heavily weighted is the poem with
+notes, prefaces, and introductions that the text appears to be smothered
+by them. It was Pope's aim to mystify his readers, and in this he has
+succeeded, for the mystifications of the poem even confound the
+commentators. The personalities of the satire excited a keen interest,
+and much amusement to readers who were not included in Pope's black list
+of dunces. At the same time it roused a number of authors to fury, as it
+well might. His satire is often unjust, and he includes among the dunces
+men wholly undeserving of the name, who had had the misfortune to offend
+him. To place a great scholar like Bentley, an eloquent and earnest
+preacher like Whitefield, and a man of genius like Defoe among the
+dunces was to stultify himself, and if Pope in his spite against
+Theobald found some justification for giving the commentator
+pre-eminence for dulness in three books of the _Dunciad_, his anger got
+the better of his wit when in Book IV. he dethroned Theobald to exalt
+Colley Cibber. For Cibber, with a thousand faults, so far from being
+dull had a buoyancy of heart and a sprightliness of intellect wholly out
+of harmony with the character he is made to assume.
+
+That he might have some excuse for his dashing assaults in the
+_Dunciad_, Pope had published in the third volume of the _Miscellanies_,
+of which he and Swift, Arbuthnot and Gay were the joint authors, an
+_Essay on Bathos_ in which several writers of the day were sneered at.
+The assault provoked the counter-attack for which Pope was looking, and
+he then produced the satire which was already prepared for the press. In
+its publication the poet, as usual, made use of trickery and deception.
+At first he issued an imperfect edition with initial letters instead of
+names, but on seeing his way to act more openly, the poem appeared in a
+large edition with names and notes.
+
+'In order to lessen the danger of prosecution for libel,' Mr. Courthope
+writes, 'he prevailed on three peers, with whom he was on the most
+intimate terms, the good-natured Lord Bathurst, the easy-going Earl of
+Oxford, and the magnificent Earl of Burlington, to act as his nominal
+publishers; and it was through them that copies of the enlarged edition
+were at first distributed, the booksellers not being allowed to sell any
+in their shops. The King and Queen were each presented with a copy by
+the hands of Sir R. Walpole. In this manner, as the report quickly
+spread that the poem was the property of rich and powerful noblemen,
+there was a natural disinclination on the part of the dunces to take
+legal proceedings, and the prestige of the _Dunciad_ being thus fairly
+established, the booksellers were allowed to proceed with the sale in
+regular course.'[19]
+
+The _Dunciad_ owes its merit to the literary felicities with which its
+pages abound. The theme is a mean one. Pope, from his social eminence at
+Twickenham, looks with scorn on the authors who write for bread, and
+with malignity on the authors whom he regarded as his enemies. There
+is, for the most part, little elevation in his method of treatment, and
+we can almost fancy that we see a cruel joy in the poet's face as he
+impales the victims of his wrath. Some portions of the _Dunciad_ are
+tainted with the imagery which, to quote the strong phrase of Mr.
+Churton Collins, often makes Swift as offensive as a polecat,[20] and
+there is no part of it which can be read with unmixed pleasure, if we
+except the noble lines which conclude the satire. Those lines may be
+almost said to redeem the faults of the poem, and they prove
+incontestably, if such proof be needed, Pope's claim to a place among
+the poets.
+
+    'In vain, in vain,--the all-composing Hour
+    Resistless falls; the Muse obeys the Power.
+    She comes! she comes! the sable Throne behold,
+    Of Night primæval and of Chaos old!
+    Before her Fancy's gilded clouds decay,
+    And all its varying rainbows die away.
+    Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,
+    The meteor drops, and in a flash expires,
+    As one by one at dread Medea's strain,
+    The sickening stars fade off the etherial plain;
+    As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand opprest,
+    Closed one by one to everlasting rest;
+    Thus at her felt approach and secret might,
+    Art after Art goes out, and all is Night.
+    See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,
+    Mountains of Casuistry heaped o'er her head!
+    Philosophy that leaned on Heaven before,
+    Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more;
+    Physic of Metaphysic begs defence,
+    And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense!
+    See Mystery to Mathematics fly!
+    In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.
+    Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,
+    And unawares Morality expires.
+    Nor public Flame, nor private, dares to shine;
+    Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!
+    Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos! is restored;
+    Light dies before thy uncreating word;
+    Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
+    And universal Darkness buries All.'
+
+The publication of the _Dunciad_ showed Pope where his main strength as
+a poet lay. That the writers he had attacked, in many instances without
+provocation, should resent the ungrateful notoriety conferred upon them
+was inevitable. In self-defence, and to add to the provocation already
+given, he started a paper called the _Grub Street Journal_, which
+existed for eight years--Pope, who had no scruple in 'hazarding a lie,'
+denying all the time that he had any connection with it.
+
+His next work of significance, _The Essay on Man_, a professedly
+philosophical poem by an author who knew little of philosophy, was
+published in four epistles, in 1733-4. Bolingbroke's brilliant,
+versatile, and shallow intellect had strongly impressed Swift, and had
+also fascinated Pope. It has been commonly supposed that the _Essay_
+owes its existence to his suggestion and guidance. The poet believed in
+his philosophy, and had the loftiest estimate of his genius. In the last
+and perhaps finest passage of the poem he calls Bolingbroke the 'master
+of the poet and the song,' and draws a picture of the ambitious
+statesman as beautiful as it is false. In Mark Pattison's Introduction
+to _The Essay on Man_,[21] which every student of Pope will read, he
+objects to the notion that the poet took the scheme of his work from
+Bolingbroke, observing that both derived their views from a common
+source.
+
+'Everywhere, in the pulpit, in the coffee-houses, in every pamphlet,
+argument on the origin of evil, on the goodness of God, and the
+constitution of the world was rife. Into the prevailing topic of polite
+conversation Bolingbroke, who returned from exile in 1723, was drawn by
+the bent of his native genius. Pope followed the example and impulse of
+his friend's more powerful mind. Thus much there was of special
+suggestion. But the arguments or topics of the poem are to be traced to
+books in much vogue at the time; to Shaftesbury's _Characteristics_
+(1711), King on the _Origin of Evil_ (1702), and particularly to
+Leibnitz, _Essais de Théodicée_ (1710).'
+
+In admitting that Pope followed the impulse of a more powerful mind, Mr.
+Pattison asserts as much perhaps as can be known with certainty as to
+Bolingbroke's influence, but it is reasonable to believe that the close
+intercourse of the two men did immensely sway the more impressionable,
+and, so far as philosophy is concerned, the more ignorant of the two.
+Mr. Pattison also overlooks the fact that Pope confessed to Warburton
+that he had never read a line of Leibnitz in his life. That the poet
+acknowledges his large debt to Bolingbroke, and that Bolingbroke
+confesses it was due, is all that can be declared with certainty. That
+which makes the _Essay_ worthy the reading is the fruit, not of the
+argument but of the poetry, and for that Pope trusted to his own genius.
+
+His attempt to 'vindicate the ways of God to man' is confused and
+contradictory, and no modern reader, perplexed with the mystery of
+existence, is likely to gain aid from Pope. Nominally a Roman Catholic,
+and in reality a deist, apart from poetry he does not seem to have had
+strong convictions on any subject, and was content to be swayed by the
+opinions current in society. In undertaking to write an ethical work
+like the _Essay_ his ambition was greater than his strength, yet if
+Pope's philosophy does not 'find' us, to use Coleridge's phrase, it did
+appeal to a large number of minds in his own day, and had not lost its
+popularity at a later period. The poem has been frequently translated
+into French, into Italian, and into German; it was pronounced by
+Voltaire to be the most useful and sublime didactic poem ever written in
+any language; it was admired by Kant and quoted in his lectures; and it
+received high praise from the Scotch philosopher, Dugald Stewart. The
+charm of poetical expression is lost or nearly lost in translations, and
+while the sense may be retained the aroma of the verse is gone. The
+popularity of the _Essay_ abroad is therefore not easily to be accounted
+for, unless we accept the theory that the shallow creed on which it is
+based suited an age less earnest than our own.[22]
+
+Pope has no strong convictions in this poem, but he has many moods. On
+one page he is a pantheist, on another he says what he probably did not
+mean, that God inspires men to do evil, and on a third that 'all our
+knowledge is ourselves to know.' Nowhere in the argument does Pope seem
+to have a firm standing, and De Quincey is not far wrong in saying that
+it is 'the realization of anarchy.'
+
+Read the poem for its poetical merits and you will forget its defects.
+Pope was a superficial teacher, but direct teaching is not the end of
+poetry. _The Essay on Man_ is not a poem which can be read and re-read
+with ever-growing delight, but there are passages in it of as fine an
+order as any that he has composed on more familiar subjects. Pope was,
+as Sir William Hamilton said, a curious reader, and the ideas versified
+in the poem may be traced to a variety of sources. Students who wish to
+follow this track will find all the help they need in Mr. Pattison's
+instructive notes, and in the comments attached to the poem in Elwin and
+Courthope's edition. In his Introduction Mr. Pattison observes that 'the
+subject of the _Essay on Man_ is not, considered in itself, one unfit
+for poetry. Had Pope had a genius for philosophy there was no reason why
+he should not have selected a philosophical subject. Didactic poetry is
+a mistake if not a contradiction in terms. But poetry is not necessarily
+didactic because its subject is philosophical.'
+
+It is always difficult to define the themes suitable for poetry. Many
+theories have been formed as to the scope of the art, and poets have
+been amply instructed by critics as to what they ought to do, and what
+they should avoid doing. The theories may appear sound, the arguments
+convincing, until a great poet arises and knocks them on the head. In a
+sense every poet of the highest order is also a philosopher and a
+prophet who sees into 'the life of things.' Whether a philosophical
+subject can be fitly represented in the imaginative light of poetry is a
+matter for discussion rather than for decision. In the case of Pope,
+however, it will be evident to all studious readers that he was
+incapable of the continuous thought needed for the argument of the
+_Essay_.
+
+'Anything like sustained reasoning,' says Mr. Leslie Stephen,' was
+beyond his reach. Pope felt and thought by shocks and electric
+flashes.... The defect was aggravated or caused by the physical
+infirmities which put sustained intellectual labour out of the
+question.'[23]
+
+Crousaz, a Swiss pastor and professor, who appears to have competed with
+Berkeley for a prize and won it, attacked Pope's _Essay_ for its want of
+orthodoxy, and his work was translated into English. The poet became
+alarmed, but had the good fortune to find a champion in Warburton, who
+for the rest of his life did Pope much service, not always of a
+reputable kind. We shall have more to say of him later on, and it will
+suffice to observe here that Warburton, who through Pope's friendship
+obtained a good wife, a fortune, and a bishopric, was not a man of high
+character. His sole object was to advance in life, and he succeeded.
+
+The _Moral Essays_ as they are called, and the _Imitations from Horace_
+are the final and crowning efforts of the poet's genius. They contain
+his finest workmanship as a satirist, and will be read, I think, with
+more pleasure than the _Dunciad_, despite Mr. Ruskin's judgment of that
+poem as 'the most absolutely chiselled and monumental work "exacted" in
+our country.'[24] It is impossible to concur in this estimate. The
+imagery of the poem serves only to disgust, and the spiteful attacks
+made in it on forgotten men want the largeness of purpose that lifts
+satire above what is of temporary interest, making it a lesson for all
+time.
+
+Pope's venom, and the personal animosities which give the sharpest
+sting, and in some instances a zest, to his verse, are also amply
+displayed in the _Moral Essays_ and in the _Imitations_, but the scope
+is wider in these poems, and the subjects allow of more versatile
+treatment. They should be read with the help of notes, a help generally
+needed for satirical poetry, but it should be remembered always that
+editorial judgments are to be received with discretion and not servilely
+followed. There is perhaps no danger more carefully to be shunned by the
+student of literature than the habit of resting satisfied with opinions
+at second-hand. Better a wrong estimate formed after due reading and
+thought, than a right estimate gleaned from critics, without any thought
+at all.
+
+According to Warburton, who is as tricky as Pope himself when it suits
+his purpose to be so, the _Essay on Man_ was intended to form four
+books, in which, as part of the general design, the _Moral Essays_ would
+have been included, as well as Book IV. of the _Dunciad_, but to have
+welded these _Essays_, which were published separately, into one
+continuous poem would neither have suited Pope's genius nor the
+character of the poems; and how the last book of the _Dunciad_ could
+have been included in such an _olla podrida_ it is difficult to
+conceive. The poet was fond of projects, and this, happily for his
+readers, remained one. The dates of the four _Essays_, which are really
+Epistles, and appeared in folio pamphlets, run over several years, but
+were afterwards re-arranged by Pope. That to Lord Burlington, _Of the
+Use of Riches_ (Epistle IV.), was published in 1731, under the title,
+_Of False Taste_; that to Lord Bathurst, _Of the Use of Riches_ (Epistle
+III), in 1732; the epistle to Lord Cobham (Epistle I.), _Of the
+Knowledge and Characters of Men_, bears the date of 1733; and that To a
+Lady (Epistle II.), _Of the Characters of Women_, in 1735. Pope wrote
+other Epistles, some at a much earlier period of his career, which
+follow the _Moral Essays_ but are not connected with them. Of these one
+is addressed to Addison, two are to Martha Blount, for whom the second
+of the _Moral Essays_ was written; one to the painter Jervas, originally
+printed in 1717; while another, a few lines only in length, was
+addressed to Craggs when Secretary of State. Space will not allow of
+examining each of the _Essays_ minutely, but there are portions of them
+which call for comment.
+
+The first _Moral Essay_, _Of the Knowledge and Characters of Men_, in
+which Pope enlarges on his theory of a ruling passion, affords a
+significant example of his incapacity for sustaining an argument, since
+Warburton, to use his own words, entirely changed and reversed the order
+and disposition of the several parts to make the composition more
+coherent. That he has succeeded is doubtful, that he should have
+ventured upon such a task shows where Pope's weakness lay as a
+philosophical poet. It is the least interesting of the _Essays_, but is
+not without lines that none but Pope could have written. _The Characters
+of Women_, the subject of the second _Essay_, was not one which the
+satirist could treat with justice. He saw little in the sex save their
+foibles, and the lines with which it opens show the spirit that animates
+the poem:
+
+    'Nothing so true as what you once let fall;
+    "Most women have no character at all,"
+    Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,
+    And best distinguished by black, brown, or fair.'
+
+The satire contains one of Pope's offensive allusions to Lady Mary, and
+the celebrated portrait drawn from two notable women, the Duchess of
+Buckingham and Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, from the latter of whom
+the poet, at one time, despite his unquestionable love of independence,
+received £1,000. The story, like many another in the career of Pope, is
+wrapt in mystery.
+
+Pope took great pains with the Epistle _Of the Use of Riches_. It was
+altered from the original conception by the advice of Warburton, who
+cared more for the argument of a poem than for its poetry. The thought
+and purpose of the _Essay_ are defective, notwithstanding Warburton's
+effort to clear them, but these defects are of slight moment when
+compared with the brilliant passages with which the poem is studded.
+Among them is the famous description of the Duke of Buckingham's
+death-bed which should be compared with Dryden's equally famous lines
+on the same nobleman's character.
+
+    'In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung,
+    The floors of plaster, and the walls of dung,
+    On once a flock-heel, but repaired with straw,
+    With tape-tied curtains never meant to draw,
+    The George and Garter dangling from that bed
+    Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,
+    Great Villiers lies--alas! how changed from him,
+    That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim!
+    Gallant and gay, in Cliveden's proud alcove,
+    The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love;
+    Or just as gay at council, in a ring
+    Of mimic statesmen and their merry King.
+    No wit to flatter left of all his store!
+    No fool to laugh at, which he valued more.
+    There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends,
+    And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends.'
+
+There is also a covert attack in this Epistle upon the moneyed interest
+represented by Walpole, and on the political corruption which he
+sanctioned and promoted. Yet Pope knew how to praise the great Whig
+statesman for his social qualities:
+
+    'Seen him I have, but in his happier hour
+    Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power;
+    Seen him uncumbered with the venal tribe,
+    Smile without art and win without a bribe.'
+
+Epistle IV. pursues the same subject as the third, and deals mainly with
+false taste in the expenditure of wealth, and with the necessity of
+following 'sense, of every art the soul.' In this poem there is the
+far-famed description of Timon's Villa, and by Timon Pope was accused of
+representing the Duke of Chandos, whose estate at Canons he is supposed
+to have held in scorn after having been, as he acknowledges,
+'distinguished' by its master. That would not have deterred Pope from
+producing a brilliant picture, and his equivocations did but serve to
+increase suspicion. Probably he found it convenient to use some features
+of what he may have seen at Canons while composing a general sketch with
+no special application. The _Moral Essays_, it may be added, are not
+especially moral, but they are full of fine things, and form a portion
+of Pope's verse second only to the _Imitations from Horace_.
+
+These _Imitations_ are introduced by the Prologue addressed to Dr.
+Arbuthnot, a poem of more than common brilliancy, and also more than
+commonly venomous. Nowhere, perhaps, is there in Pope's works so
+powerful and bitter an attack as the twenty-five lines in the Prologue
+devoted to the vivisection of Lord Hervey, which we are forced to admire
+while feeling their malevolence; nowhere is there a more consummate
+piece of satire than the twenty-two lines that contain the poet's
+masterpiece, the character of Atticus; and nowhere, I may add, are there
+lines more personally interesting. Portions of the poem were written
+long before the date of publication, and this is Pope's excuse, a rather
+lame one perhaps, for printing the character of Atticus and the lines on
+his mother after the death of Addison and of Mrs. Pope.
+
+'When I had a fever one winter in town,' Pope said to his friend Spence,
+'that confined me to my room for some days, Lord Bolingbroke came to see
+me, happened to take up a Horace that lay on the table, and in turning
+it over dipt on the first satire of the second book. He observed how
+well that would hit my case if I were to imitate it in English. After he
+was gone I read it over, translated it in a morning or two, and sent it
+to press in a week or fortnight after. And this was the occasion of my
+imitating some other of the satires and epistles afterwards.'
+
+Bolingbroke did his friend a better service in giving this advice than
+he had done with regard to the _Essay on Man_; and the six _Imitations_,
+with the Prologue and Epilogue, which are among the latest fruits of
+Pope's genius as a satirist, are also the ripest.
+
+Warburton, writing of the _Imitations of Horace_, says: 'Whoever expects
+a paraphrase of Horace or a faithful copy of his genius or his manner of
+writing in these _Imitations_ will be much disappointed. Our author uses
+the Roman poet for little more than his canvas; and if the old design or
+colouring chance to suit his purpose, it is well; if not, he employs his
+own without scruple or ceremony.'
+
+This is true. Pope makes use of Horace when it suits his convenience,
+but never follows him servilely, and quits him altogether when his
+design carries him another way.
+
+It was inevitable that he should exercise this freedom, since, as
+Johnson has pointed out, there will always be an irreconcilable
+dissimilitude between Roman images and English manners. Moreover, the
+aim of the two poets was different, Pope's main object being to express
+personal enmities and to give an exalted notion of his own virtue.
+
+In the opening lines of his First Satire Pope follows Horace pretty
+closely. Both poets complain that some persons think them too severe,
+and others too complaisant; both take the advice of a lawyer, Horace of
+C. Trebatius Testa, who gives him the pithiest replies; and Pope of
+Fortescue. Both complain that they cannot sleep, the prescription of a
+wife and cowslip wine being given by the English adviser, while Testa
+advises Horace to swim thrice across the Tiber and moisten his lips with
+wine. Throughout the rest of the satire Pope takes only casual glances
+at the Roman original, and if in the Second Satire the English poet
+follows Horace in the first few verses in recommending frugality, and in
+the advice to keep the middle state, and neither to lean on this side or
+on that, the resemblance between the poets is seldom striking, and the
+spirit which animates them is different,--Horace being classical, and
+therefore open to the apprehension of all educated readers, while Pope
+is in a sense provincial, and, as I have already said with reference to
+the _Dunciad_, cannot be fully enjoyed or even understood without some
+knowledge of the time and of the men whom he lashes in his satire. The
+Sixth Epistle of the First Book of Horace, which Pope attempts to
+imitate, is, as Mr. Courthope observes, 'incapable of imitation. Its
+humour, no less than its philosophy, belongs entirely to the Pagan
+World.' In a general sense it is also true that Horace's style, whether
+of language or of thought, will not bear transplanting. Indeed, whatever
+is most characteristic and most exquisite in a poet's work is precisely
+the portion which cannot be clothed in a foreign dress.
+
+'Life,' said Pope, 'when the first heats are over is all down hill,' and
+with him the downward progress began at a time when most men are still
+standing on the summit. Never was there a more fiery spirit in so weak a
+body. He suffered frequently from headaches, which he relieved by
+inhaling the steam of coffee. Unfortunately he pampered his appetite and
+paid a heavy penalty for doing so. Every change of weather affected him;
+and at the time when most people indulge in company, he tells Swift that
+he hid himself in bed. Although he sneers at Lord Hervey for taking
+asses' milk he tried that remedy himself, and he frequently needed
+medical aid. In his early days he was strong enough to ride on
+horseback, but in later life his weakness was so great that he was in
+constant need of help. M. Taine, whose criticism of Pope needs to be
+read with caution, indulges in an exaggerated description of his bodily
+condition, observing that when arrived at maturity he appeared no longer
+capable of existing, and styling him 'a nervous abortion.' The poet's
+condition was sad enough as told by Dr. Johnson, without amplifying it
+as M. Taine has done. 'One side was contracted. His legs were so slender
+that he enlarged their bulk with three pairs of stockings, which were
+drawn on and off by the maid; for he was not able to dress or undress
+himself, and neither went to bed nor rose without help. His weakness
+made it very difficult for him to be clean.' After this forlorn
+description of the poet's state it is a little grotesque to read that
+his dress of ceremony was black, with a tie-wig and a little sword. A
+distorted body often holds a generous and untainted soul. This was not
+the case with Pope, and the sympathy he stood in so large a need of
+himself, was seldom given to others.
+
+In the spring of 1744 it became evident that the end was approaching.
+Three weeks before his death he distributed the _Moral Epistles_ among
+his friends, saying: 'Here I am, like Socrates, dispensing my morality
+amongst my friends just as I am dying.' He died peacefully on May 30th,
+1744, and was buried in Twickenham Church near the monument erected to
+his parents.
+
+Pope's standing among his country's poets has been the source of much
+controversy. There have been critics who deny to him the name of a poet,
+while others place him in the first rank. In his own century there was
+comparatively little difference of opinion with regard to his merits.
+Chesterfield gave him the warmest praise; Swift, Addison, and Warburton
+ranked him with the peers of song; Johnson, whose discriminative
+criticism reaches perhaps its highest level in his _Life of Pope_, in
+reply to the question which had been asked, even in his day, whether
+Pope was a poet? asks in return, 'If Pope be not a poet, where is poetry
+to be found?' and adds that 'to circumscribe poetry by a definition will
+only show the narrowness of the definer, though a definition which shall
+exclude Pope will not readily be made.' Joseph Warton, too, Johnson's
+contemporary and friend, while preferring the Romantic School to the
+Classical, allows that in that species of poetry wherein Pope excelled
+he is superior to all mankind.
+
+In our century Bowles, whose edition of his works provoked prolonged
+discussion, in which Campbell, Byron, and the _Quarterly Review_ took
+part, places Pope above Dryden. Byron, with more enthusiasm than
+judgment, regarded him as the greatest name in our poetry; Scott, with
+generous appreciation of a genius so alien to his own, called him a
+'true Deacon of the craft,' and at one time proposed editing his works,
+a task projected also by Mr. Ruskin, who, putting Shakespeare aside as
+rather the world's than ours, holds Pope 'to be the most perfect
+representative we have since Chaucer of the true English mind.' 'Matched
+on his own ground,' says Mr. Swinburne, 'he never has been nor can be.'
+And Mr. Lowell in the same strain observes that 'in his own province he
+still stands unapproachably alone.'
+
+What then is Pope's ground? What is this province of which he is the
+sole ruler? To a considerable extent the question has been answered in
+these pages, but it may be well to sum up with more definiteness what
+has been already stated.
+
+In poetry Pope takes a first place in the second order of poets. The
+deficiencies which forbid his entrance into the first rank are obvious.
+He cannot sing, he has no ear for the subtlest melodies of verse, he is
+not a creative poet, and has few of the spirit-stirring thoughts which
+the noblest poets scatter through their pages with apparent
+unconsciousness. There are no depths in Pope and there are no heights;
+he has neither eye for the beauties of Nature, nor ear for her
+harmonies, and a primrose was no more to him than it was to Peter Bell.
+
+These are defects indeed, but nothing is more unfair says a great French
+critic than to judge notable minds solely by their defects, and in spite
+of them Pope's position is so unassailable that the critic must take a
+contracted view of the poet's art who questions his right to the title.
+
+His merits are of a kind not likely to be affected by time; a lively
+fancy, a power of satire almost unrivalled, and a skill in using words
+so consummate that there is no poet, excepting Shakespeare, who has left
+his mark upon the language so strongly. The loss to us if Pope's verse
+were to become extinct cannot readily be measured. He has said in the
+best words what we all know and feel, but cannot express, and has made
+that classical which in weaker hands would be commonplace. His
+sensibility to the claims of his art is exquisite, the adaptation of his
+style to his subject shows the hand of a master, and if these are not
+the highest gifts of a poet, they are gifts to which none but a poet can
+lay claim.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[11] Some qualification may be made to these statements. Pope took
+pleasure in landscape gardening on the English plan, as opposed to the
+formality of the French and Dutch systems, and the design of the Prince
+of Wales's garden is said to have been copied from the poet's at
+Twickenham.
+
+[12] Elwin and Courthope's _Pope_, vol. ii. p. 160.
+
+[13] See the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.
+
+[14] Elwin and Courthope's _Pope_, vol. v., p. 195.
+
+[15] 'Lady Mary,' says Byron, 'was greatly to blame in that quarrel for
+having encouraged Pope.... She should have remembered her own line,
+
+    '"He comes too near who comes to be denied."'
+
+
+[16] _Studies in English Literature_, p. 47.--_Stanford._
+
+[17] Quin (1693-1766) was the famous actor, and Patterson was Thomson's
+deputy in the surveyor-generalship of the Leeward Isles, and ultimately
+his successor.
+
+[18] The Earl of Peterborough, the meteor-like brilliancy of whose
+actions forms one of the most striking chapters in the history of his
+time.
+
+[19] _Life of Pope_, p. 216.
+
+[20] 'Pope and Swift,' says Dr. Johnson, 'had an unnatural delight in
+ideas physically impure, such as every other tongue utters with
+unwillingness, and of which every ear shrinks from the mention.'
+
+[21] Clarendon Press, Oxford.
+
+[22] No doubt many distinguished foreigners who appreciated the beauty
+of the poem had read it in the original.
+
+[23] Stephen's _Pope_, p. 163.
+
+[24] _Lectures on Art_, p. 70, Oxford.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+PRIOR, GAY, YOUNG, BLAIR, THOMSON.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Matthew Prior (1664-1721).]
+
+The ease with which the Queen Anne wits obtained office and rose to
+posts of high trust through the pleasant art of verse-making, is
+conspicuous in the career of Prior. His parents are unknown, the place
+of his birth is somewhat doubtful, although he is claimed by
+Wimborne-Minster, in Dorsetshire, and the first trustworthy facts
+recorded of his early career are that he was a Westminster scholar when
+the famous Dr. Busby, whose discipline was physical as well as mental,
+presided over the school. His father died, and his mother being no
+longer able to pay the school fees, Prior was placed with an uncle who
+kept the Rhenish Wine Tavern in Westminster. His seat was in the bar,
+and there the Earl of Dorset (1637-1705-6), a small poet, but a generous
+patron of poets, found the youth reading Horace, and, pleased with his
+'parts,' sent him back to Westminster, whence he went up to Cambridge as
+a scholar at St. John's, the college destined a century later to receive
+one of the greatest of English poets.
+
+Charles Montague, afterwards Earl of Halifax (1661-1715), the son of a
+younger son of a nobleman, was also a Westminster scholar. He entered
+Trinity College in 1679, and like Prior appears to have owed his good
+fortune to the rhymer's craft. 'At thirty,' writes Lord Macaulay, 'he
+would gladly have given all his chances in life for a comfortable
+vicarage and a chaplain's scarf. At thirty-seven he was First Lord of
+the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a Regent of the Kingdom.'
+The literary history of the Queen Anne age has many associations with
+his name. He proved a liberal patron of the wits, and of Pope among
+them, by subscribing largely to his _Homer_; but the poet's memory was
+stronger for imaginary injuries than for real benefits, and because
+Halifax had patronized Tickell, he figures in the Prologue to the
+Satires as 'full-blown Bufo, puffed by every quill.'
+
+Prior and Montague began their rhyming career early, and a partnership
+production, entitled the _Hind and Panther, transversed to the story of
+the Country Mouse and the City Mouse_ (1687), a parody of Dryden's
+famous poem published in the same year, brought both authors into
+notice. At the age of twenty-six Prior, who had previously obtained a
+fellowship, was appointed Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague. After
+that he rose steadily to eminence, became Secretary of State in Ireland,
+and was finally appointed Ambassador at the French Court. High office
+brings its troubles, and in those days was not without its perils. In
+1711 Prior was sent secretly to Paris to negotiate a peace, for which,
+when the Whigs came again into power, he was imprisoned and expected to
+lose his head. While in prison, where he remained for two years
+(1715-1717), the poet wrote _Alma_, a humorous and speculative poem on
+the relations of the soul and body, and when released published his
+_Poems_ by subscription in a noble folio, said to be the largest-sized
+volume in the whole range of English poetry. He gained 4,000 guineas by
+the publication, and with that sum and an estate purchased for him by
+Lord Harley, Prior was able to live in comfort. He died in September,
+1721, in his fifty-eighth year, and was buried in Westminster Abbey,
+under a monument for which he had had the vanity to pay five hundred
+pounds.
+
+The peculiar merit of Prior is better understood in our day than it was
+in his own. We read his poems solely for the sake of the 'lighter
+pieces,' which Johnson despised. The poet thought _Solomon_ his best
+work, but no one who toils through the three books which form that poem
+is likely to agree with this estimate. Dulness pervades the work like an
+atmosphere, but it had its admirers in the last century, and among them
+was John Wesley, who, in reply to Johnson's complaint of its
+tediousness, said he should as soon think of calling the Second or Sixth
+Æneid tedious. In the preface to the poem Prior declares that he "had
+rather be thought a good Englishman than the best poet or greatest
+scholar that ever wrote," a passage which does more honour to the poet
+than any in the text. A far more popular piece was _Henry and Emma_,
+which even so fine a judge of poetry as Cowper called 'inimitable.'
+Tastes change, let us hope for the better, and possibly none but the
+greatest poets remain unaffected by time. Assuredly Prior does not, and
+_Henry and Emma_ affords a striking illustration of the contrast between
+the poetical spirit of Prior's age and that which influences ours. The
+poem is founded on the fine ballad of the _Nut-Browne Maide_. The story,
+as originally told, is homely and quaint, written without apparent
+effort and told in 360 lines. Prior requires considerably more than
+twice that number, and his maid and her lover, instead of using the
+simple language befitting the theme, employ the conventional machinery
+of the age, and bring Jove and Mars, Cupid and Venus upon the scene,
+with allusions to Marlborough's victories and to 'Anna's wondrous
+reign.'
+
+_Alma_, a poem written in Hudibrastic verse, which shows that Prior had
+in a measure caught the vein of Butler, has some couplets familiar in
+quotations. He won, too, not a little contemporary reputation for his
+tales in verse, which are singularly coarse; but an age that tolerated
+Mrs. Manley and read the plays and novels of Aphra Behn was not likely
+to object to the grossness of Prior. Dr. Johnson would not admit that
+his poems were unfit for a lady's table, and Wesley, who appears to have
+been strangely oblivious to Prior's moral delinquencies, observes that
+his tales are the best told of any in the English tongue. Cowper praised
+him for his 'charming ease,' and this gift enabled him to write some of
+the most delightful occasional verses produced in the century. There is
+nothing more exquisite of its kind than his address, _To a Child of
+Quality_, written when the child was five years old and the poet forty,
+and one is not surprised to learn that Prior was admired by Thomas
+Moore, who more than once caught his note. A reader familiar with Moore
+and ignorant of Prior would without hesitation attribute the following
+stanzas, from the _Answer to Chloe Jealous_, to the Irish poet:
+
+    'The god of us versemen (you know, Child), the sun,
+      How after his journeys he sets up his rest;
+    If at morning o'er earth 'tis his fancy to run,
+      At night he declines on his Thetis's breast.
+
+    'So when I am wearied with wandering all day,
+      To thee, my delight, in the evening I come;
+    No matter what beauties I saw in my way;
+      They were but my visits, but thou art my home.
+
+    'Then finish, dear Cloe, this pastoral war,
+      And let us, like Horace and Lydia, agree;
+    For thou art a girl as much brighter than her
+      As he was a poet sublimer than me.'
+
+"The grammatical lapse in these last two lines," says Mr. Austin Dobson,
+"perhaps calls for correction, but many readers will probably agree with
+Moore (_Diary_, November, 1818), 'that it is far prettier as it is.'
+'Nothing,' he says truly, 'can be more gracefully light and gallant than
+this little poem.'"
+
+It was fancy and not imagination which conceived the following lines,
+but how charming is the fancy! The poem, which is given in a slightly
+abridged form, is addressed
+
+'TO A LADY: SHE REFUSING TO CONTINUE A DISPUTE WITH ME, AND LEAVING ME
+IN THE ARGUMENT.
+
+    'In the dispute whate'er I said,
+      My heart was by my tongue belied;
+    And in my looks you might have read
+      How much I argued on your side.
+
+    'You, far from danger as from fear,
+      Might have sustained an open fight;
+    For seldom your opinions err;
+      Your eyes are always in the right.
+
+    'Alas! not hoping to subdue,
+      I only to the fight aspired;
+    To keep the beauteous foe in view
+      Was all the glory I desired.
+
+    'But she, howe'er of victory sure,
+      Contemns the wreath too long delayed;
+    And, armed with more immediate power,
+      Calls cruel silence to her aid.
+
+    'Deeper to wound, she shuns the fight:
+      She drops her arms, to gain the field;
+    Secures her conquest by her flight;
+      And triumphs, when she seems to yield.
+
+    'So when the Parthian turned his steed,
+      And from the hostile camp withdrew;
+    With cruel skill the backward reed
+      He sent; and as he fled, he slew.'
+
+Wit and a ready command of verse are the characteristics of Prior's
+poetry. Both of these gifts are to be seen in his lively _English
+ballad on the Taking of Namur by the King of Great Britain_, in which he
+travesties Boileau's _Ode sur la prise de Namur_. As an epigrammatist he
+reaped his advantage from a study of Martial, and in this department of
+verse Prior is often successful. If brevity be a prominent merit in an
+epigram, he sometimes excels his master, as, for example, in this
+stanza:
+
+    'To John I owed great obligation;
+      But John unhappily thought fit
+    To publish it to all the nation;
+      Sure John and I are more than quit.'[25]
+
+This is half the length of the original Latin, and what it loses in
+elegance it gains in point.
+
+It may be hoped that the next quotation is a libel on Bishop Atterbury;
+if so, the lines have every merit but truth. The epigram is on the
+funeral of the Duke of Buckingham, who died in 1721.
+
+    'I have no hopes,' the duke he says, and dies;
+    'In sure and certain hopes,' the prelate cries:
+    Of these two learned peers, I prithee say, man,
+    Who is the lying knave, the priest or layman?
+    The duke he stands an infidel confest;
+    'He's our dear brother,' quoth the lordly priest.
+    The duke, though knave, still 'brother dear,' he cries;
+    And who can say the reverend prelate lies?
+
+Prior, it may be observed here, could say pointed things in prose as
+well as in verse, and nothing can be happier than his reply to the
+Frenchman's inquiry whether the King of England had anything to show in
+his palace equal to the paintings at Versailles illustrating the
+victories of Louis XIV: 'The monuments of my master's actions,' said the
+poet, 'are to be seen everywhere except in his own house.'
+
+It is always interesting to link poet with poet, and in relation to
+Prior many readers will recall the pathetic incident related of Sir
+Walter Scott when the wonderful intellect which had entranced the world
+was giving indications of decay. Lockhart relates how, as they were
+travelling together, a quotation from Prior led Scott to make another,
+slightly altered for the occasion, and he adds:
+
+'This seemed to put him into the train of Prior, and he repeated several
+striking passages both of the _Alma_ and the _Solomon_. He was still at
+this when we reached a longish hill, and he got out to walk a little. As
+we climbed the ascent, he leaning heavily on my shoulder, we were met by
+a couple of beggars, who were, or professed to be, old soldiers both of
+Egypt and the Peninsula. One of them wanted a leg, which circumstance
+alone would have opened Scott's purse-strings, though, _ex facie_, a sad
+old blackguard; but the fellow had recognized his person as it happened,
+and in asking an alms bade God bless him fervently by his name. The
+mendicants went on their way, and we stood breathing on the knoll. Sir
+Walter followed them with his eye, and planting his stick firmly on the
+sod, repeated, without break or hesitation Prior's verses to the
+historian Mezeray. That he applied them to himself was touchingly
+obvious, and therefore I must quote them.
+
+    '"Whate'er thy countrymen have done,
+    By law and wit, by sword and gun,
+      In thee is faithfully recited;
+    And all the living world that view
+    Thy work, give thee the praises due,
+      At once instructed and delighted.
+
+    '"Yet for the fame of all these deeds,
+    What beggar in the _Invalides_,
+      With lameness broke, with blindness smitten,
+    Wished ever decently to die,
+    To have been either Mezeray,
+      Or any monarch he has written?
+
+    '"It strange, dear author, yet it true is,
+    That down from Pharamond to Louis
+      All covet life, yet call it pain:
+    All feel the ill, yet shun the cure;
+    Can sense this paradox endure?
+      Resolve me Cambray[26] or Fontaine.
+
+    '"The man in graver tragic known
+    (Though his best part long since was done),
+      Still on the stage desires to tarry;
+    And he who played the Harlequin,
+    After the jest still loads the scene,
+      Unwilling to retire, though weary."'
+
+[Sidenote: John Gay (1685-1732).]
+
+Gay, who enjoyed an unbroken friendship with the brotherhood of wits,
+and was treated by them like a spoilt child, was born at Barnstaple in
+1685, and left an orphan at the age of ten. He was educated at the free
+grammar school in the town, and was afterwards, to his discontent,
+apprenticed to a mercer in London. He escaped from this uncongenial
+employment to be dependent on an uncle, and thus early exhibited his
+life-long disposition to rely upon others for support. 'Providence,'
+Swift writes, 'never designed Gay to be above two-and-twenty by his
+thoughtlessness and gullibility. He has as little foresight of age,
+sickness, poverty, or loss of admirers as a girl of fifteen.' His
+weakness, it has been said, appealed to Swift's strength, and Swift,
+Pope, and Arbuthnot were Gay's most faithful friends. They found
+something in him to laugh at and to love. Ladies, too, treated him with
+the kind of friendliness which has a touch of commiseration. In 1714 Gay
+was appointed secretary to Lord Clarendon, a post which he owed to
+Swift, but the death of Queen Anne in that year brought the Whigs into
+office, and destroyed the poet's prospects. Prior to this he had been
+secretary to the imperious Duchess of Monmouth. He was now left without
+money or employment, and owed much to the generosity of Pope. It was
+Gay's lot 'in suing long to bide,' to be always hoping, and nearly
+always disappointed. 'He seems,' says his latest biographer, 'to have
+begun his career under the impression that it was somebody's duty to
+provide for him in the world, and this impression clung to him through
+nearly the whole of a lifetime.'[27] Ten years before his death he was
+eagerly looking to others for support. Writing to Swift, he says: 'I
+lodge at present in Burlington House, and have received many civilities
+from many great men, but very few real benefits. They wonder at each
+other for not providing for me, and I wonder at them all.'
+
+Gay's first poem of any mark was _The Shepherd's Week_ (1714), six
+burlesque pastorals, a subject proposed to him by Pope, who was then
+smarting from the praise Philips had received in _The Guardian_. But if
+Pope meant Gay to poke his fun at Philips in _The Shepherd's Week_, he
+must have been disappointed, for the poems were accepted as genuine
+bucolics, and although humorously absurd, are, to say the least, more
+true to rustic life than the pastorals either of Philips or of Pope.
+_The Shepherd's Week_ was followed by _Trivia_ (1715), a piece suggested
+by Swift's _City Shower_. It is one of Gay's most notable productions,
+not as a poem, but as a vivid description of the streets of London
+nearly two hundred years ago. The great reputation he obtained as the
+author of _The Fables_ (1727), and still more of _The Beggar's Opera_
+(1728), the idea of which was suggested to Gay by Swift, survived him
+for some years. _The Fables_ were written for and dedicated to the
+youthful Duke of Cumberland, who is asked to "accept the moral lay, and
+in these tales mankind survey." There is skill and ingenuity in the
+poems, but higher merit they cannot boast, and young readers are likely
+to prefer the illustrations which generally accompany _The Fables_ to
+the letterpress. Many of Gay's allusions are beyond the apprehension of
+the young, and have a political flavour. _The Beggar's Opera_ was
+intended as a burlesque of the Italian opera, which had been long the
+laughing-stock of men of letters, and as the play was thought to have
+political significance, and the character of Macheath to be a portrait
+of Walpole, it was received with enthusiasm, and acted in London for
+about sixty nights. So popular did the opera become, that ladies carried
+about the songs on their fans.
+
+Eight years before, Gay had published his poems by subscription, and in
+those happy days for versemen had gained £1,000 by the venture. He put
+the money into South Sea stock, and lost it all. For _The Beggar's
+Opera_ he received about £800. It was followed by _Polly_, a play of the
+same coarse character, which, for political reasons, was not allowed to
+be acted. The result was that it had a large sale, and put money in
+Gay's purse. Ten thousand five hundred copies are said to have been
+printed in one year, and the £1,200 realized by the sale were very
+wisely retained for the poet's use by the Duke of Queensberry, under
+whose roof he had at length found a warm nest. To the student Gay is
+chiefly interesting as the only noteworthy poet of the period, south of
+the Tweed, gifted with a lyrical capacity. Two or three of his songs and
+ballads, and especially _Black-Eyed Susan_, have a charm beyond the
+reach of the mechanical versifier. But the art of song is at a low level
+even in the hands of Gay. The lyric which the Elizabethan and Jacobean
+poets loved so well, and of which the present century has produced
+specimens to be matched only by Shakespeare, may be said to have been
+lost to English poetry for the first half of the last century, since
+neither Prior's verse, delightful though it be, nor the songs of Gay,
+have enough of the poetical element to form exceptions to this
+statement.
+
+In his _Tales_ he follows Prior in grossness, while inferior to him in
+art. Like the greater number of the Queen Anne poets, Gay flatters with
+a free hand. In an epistle addressed to Lintot, the bookseller, he
+declares that Anacreon lives once more in Sheffield, and Waller in
+Granville, that Buckingham's verse will last to distant time; while Ovid
+sings again in Addison, and 'Homer's _Iliad_ shines in his _Campaign_.'
+
+One of the liveliest and most graceful of Gay's poems is addressed to
+Pope 'On his having finished his translation of Homer's _Iliad_.' It is
+called _A Welcome from Greece_, and describes the friends who assembled
+to greet the poet on his return to England.
+
+Three stanzas from the Epistle shall be quoted:
+
+    'Oh, what a concourse swarms on yonder quay!
+      The sky re-echoes with new shouts of joy;
+    By all this show, I ween 'tis Lord Mayor's day;
+      I hear the voice of trumpet and hautboy--
+    No, now I see them near.--Oh, these are they
+      Who come in crowds to welcome thee from Troy.
+    Hail to the bard, whom long as lost we mourned
+    From siege, from battle, and from storm returned!
+
+    'What lady's that to whom he gently bends?
+      Who knows not her? Ah! those are Wortley's eyes:
+    How art thou honoured, numbered with her friends!
+      For she distinguishes the good and wise.
+    The sweet-tongued Murray near her side attends;
+      Now to my heart the glance of Howard flies;
+    Now Hervey, fair of face, I mark full well,
+    With thee Youth's youngest daughter, sweet Lepell.
+
+    'I see two lovely sisters hand in hand,
+      The fair-haired Martha and Teresa brown;
+    Madge Bellenden, the tallest of the land;
+      And smiling Mary, soft and fair as down.
+    Yonder I see the cheerful Duchess stand,
+      For friendship, zeal, and blithesome humours known;
+    Whence that loud shout in such a hearty strain?
+    Why, all the Hamiltons are in her train!'
+
+Gay's love of good living was known to all his friends. 'As the French
+philosopher,' Congreve wrote, 'used to prove his existence by _cogito
+ergo sum_, the greatest proof of Gay's existence is _edit ergo est_.'
+For a long time his health compelled him to give up wine, and he tells
+Swift that he had also left off verse-making, 'for I really think that
+man must be a bold writer who trusts to wit without it.' He was
+dispirited, he told Swift not long before his death, for want of a
+pursuit, and found 'indolence and idleness the most tiresome things in
+the world.'
+
+Gay died in 1732 at the Duke of Queensberry's house, and Pope grieved
+that one of his nearest and longest ties was broken. He was interred, to
+quote Arbuthnot's words, 'as a peer of the realm,' in Westminster Abbey.
+The superficial character of the poet may be seen in his couplet
+transcribed upon the monument:
+
+    'Life is a jest, and all things show it;
+    I thought so once, and now I know it.'
+
+[Sidenote: Edward Young (1684-1765).]
+
+Gay's moderate gift of song was withheld from the famous author of the
+_Night Thoughts_. Yet Young was vain enough to think that he possessed
+it, and wrote a patriotic ode called _Ocean_, preceded by an elaborate
+essay on lyric poetry. He also produced _Imperium Pelagi_ (1729), _A
+Naval Lyric written in Imitation of Pindar's spirit_. The lyric, which
+was travestied by Fielding in his _Tom Thumb_,[28] reads like a
+burlesque, and badly treated though Pindar was by the versemen of the
+last century, there is perhaps not one of them who mocks him more
+outrageously than Young. He says that this ode is an original, and no
+critic is likely to dispute the assertion.
+
+Young was born in 1684 at Upham, near Winchester, his father, who was
+afterwards Dean of Sarum, being at that time the rector of the village.
+Edward was placed upon the foundation at Winchester College, and
+remained there until he was eighteen. He was then sent up to New
+College, and afterwards removed to Corpus. At the age of twenty-seven he
+was nominated to a law fellowship at All Souls, and took his degree of
+B.C.L. and his doctor's degree some years later. Characteristically
+enough he began his poetical career by _An Epistle to Lord Lansdowne_
+(1712), who is praised for his heavenly numbers, and is said to have
+been born "to make the muse immortal." His next poem of any consequence,
+_The Last Day_, written in heroic couplets, and filling three books, is
+correct, or fairly so, in versification, and execrable in taste. Young,
+it may be supposed, wished to produce a sense of solemnity in the
+treatment of his theme, and he does so by lamenting that the very land
+'where the Stuarts filled an awful throne' will in that day be
+forgotten. The want of taste which so often deforms Young's verse is
+also seen in the imagery he employs to illustrate the fear which even
+good men may have on appearing before that 'dread tribunal.'
+
+    'Thus the chaste bridegroom, when the priest draws nigh,
+    Beholds his blessing with a trembling eye;
+    Feels doubtful passions throb in every vein,
+    And in his cheeks are mingled joy and pain,
+    Lest still some intervening chance should rise,
+    Leap forth at once, and snatch the golden prize,
+    Inflame his woe, by bringing it so late,
+    And stab him in the crisis of his fate.'
+
+His next poem, _The Force of Religion, or Vanquished Love_, was
+suggested by the execution of Lady Jane Grey and Lord Guildford, a
+subject chosen for a tragedy by John Banks (1694), by Rowe in 1715, and
+treated with considerable dramatic power in our own day by Ross Neil. In
+Young's hands this fine theme becomes a rhetorical exercise without
+poetry and without pathos. A few lines will suffice to show the style of
+the poem. Jane and Dudley, it must be premised, are imprisoned in a
+gloomy hall:
+
+    'What can they do? They fix their mournful eyes--
+    Then Guildford, thus abruptly: "I despise
+    An empire lost; I fling away the crown;
+    Numbers have laid that bright delusion down;
+    But where's the Charles, or Dioclesian, where,
+    Could quit the blooming, wedded, weeping fair?
+    Oh! to dwell ever on thy lip! to stand
+    In full possession of thy snowy hand!
+    And thro' the unclouded crystal of thine eye
+    The heavenly treasures of thy mind to spy!
+    Till rapture reason happily destroys,
+    And my soul wanders through immortal joys!
+    Give me the world, and ask me, where's my bliss?
+    I clasp thee to my breast and answer, this."'
+
+Verse of this quality, which might be amply quoted, is of interest to
+the student of literature, since in Young's day it passed current for
+poetry. But in accepting his claims as a poet the faith of the age must
+have been often strained.
+
+Walpole, who despised the whole tribe of poets, and cared nothing for
+literature, had by some strange chance awarded to Young a pension of
+£200 a-year, whereupon in a piece called _The Instalment_, addressed to
+Sir Robert, Britain is called upon to behold
+
+    'His azure ribbon and his radiant star,'
+
+and the poet's breast 'glows with grateful fire' as he exclaims:
+
+    'The streams of royal bounty turned by thee
+    Refresh the dry domains of poesy.
+    My fortune shows, when arts are Walpole's care,
+    What slender worth forbids us to despair:
+    Be this thy partial smile from censure free,
+    'Twas meant for merit, though it fell on me.'
+
+Following in the steps of George Sandys, but with inferior power, and in
+a less racy diction, Young performed the vain task of paraphrasing part
+of the Book of Job, one of the noblest poems the world possesses, and
+translated in our authorized version in language not to be surpassed for
+dignity and simplicity.
+
+In 1719 his _Busiris_ was performed. _The Revenge_, a better known
+tragedy, written on the French model, followed in 1721, and kept the
+stage for some time. Seven years later _The Brothers_, his third and
+last tragedy, was in rehearsal, but the poet, who had lately taken holy
+orders, withdrew it at the last moment. These tragedies, which are full
+of sound and fury, are destitute of tragic power. _The Revenge_, in
+which Zanga acts the part of an Iago, has some forcible scenes, and so,
+despite much rant and fustian, has _Busiris_. Plenty of blood is shed,
+of course, and the heroines of the plays die by their own hands. Tragedy
+is supposed to exercise an elevating influence, but to counteract this
+happy result, _Busiris_ and _The Revenge_ are followed by indecent
+epilogues, in which the speakers jest at the feelings which the plays
+may have excited. For _The Brothers_ Young wrote his own epilogue. It is
+decent and dull. His genius was better fitted for satire than for the
+drama, and _The Universal Passion_, which consists of seven satires
+published in a collected form in 1728, brought him reputation and money.
+The poet Crabbe was never more surprised in his life than when John
+Murray (the famous 'My Murray' of Byron) gave him £3,000 for the
+copyright of his poems; Young received the same sum for work
+immeasurably inferior in value, and in a less legitimate way. Two
+thousand pounds, it is stated, was a gift from the Duke of Grafton, who
+said it was the best bargain he ever made, as the satires were worth
+£4,000. Young, it will be seen, preceded Pope as a satirist. He is more
+generous and humane, and has none of the venomous attacks on living
+persons by which Pope added piquancy to his verse. But he is a careless
+writer, and for the most part lacks the exquisite precision, the subtle
+wit, the rhythmical felicity, which make the couplets of Pope so
+memorable. _The Dunciad_, the _Moral Essays_, and the _Imitations_ are
+read by all lovers of literature, but _The Universal Passion_ is
+forgotten. Of the six satires, the two on women are the most spirited,
+and may be compared with Pope's on the same subject. The different
+foibles, and faults worse than foibles of the women of that day are
+exhibited with a satirist's licence, and occasionally with a Pope-like
+terseness. Take the following, for example:
+
+    'There is no woman where there's no reserve,
+    And 'tis on plenty your poor lovers starve.'
+
+    'Few to good breeding make a just pretence;
+    Good breeding is the blossom of good sense.'
+
+    'A shameless woman is the worst of men.'
+
+    'Naked in nothing should a woman be,
+    But veil her very wit with modesty.'
+
+It was not until he was nearly fifty that Young, disappointed of the
+preferment he sought, took holy orders, and in 1730 accepted the college
+living of Welwyn, in Herts, which he held till his death.
+
+In the following year the poet married Lady Elizabeth Lee, a daughter of
+the Earl of Lichfield, a union that lasted ten years. One son was the
+offspring of this marriage. Lady Elizabeth had a daughter by a former
+marriage, who was married to Mr. Temple, a son of Lord Palmerston, and
+shortly before her own death she lost both daughter and son-in-law, who,
+there can be little doubt, are the Philander and Narcissa of the _Night
+Thoughts_, the earlier books of which were published in 1742. This once
+celebrated poem, written in his old age, is the one effort of Young's
+genius that has enjoyed a great popularity. It suited well an age which,
+while far from moral, delighted in moral treatises and in didactic
+verse. In the _Night Thoughts_ Young remembers that he is a clergyman,
+and puts on his gown and bands. He puts on also his singing robes, and
+shows the reader what none of his earlier poems prove, that he is in the
+presence of a poet.
+
+The _Night Thoughts_ is remarkable in its finest passages for a strong,
+but sombre imagination, and for a command of his instrument that puts
+Young at times nearly on a level with the greatest masters of blank
+verse. On this height, however, he does not stay long. He is rich in
+great thoughts, but they do not fall unconsciously, as it were, while
+the poet pursues his argument. They are aphorisms uttered generally in
+single lines which are apt to break the continuity of the poem and to
+injure the harmony of its versification. The theme of Life, Death, and
+Immortality is not a narrow one, and affords ample space for imaginative
+treatment. Young's treatment of it is too often declamatory; he drops
+the poet in the rhetorician and the wit. There is much of the false
+sublime in the poem, and much that reveals the hollow character of the
+writer. The first book is the finest, sparkling with felicitous
+expressions and rising frequently to true poetry. The poetical quality
+of that book, however, is lessened by the author's passion for
+antithesis. The merit of the following passage, for example, is not due
+to poetical inspiration:
+
+    'How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
+    How complicate, how wonderful is man!
+    How passing wonder He, who made him such!
+    Who centered in our make such strange extremes
+    From different natures, marvellously mixed,
+    Connexion exquisite of distant worlds!
+    Distinguished link in being's endless chain!
+    Midway from nothing to the Deity;
+    A beam etherial, sullied, and absorbt!
+    Though sullied and dishonoured still divine!
+    Dim miniature of greatness absolute!
+    An heir of glory! a frail child of dust!
+    Helpless immortal! insect infinite!
+    A worm! a god!--I tremble at myself,
+    And in myself am lost. At home a stranger,
+    Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast,
+    And wondering at her own: How reason reels!
+    O what a miracle to man is man!
+    Triumphantly distressed! what joy! what dread!
+    Alternately transported and alarmed!
+    What can preserve my life? or what destroy?
+    An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave:
+    Legions of angels can't confine me there.'
+
+The opening of the ninth and last book will give a more favourable
+illustration of Young's style:
+
+    'As when a traveller, a long day past
+    In painful search of what he cannot find,
+    At night's approach, content with the next cot,
+    There ruminates awhile, his labour lost;
+    Then cheers his heart with what his fate affords,
+    And chants his sonnet to deceive the time,
+    Till the due season calls him to repose;
+    Thus I, long-travelled in the ways of men,
+    And dancing with the rest the giddy maze
+    Where Disappointment smiles at Hope's career;
+    Warned by the languor of life's evening ray,
+    At length have housed me in an humble shed,
+    Where, future wandering banished from my thought,
+    And waiting, patient, the sweet hour of rest,
+    I chase the moments with a serious song.
+    Song soothes our pains, and age has pains to soothe.'
+
+While moralizing on man's mortality Young is seldom a cheerful monitor,
+he dwells with too great persistence on the incidents of death and of
+bodily corruption, too little on life with which we have more to do than
+with death. Thus with a strange perversion he exclaims:
+
+    'This is the desart, this the solitude,
+    How populous, how vital, is the grave!
+    This is creation's melancholy vault,
+    The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom,
+    The land of apparitions, empty shades!
+    All, all on earth is shadow, all beyond
+    Is substance; the reverse is folly's creed.'
+
+and harping on the same theme in the ninth book, says:
+
+    'What is the world itself? Thy world--a grave.
+    Where is the dust that has not been alive?
+    The spade, the plough, disturb our ancestors;
+    From human mould we reap our daily bread;
+    The globe around earth's hollow surface shakes,
+    And is the ceiling of her sleeping sons.
+    O'er devastation we blind revels keep;
+    Whole buried towns support the dancer's heel.'
+
+[Sidenote: Robert Blair (1699-1746).]
+
+On laying down the _Night Thoughts_ the student may be advised to read
+Blair's _Grave_, a poem in less than 800 lines of blank verse, composed
+in a fresher and more rigorous style than the far larger work of Young,
+and rather moulded, as Mr. Saintsbury has observed, 'upon dramatic than
+upon purely poetical models.' _The Grave_, which was written before the
+publication of the _Night Thoughts_,[29] abounds with poetical
+felicities, and is pregnant with suggestions that seize the imagination,
+and appeal alike to the intellect and the heart. The brevity of the
+piece is in its favour; there is not a line that flags.
+
+    'Tell us, ye dead! will none of you, in pity
+    To those you left behind, disclose the secret?
+    Oh! that some courteous ghost would blab it out,--
+    What 'tis you are and we must shortly be.
+    I've heard that souls departed have sometimes
+    Forewarned men of their death. 'Twas kindly done
+    To knock and give the alarm. But what means
+    This stinted charity? 'Tis but lame kindness
+    That does its work by halves. Why might you not
+    Tell us what 'tis to die? Do the strict laws
+    Of your society forbid your speaking
+    Upon a point so nice?--I'll ask no more:
+    Sullen, like lamps in sepulchres, your shine
+    Enlightens but yourselves. Well, 'tis no matter;
+    A very little time will clear up all,
+    And make us learn'd as you are, and as close.'
+
+
+Blair, who was a Scotch clergyman, wrote also an _Elegy in Memory of
+William Law_, a Professor of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh, whose
+daughter he married. He writes in a masculine and homely style. His
+imagery is often more powerful than pleasing, but some of his similes
+win attention by their beauty. For example:
+
+    "Look how the fair one weeps! the conscious tears
+    Stand thick as dewdrops on the bells of flowers."
+
+Among the victims claimed by the grave is
+
+        'The long demurring maid,
+    Whose lonely unappropriated sweets
+    Smiled, like yon knot of cowslips on the cliff,
+    Not to be come at by the willing hand.'
+
+And the death of a good man is pictured in this musical couplet:
+
+    'Night dews fall not more gently to the ground
+    Nor weary worn out winds expire so soft.'
+
+Cowper, referring to the poets of his century, said that every warbler
+had Pope's tune by heart. But if they had the tune by heart, many of
+them did not make it a vehicle for their verse, and among these are
+poets of the weight and worth of Thomson and Young, of Gray and Collins.
+Poets of a minor order, too, such as Somerville, Armstrong, Glover,
+Shenstone, Akenside, and John Dyer, either did not use the heroic
+distich which Pope crowned with such honour, or used it in their least
+significant poems.
+
+[Sidenote: James Thomson (1700-1748).]
+
+Thomson's influence, though less visible than Pope's, was probably as
+great. It was felt by the poets who loved Nature, and had no turn for
+satire. To pass to him from Prior, Gay, and Young is to leave the town
+for the country. English poetry owes much to the author of _The
+Seasons_, who was the first among the poets of his century to bring men
+back to 'Nature, the Vicar of the Almighty Lord.' He could not, indeed,
+shake off altogether the fetters of the conventional diction current in
+his day, and his style is often turgid and verbose. But Thomson had, to
+use a phrase of his own, 'a fine flame of imagination,' and when brought
+face to face with Nature he has the inspiration of a poet who discerns
+the lessons which Nature is ready to teach.
+
+James Thomson was born at Ednam, on the banks of the Tweed, on September
+11th, 1700, but his father removed to Jedburgh shortly afterwards, and
+there the future poet gained his first impression of rural scenes. He
+began to rhyme in boyhood, but, unlike most young poets, had the good
+sense to make an annual bonfire of his youthful effusions. At the early
+age of fifteen he was sent to the university at Edinburgh, his father,
+who was a Presbyterian minister, wishing that his son should follow the
+same vocation. But Thomson was not destined to 'wag his head in a
+pulpit.' He had a friend at this time in David Mallet, a minor poet of
+more prudence than principle, and when Mallet had the good fortune to
+gain a tutorship in London, his companion also started for the
+metropolis in search of money and fame. It was a desperate venture, and
+the young poet's difficulties were increased by the loss of his letters
+of introduction. Scotchmen however have always countrymen willing to
+help them, and Thomson whose pedigree on the mother's side connected him
+with the famous house of Home, found temporary employment as tutor to a
+child of Lord Binning who belonged by marriage to the same family.
+Afterwards he resided with Millan, a bookseller at Charing Cross, and
+then having finished _Winter_ (1726), on which he had been at work for
+some time, he sold it to the publisher for three guineas. Before long
+it was read and warmly praised by Aaron Hill, then a man of mark in the
+world of letters. Sir Spencer Compton, the Speaker, to whom the poem was
+dedicated, gave the poet twenty guineas for the compliment; Rundle, the
+Bishop of Derry, and several ladies of rank cheered him with their
+praise, and Thomson's success was assured. It was the age of patrons,
+and he practised without shame and without discrimination the art of
+flattery. Each book of _The Seasons_ had a dedication, and the honour
+was one for which some kind of payment was expected. _Summer_ appeared
+in 1727 and _Spring_ in the year following. In 1729 the appearance of
+_Britannia_ showed the popularity of the poet and of his theme, for
+three editions were sold. It is a distinctly party poem, and contains an
+attack upon Walpole--whom he had previously praised as the 'most
+illustrious of patriots'--for submitting to indignities from Spain. The
+British Lion roars loudly in it, but there is more of fustian in the
+piece than of true patriotism. 'How dares,' the poet exclaims, 'the
+proud Iberian rouse to wrath the masters of the main:'
+
+    'Who told him that the big incumbent war
+    Would not ere this have rolled his trembling ports
+    In smoky ruin? and his guilty stores,
+    Won by the ravage of a butchered world,
+    Yet unatoned, sunk in the swallowing deep,
+    Or led the glittering prize into the Thames?'
+
+In February, 1729-30, Thomson's tragedy of _Sophonisba_, a subject
+previously chosen by Marston (1606), and by Lee (1676), was acted at
+Drury Lane. The play was dedicated to the queen, and on the opening
+night the house was crowded, but the success of the piece was slight.
+Thomson's genius was not dramatic, and while his characters declaim,
+they do not act. His next play, _Agamemnon_ (1738), was not lost for
+want of labour or of friends. Pope appeared in the theatre on the first
+night, and was greeted with applause. The Prince and Princess of Wales
+were present on another occasion, but the play did not live long. His
+third attempt, _Edward and Eleanora_, was prohibited by the Lord
+Chamberlain, since it was supposed to praise the Prince of Wales at the
+expense of the Court. In 1740 the _Masque of Alfred_, by Thomson and
+Mallet, was performed. _Tancred and Sigismunda_ followed in 1745, and
+this tragedy, in which Garrick played the leading part, had at the time
+a considerable measure of success. The plot is more interesting than
+that of _Sophonisba_, and the characters are more life-like. Despite its
+effusive sentiment, Garrick's splendid acting would, no doubt, make the
+tragedy effective on the stage, but it does not add to the literary
+reputation of the poet. _Coriolanus_, Thomson's last drama, was not
+performed upon the stage until the year after his death.
+
+Voltaire, who had met Thomson and liked him--the liking, indeed, seemed
+to be universal--praised his tragedies for being 'elegantly writ.' 'It
+may be,' he says, 'that his heroes are neither moving nor busy enough,
+but taking him all in all, methinks he has the highest claim to the
+greatest esteem.' The value of Voltaire's criticism of an English
+dramatist is best appreciated by remembering his ignorant judgment of
+Shakespeare.
+
+Thomson's laurels were gained in another field of poetry. On the
+production of _Autumn_ in 1730, _The Seasons_ in its complete form was
+published by subscription in quarto. The four books, as we have already
+said, appeared at different times, _Winter_ being the first in order and
+_Autumn_ the latest. The Hymn with which the poem concludes may be
+compared, and will not greatly suffer in the comparison, with Adam's
+morning hymn in the fifth book of _Paradise Lost_, and with Coleridge's
+_Hymn in the Valley of Chamouni_. Like them it is raised, to use the
+poet's own words, to an 'Almighty Father.' A brief extract shall be
+given:
+
+    'His praise, ye brooks, attune, ye trembling rills;
+    And let me catch it as I muse along.
+    Ye headlong torrents, rapid, and profound;
+    Ye softer floods, that lead the humid maze
+    Along the vale; and thou, majestic main,
+    A secret world of wonders in thyself,
+    Sound His stupendous praise, whose greater voice
+    Or bids you roar, or bids your roarings fall.
+    Soft roll your incense, herbs, and fruits, and flowers,
+    In mingled clouds to Him, whose sun exalts,
+    Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil paints.
+    Ye forests bend, ye harvests wave, to Him;
+    Breathe your still song into the reaper's heart,
+    As home he goes beneath the joyous moon.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Great source of day! best image here below
+    Of thy Creator, ever pouring wide,
+    From world to world, the vital ocean round,
+    On Nature write with every beam His praise.
+    The thunder rolls: be hushed the prostrate world;
+    While cloud to cloud returns the solemn hymn.
+    Bleat out afresh, ye hills; ye mossy rocks
+    Retain the sound: the broad responsive low,
+    Ye valleys, raise; for the Great Shepherd reigns,
+    And His unsuffering kingdom yet will come.'
+
+Swift complains that the _Seasons_, being all descriptive, nothing is
+doing, a defect inseparable from the subject. But the work has a poet's
+best gift--imagination--and a poet's instinct for apprehending the charm
+of what is minute in Nature, as well as of what is grand.
+
+Thomson has been called the naturalist's poet, and Hartley Coleridge
+observes that he is 'a perfect reservoir of natural images.' In his
+account of what he had learnt only by report he depends sometimes on the
+ignorant traditions of the country people; but in describing what he
+observes with the bodily eye, and with the eye of the mind, he is
+faithful to what he sees, and to what he perceives. No Dutch painter can
+be more exact and accurate than Thomson in the delineation of familiar
+scenes, and of animal life. In illustration of this gift, which Cowper
+shares with him, a scene, not to be surpassed for truthfulness of
+description, shall be quoted from _Winter_:
+
+    'Through the hushed air the whitening shower descends,
+    At first thin-wavering; till at last the flakes
+    Fall broad and wide and fast, dimming the day
+    With a continual flow. The cherished fields
+    Put on their winter robe of purest white.
+    'Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts
+    Along the mazy current. Low the woods
+    Bow their hoar head; and ere the languid sun,
+    Faint from the west, emits his evening ray,
+    Earth's universal face, deep-hid and chill,
+    Is one wild dazzling waste, that buries wide
+    The works of man. Drooping, the labourer-ox
+    Stands covered o'er with snow, and then demands
+    The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven,
+    Tamed by the cruel season, crowd around
+    The winnowing store, and claim the little boon
+    Which Providence assigns them. One alone,
+    The redbreast, sacred to the household gods,
+    Wisely regardful of th' embroiling sky,
+    In joyless fields and thorny thickets, leaves
+    His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man
+    His annual visit. Half afraid, he first
+    Against the window beats; then brisk, alights
+    On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor,
+    Eyes all the smiling family askance,
+    And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is--
+    Till more familiar grown, the table-crumbs
+    Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds
+    Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare,
+    Though timorous of heart and hard beset
+    By death in various forms, dark snares, and dogs,
+    And more unpitying men, the garden seeks
+    Urged on by fearless want. The bleating kind
+    Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth,
+    With looks of dumb despair; then, sad-dispersed
+    Dig for the withered herb through heaps of snow.'
+
+Thomson loves also to paint the landscape on a broad scale, and though
+his diction is sometimes too florid, he generally satisfies the
+imagination, as, for instance, in the splendid description in _Summer_
+of a sand-storm in the desert.
+
+                                    'Breathed hot
+    From all the boundless furnace of the sky,
+    And the wide, glittering waste of burning sand,
+    A suffocating wind the pilgrim smites
+    With instant death. Patient of thirst and toil,
+    Son of the desert! even the camel feels,
+    Shot through his withered heart, the fiery blast.
+    Or from the black-red ether, bursting broad,
+    Sallies the sudden whirlwind. Straight the sands,
+    Commoved around, in gathering eddies play;
+    Nearer and nearer still they darkening come;
+    Till with the general all-involving storm
+    Swept up, the whole continuous wilds arise;
+    And by their noonday fount dejected thrown,
+    Or sunk at night in sad disastrous sleep,
+    Beneath descending hills, the caravan
+    Is buried deep. In Cairo's crowded streets
+    The impatient merchant, wondering, waits in vain,
+    And Mecca saddens at the long delay.'
+
+The _Seasons_ was at one time, and for many years the most popular
+volume of poetry in the country. It was to be found in every cottage,
+and passages from the poem were familiar to every school-boy. The
+appreciation of the work was more affectionate than critical, and
+Thomson's faults were sometimes mistaken for beauties; but the
+popularity of the _Seasons_ was a healthy sign, and the poem, a
+forerunner of Cowper's _Task_, brought into vigorous life, feelings and
+sympathies that had been long dormant.
+
+Pope, who is twice mentioned in the poem, took a great interest in its
+progress through the press. Thomson consulted him frequently, and
+accepted many of his suggestions, while apparently retaining at all
+times an independent judgment. To the familiar episode of 'the lovely
+young Lavinia' the following graceful passage is said, but on very
+doubtful authority to have been added by Pope.[30] The first line, given
+for the sake of the context, is from Thomson's pen:
+
+    'Thoughtless of beauty, she was Beauty's self,
+    Recluse amid the close-embowering woods;
+    As in the hollow breast of Apennine,
+    Beneath the shelter of encircling hills,
+    A myrtle rises, far from human eye,
+    And breathes its balmy fragrance o'er the wild;
+    So flourished, blooming and unseen by all,
+    The sweet Lavinia; till, at length, compelled
+    By strong necessity's supreme command
+    With smiling patience in her looks she went
+    To glean Palemon's fields.'
+
+Thomson had now gained the highest mark of his fame, and, like Pope, had
+won it in a few years. Nearly two years of foreign travel followed, the
+poet having obtained the post of governor to a son of the
+Solicitor-General. The fruit of this tour was a long poem in blank verse
+on _Liberty_, which probably gave him infinite labour, but his ascent
+upon this occasion of what he calls 'the barren, but delightful mountain
+of Parnassus,' was labour lost. It is enough to say of _Liberty_, that
+it contains more than three thousand lines of unreadable blank verse.
+Sinecures were the rewards of genius in Thomson's day, and he was made
+Secretary of Briefs in the Court of Chancery. He took a cottage at
+Richmond, within an easy walk of Pope, and the two poets met often and
+lived amicably.
+
+Thomson did not enjoy his official fortune long, for his patron died,
+and though he might have kept his post had he applied to the Lord
+Chancellor, in whose gift it was, he appears to have been too lazy to do
+so. His friend Lyttelton in this emergency introduced him to the Prince
+of Wales, who, on learning that his affairs 'were in a more poetical
+posture than formerly,' gave him a pension of £100 a year. There was no
+certainty in a gift of this nature, and in about ten years it was
+withdrawn.
+
+_The Castle of Indolence_ (1748) was the latest labour of Thomson's
+life, and in the judgment of many critics takes precedence of _The
+Seasons_ in poetical merit. This verdict may be questioned, but the
+poem, written in the Spenserian stanza, has a soothing beauty and an
+enchanting felicity of expression which show the poet's genius in a new
+light. It is unlike any poetry of that age, and when compared with _The
+Seasons_, the verse, as Wordsworth justly says, 'is more harmonious and
+the diction more pure.' All the imagery of the poem is adopted to the
+vague and sleepy action of the characters represented in it. It is a
+veritable poet's dream, which carries the reader in its earliest stanzas
+into 'a pleasing land of drowsy-head:'
+
+      'In lowly dale, fast by a river's side,
+      With woody hill o'er hill encompassed round,
+      A most enchanting wizard did abide,
+      Than whom a fiend more fell is nowhere found.
+      It was, I ween, a lovely spot of ground;
+      And there a season atween June and May
+      Half prankt with Spring, with Summer half embrowned,
+      A listless climate made, where, sooth to say,
+    No living wight could work, ne carèd even for play.'
+
+There are verbal inspirations in a great poet which satisfy the ear,
+capture the imagination, and live in the memory for ever. Milton's pages
+are studded with them like stars; Gray has a few, Wordsworth many, and
+Keats some not to be surpassed for witchery. Of such poetically
+suggestive lines Thomson has his share, and although it seems unfair to
+remove them from their context, the excision may be made in a few cases,
+since they show not only that a new poet had appeared in an age of
+prose, but a poet of a new order, whose inspiration was felt by his
+successors. How poetically imaginative is Thomson's imagery of the
+'meek-eyed morn, mother of dews;' of
+
+    'Ships dim discovered dropping from the clouds;'
+
+of
+
+    'Autumn nodding o'er the yellow plain;'
+
+of the summer wind
+
+    'Sweeping with shadowy gust the fields of corn;'
+
+and of the Hebrid-Isles
+
+    'Placed far amid the melancholy main,'
+
+a line which may have suggested the lovelier verse of Wordsworth
+descriptive of the cuckoo:
+
+    'Breaking the silence of the seas
+    Among the farthest Hebrides.'
+
+Thomson did not live long after the publication of _The Castle of
+Indolence_. A cold caught upon the river led to a fever, which ended
+fatally on August 27th, 1748. He had for some years been in love with a
+Miss Young, the 'Amanda' of his very feeble love lyrics, and her
+marriage is said to have hastened his death. Men, however, do not die
+for love at the mature age of forty-nine, and as Thomson was 'more fat
+than bard beseems,' and was not always temperate in his habits,
+constitutional causes are more likely to have led to the poet's death
+than Amanda's cruelty.
+
+Dr. Johnson says somewhere that the further authors keep apart from each
+other the better, and the literary squabbles of the last century
+afforded him good ground for the remark. It is to Thomson's credit that,
+like Goldsmith twenty-six years later, he died, leaving behind him many
+friends and not a single enemy. His fame rests upon two poems, _The
+Seasons_ and _The Castle of Indolence_, and on a song which has gained a
+national reputation. Apart from _Rule Britannia_, which appeared
+originally in the _Masque of Alfred_ and is spirited rather than
+poetical, his attempts to write lyrical poetry resulted in failure; but
+from his own niche in the Temple of Fame time is not likely to dislodge
+Thomson.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[25] See _Martialis Epigrammata_, book v. lii.
+
+[26] Fénelon was Archbishop of Cambray.
+
+[27] _The Poetical Works of Gay_, edited, with Life and Notes, by John
+Underhill, 2 vols.
+
+[28]
+
+    'I'll swim through seas; I'll ride upon the clouds;
+    I'll dig the earth; I'll blow out every fire;
+    I'll rave; I'll rant; I'll rise; I'll rush; I'll war;
+    Fierce as the man whom smiling dolphins bore
+    From the prosaic to poetic shore.
+    I'll tear the scoundrel into twenty pieces.'
+
+'The reader,' Fielding adds in a note, 'may see all the beauties of this
+speech in a late ode called a _Naval Lyric_.'
+
+[29] Written but not published. The earlier books of the _Night
+Thoughts_ appeared in 1742, the _Grave_ in 1743, but in a letter dated
+Feb. 25th, 1741-2, Blair in transmitting the MS. of the poem to a friend
+states that the greater portion of it was composed several years before
+his ordination ten years previously. Southey states that Blair's _Grave_
+is the only poem he could call to mind composed in imitation of the
+_Night Thoughts_, but the style as well as the date contradicts this
+judgment.
+
+[30] The tradition is founded on a volume in the British Museum
+containing MS. corrections supposed to be in Pope's handwriting. It is
+now, however, the opinion of experts that the writing is not Pope's. If
+he be the author, it is the only example of blank verse which we have
+from his pen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+MINOR POETS.
+
+Sir Samuel Garth--Ambrose Philips--John Philips--Nicholas
+    Rowe--Aaron Hill--Thomas Parnell--Thomas Tickell--William
+    Somerville--John Dyer--William Shenstone--Mark Akenside--David
+    Mallet--Scottish Song-Writers.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Sir Samuel Garth (1660-1717-18).]
+
+In Pope's day even the medical profession was influenced by party
+feeling, and Samuel Garth became known as the most famous Whig
+physician, but his friendships were not confined to one side, and he
+appears to have been universally beloved.
+
+Garth came of a Yorkshire family, and was born in 1660. He was admitted
+a Fellow of the College of Physicians in 1693, gained a large practice,
+and is said to have been very benevolent to the poor. The _Dispensary_
+(1699) is a satire called forth by the opposition of the Society of
+Apothecaries, to an edict of the College, and is a mock-heroic poem,
+which the quarrel made so effective at the time that it passed through
+several editions. The merit of achieving what the satirist intended may
+therefore be granted to the _Dispensary_. Few modern readers, however,
+will appreciate the welcome it received, and it is ludicrous to read in
+Anderson's edition of the poet that the poem 'is only inferior in
+humour, discrimination of character, and poetical ardour to the _Rape of
+the Lock_.' It would be far more accurate to say that the _Dispensary_
+has not a single merit in common with that poem, and but slight merit of
+any kind.
+
+The following passage upon death is the most vigorous, and is
+interesting as having supplied Cowper with a line in the poem on his
+Mother's Picture:[31]
+
+    ''Tis to the vulgar Death too harsh appears,
+    The ill we feel is only in our fears;
+    To die is landing on some silent shore
+    Where billows never break, nor tempests roar;
+    Ere well we feel th' friendly stroke 'tis o'er.
+    The wise through thought th' insults of death defy,
+    The fools through blest insensibility.
+    'Tis what the guilty fear, the pious crave;
+    Sought by the wretch and vanquished by the brave.
+    It eases lovers, sets the captive free,
+    And though a tyrant, offers liberty.'
+
+Addison in defending Garth in the _Whig-Examiner_ from the criticisms of
+Prior in the _Examiner_, the organ of the Tory party, says he does not
+question but the author 'who has endeavoured to prove that he who wrote
+the _Dispensary_ was no poet, will very suddenly undertake to show that
+he who gained the battle of _Blenheim_ is no general.' The comparison
+was an unfortunate one. Marlborough's military reputation has grown
+brighter with time, Garth's fame as a poet has long ago ceased to exist.
+
+A literary although not a poetical interest is associated with the name
+of "well-natured Garth," who, as Pope acknowledges, was one of his
+earliest friends; like Arbuthnot, he lived among the wits, and as a
+member of the famous Kit-cat Club he wrote verses upon the Whig beauties
+toasted by its members. His name is linked with Dryden's as well as with
+that of his illustrious successor. It will be remembered how, on the
+death of Dryden, the poet's body lay in state in the College of
+Physicians, and how, before the great procession started for
+Westminster Abbey, Sir Samuel, who was then President, delivered a Latin
+oration.
+
+Garth died in January, 1717-18, and, according to Pope, was a good
+Christian without knowing it. Addison, however, who visited Garth in his
+last illness, told Dr. Berkeley that he rejected Christianity on the
+assurance of his friend Halley that its doctrines were incomprehensible,
+and the religion itself an imposture. According to another report which
+comes through Pope, he actually 'died a papist.'
+
+[Sidenote: Ambrose Philips (1671-1749).]
+
+Ambrose Philips, who belonged, like Tickell, to Addison's 'little
+senate,' was born in 1671, and educated at St. John's, Cambridge. His
+_Pastorals_ were published in Tonson's _Miscellany_ (1709), and the same
+volume contained the _Pastorals_ of Pope. Log-rolling was understood in
+those days, and Philips's verses received warm praise in more than one
+number of the _Guardian_, the writer in one place declaring that there
+have been only four masters of the art in above two thousand years:
+'Theocritus, who left his dominions to Virgil; Virgil, who left his to
+his son Spenser; and Spenser, who was succeeded by his eldest born,
+Philips.'
+
+Pope's _Pastorals_ were not mentioned, and in revenge he devised the
+consummate artifice of sending an anonymous paper to the _Guardian_, in
+which, while appearing to praise Philips, he exalted himself. Steele
+took the bait, and considering that the essay depreciated Pope would not
+publish it without his permission, which was of course readily granted.
+'From that time,' says Johnson, 'Pope and Philips lived in a perpetual
+reciprocation of malevolence.'
+
+Philips's tragedy, _The Distrest Mother_ (1712), a translation, or
+nearly so, of Racine's _Andromaque_, was puffed in the _Spectator_. It
+is the play to which Sir Roger de Coverley was taken by his friends, and
+the representation supplied the good knight with an opportunity for
+much humorous comment.
+
+'When Sir Roger saw Andromache's obstinate refusal to her lover's
+importunities, he whispered me in the ear that he was sure she would
+never have him; to which he added with a more than ordinary vehemence,
+"You cannot imagine, sir, what it is to have to do with a widow." Upon
+Pyrrhus his threatening afterwards to leave her, the knight shook his
+head, and muttered to himself, "Ay, do if you can." This part dwelt so
+much upon my friend's imagination that at the close of the third Act, as
+I was thinking of something else, he whispered in my ear, "These widows,
+sir, are the most perverse creatures in the world. But pray," says he,
+"you that are a critic, is this play according to your dramatic rules,
+as you call them? Should your people in tragedy always talk to be
+understood? Why, there is not a single sentence in this play that I do
+not know the meaning of."'[32] Addison also inserted and praised in the
+_Spectator_ Philips's translations from Sappho (Nos. 223, 229).
+
+His odes to babes and children earned for him the _sobriquet_ of 'Namby
+Pamby,' 'a term which has been incorporated into the English language to
+designate mawkish sentiment. Namby was the infantine pronunciation of
+Ambrose, and Pamby was formed by the first letter of Philips's surname
+and that reduplication of sound which is natural to lisping
+children.'[33]
+
+Between simplicity and absurdity the line is a narrow one, and Philips
+stepped over it when he wrote to a child in the nursery--
+
+    'Dimply damsel, sweetly smiling,
+    All caressing, none beguiling;
+    Bud of beauty, fairly blowing,
+    Every charm to nature owing.'
+
+The longest of his baby songs is addressed to the Hon. Miss Carteret, in
+which he pictures the child's progress to womanhood, and anticipates her
+future loveliness and maiden reign:
+
+    'Then the taper-moulded waist
+    With a span of ribbon braced;
+    And the swell of either breast,
+    And the wide high-vaulted chest;
+    And the neck so white and round,
+    Little neck with brilliants bound;
+    And the store of charms which shine
+    Above, in lineaments divine,
+    Crowded in a narrow space
+    To complete the desperate face;
+    These alluring powers, and more,
+    Shall enamoured youths adore;
+    These and more in courtly lays
+    Many an aching heart shall praise.'
+
+The inventory of the maiden's physical charms which follows includes
+veiny temples, sloping shoulders, a hazely lucid eye, and cheek of
+health; but in the category the only allusion to the attractions of
+intellect and heart is in a couplet foretelling her
+
+                              'Gentleness of mind,
+    Gentle from a gentle kind.'
+
+That Philips translated _The Persian Tales_ is indelibly recorded by
+Pope:
+
+    'The bard whom pilfered Pastorals renown,
+    Who turns a Persian tale for half-a-crown,
+    Just writes to make his barrenness appear,
+    And strains from hard-bound brains eight lines a year.'
+
+But even Pope could award praise to Philips. In a letter to Henry
+Cromwell, in 1710, he observes that he was capable of writing very
+nobly, 'as I guess by a small copy of his, published in the _Tatler_, on
+the Danish winter;' and two years later he says to his friend Caryll:
+'Mr. Philips has two lines which seem to me what the French call very
+_picturesque_, that I cannot omit to you:
+
+    'All hid in snow in bright confusion lie,
+    And with one dazzling waste fatigue the eye!'
+
+The lines, not quite accurately quoted by Pope, are from an epistle,
+addressed to Lord Dorset from Copenhagen, which contains a few striking
+couplets, two of which may be transcribed before bidding adieu to
+Ambrose Philips:
+
+    'The vast leviathan wants room to play,
+    And spout his waters in the face of day.
+    The starving wolves along the main sea prowl,
+    And to the moon in icy valleys howl.'
+
+[Sidenote: John Philips (1676-1708).]
+
+Ambrose Philips must not be confounded with his namesake John, the
+author of a clever burlesque of Milton, called _The Splendid Shilling_
+(1705); of _Blenheim_ (1705), a poem which he was urged to write by the
+Tories in opposition to Addison's _Campaign_; and of a poem upon _Cider_
+(1706), in 'Miltonian verse,' which seems to have afforded several
+suggestions to Pope in his _Windsor Forest_. It is said to display a
+considerable knowledge of the subject, and in that its principal merit
+consists. From _The Splendid Shilling_ a brief extract may be given:
+
+    'So pass my days. But when nocturnal shades
+    This world envelop, and th' inclement air
+    Persuades men to repel benumbing frosts
+    With pleasant wines, and crackling blaze of wood;
+    Me, lonely sitting, nor the glimmering light
+    Of make-weight candle, nor the joyous talk
+    Of loving friend delights; distressed, forlorn,
+    Amidst the horrors of the tedious night,
+    Darkling I sigh, and feed with dismal thoughts
+    My anxious mind; or sometimes mournful verse
+    Indite, and sing of groves and myrtle shades,
+    Or desperate lady near a purling stream,
+    Or lover pendent on a willow tree.
+    Meanwhile I labour with eternal drought
+    And restless wish, and rave; my parched throat
+    Finds no relief, nor heavy eyes repose.
+    But if a slumber haply does invade
+    My weary limbs, my fancy still awake,
+    Thoughtful of drink, and eager, in a dream
+    Tipples imaginary pots of ale
+    In vain; awake I find the settled thirst
+    Still gnawing, and the pleasant phantom curse.'
+
+'Philips,' says the poet Campbell, 'had the merit of studying and
+admiring Milton, but he never could imitate him without ludicrous
+effect, either in jest or earnest. His _Splendid Shilling_ is the
+earliest and one of the best of our parodies; but _Blenheim_ is as
+completely a burlesque upon Milton as _The Splendid Shilling_, though it
+was written and read with gravity, ... yet such are the fluctuations of
+taste that contemporary criticism bowed with solemn admiration over his
+Miltonic cadences.'
+
+[Sidenote: Nicholas Rowe (1673-1718).]
+
+Nicholas Rowe had the honour, if it was one in those days, of being made
+Laureate on the accession of George I. His odes, epistles, and songs are
+without merit, but he gained reputation as the translator of Lucan's
+_Pharsalia_, of which Sir Arthur Gorges had produced a version in 1614,
+and his plays entitle him to a place, though not a high one, in our
+dramatic literature.
+
+Rowe edited an edition of Shakespeare, and should have known his author,
+yet in a prologue he declares that he could not draw women--an amazing
+assertion echoed by Collins, who praises Fletcher for his knowledge of
+the 'female mind,' and adds that 'stronger Shakespeare felt for man
+alone.'
+
+The chronological list of Rowe's dramas runs as follows: _The Ambitious
+Step-mother_ (1700); _Tamerlane_ (1702); _The Fair Penitent_ (1703);
+_Ulysses_ (1705); _The Royal Convert_ (1707); the _Tragedy of Jane
+Shore_ (1714); and the _Tragedy of Lady Jane Grey_ (1715). Measured by
+his contemporary dramatists he is a distinguished playwright. His
+characters do not live, but he could invent effective scenes, though in
+some cases the poet's taste may be questioned.
+
+For many years _Tamerlane_ was acted at Drury Lane on the anniversary of
+King William's landing in England, and under the names of Tamerlane and
+Bajazet the king is belauded at the expense of Louis XIV. _The Fair
+Penitent_, a piece even more successful upon the stage, will still
+please the reader, though he may question the high eulogium of Johnson,
+that "scarcely any work of any poet is at once so interesting by the
+fable, and so delightful by the language." Rowe has not the tragic power
+which can express passion without rant, and pathos without extravagance.
+In _The Fair Penitent_ Calista gives utterance to her feelings by piling
+up expletives. Thus, when her husband attacks the lover who has ruined
+her, she exclaims, 'Destruction! fury! sorrow! shame! and death!' and,
+on another occasion, she cries out, 'Madness! confusion!' words which
+give a sense of the ludicrous rather than of the tragic; and so also
+does Calista's last utterance when, addressing Altamont, she says:
+
+                    'Had I but early known
+    Thy wondrous worth, thou excellent young man
+    We had been happier both--now 'tis too late!'
+
+Rowe may be regarded as the principal representative of tragedy in the
+'age of Pope,' but his respectable work shows a fatal degeneration from
+the 'gorgeous tragedy' of the Elizabethans.
+
+[Sidenote: Aaron Hill (1684-1749).]
+
+Aaron Hill, unlike Rowe, was not distinguished as a dramatist, and
+succeeded only in two or three adaptations from the French. His claims
+as a poet are also insignificant. He was born in London in 1684, with
+expectations that were not destined to be realized, but Fortune was not
+unkind to him. His uncle, Lord Paget, Ambassador at Constantinople, gave
+the youth a warm welcome, supplied him with a tutor, and sent him to
+travel in the East. On Lord Paget's return to England, Hill accompanied
+him, and together they are said to have visited a great part of Europe.
+Some time later Hill went abroad again, and was absent two or three
+years. For awhile--it could not have been long--he was secretary to the
+Earl of Peterborough, and at the age of twenty-six, his good star being
+still in the ascendant, he married a young lady 'of great merit and
+beauty, with whom he had a very handsome fortune.' Hill was then
+appointed manager of Drury Lane, and he wrote a number of plays, the
+very names of which are now forgotten. Few men indeed so well known in
+his own day have sunk into such insignificance in ours. He wrote eight
+books of a long and unfinished epic called _Gideon_, which I suppose no
+one in the present century has had the hardihood to read; like Young he
+wrote a poem on _The Judgment Day_, a theme attempted also, shortly
+before his death, by John Philips, and that, after his kind, he produced
+a Pindaric ode goes without saying. A long poem called _The Northern
+Star_, a panegyric on Peter the Great, is said to have passed through
+several editions. The poem does not prove Hill to be a poet, but it
+shows his command of the heroic couplet. The style of the poem, which
+is an indiscriminate panegyric, may be judged from the following lines:
+
+    'Transcendent prince! how happy must thou be!
+    What can'st thou look upon unblessed by thee?
+    What inward peace must that calm bosom know,
+    Whence conscious virtue does so strongly flow!
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Such are the kings who make God's image shine,
+    Nor blush to dare assert their right divine!
+    No earth-born bias warps their climbing will,
+    No pride their power, no avarice whets their skill.
+    They poise each hope which bids the wise obey,
+    And shed broad blessings from their widening sway;
+    To raise the afflicted, stretch the healing hand,
+    Drive crushed oppression from each rescued land,
+    Bold in alternate right, or sheath or draw
+    The sword of conquest, or the sword of law;
+    Spare what resists not, what opposes bend,
+    And govern cool, what they with warmth defend.'
+
+Hill has the merit of having turned the tables upon Pope, who had put
+him into the treatise on the _Bathos_, and then into the _Dunciad_,
+where, however, the lines have more of compliment than censure, since he
+is made to mount 'far off among the swans of Thames.' Irritated by a
+note in the _Dunciad_, Hill replied in a long poem entitled _The
+Progress of Wit, a Caveat_, which opens with the following pointed
+lines:
+
+    'Tuneful Alexis, on the Thames' fair side,
+    The ladies' plaything, and the Muses' pride;
+    With merit popular, with wit polite,
+    Easy though vain, and elegant though light;
+    Desiring, and deserving others' praise,
+    Poorly accepts a fame he ne'er repays;
+    Unborn to cherish, sneakingly approves,
+    And wants the soul to spread the worth he loves.'
+
+In a letter to Hill Pope complained of these lines, and had the
+hypocrisy to say that he never thought any great matters of his poetical
+capacity, but prided himself on the superiority of his moral life. Hill
+returned a masterly and incisive reproof to this ridiculous statement,
+in the course of which he says:
+
+    'I am sorry to hear you say you never thought any great matters
+    of your poetry. It is in my opinion the characteristic you are
+    to hope your distinction from. To be honest is the duty of every
+    plain man. Nor, since the soul of poetry is sentiment, can a
+    great poet want morality. But your honesty you possess in common
+    with a million who will never be remembered; whereas your poetry
+    is a peculiar, that will make it impossible that you should be
+    forgotten.'
+
+He adds that if Pope had not been in the spleen when he wrote, he would
+have remembered that humility is a moral virtue; and how, asks the
+writer, can you know that your moral life is above that of most of the
+wits 'since you tell me in the same letter that many of their names were
+unknown to you?'
+
+Aaron Hill, though he could write a sensible letter, was not a wise man.
+He was 'everything by turns and nothing long.' Poetry was but one of his
+accomplishments, and we are told that he cultivated it 'as a relaxation
+from the study of history, criticism, geography, physic, commerce,
+agriculture, war, law, chemistry, and natural philosophy, to which he
+devoted the greatest part of his time.'
+
+As a poet Hill has the facility in composition exhibited by so many of
+his contemporaries, and he has occasionally a pretty turn of fancy. His
+last labour was the successful adaptation of Voltaire's _Merope_ to the
+English stage (1749); sixteen years before he had adapted _Zara_ with
+equal success.
+
+[Sidenote: Thomas Parnell (1679-1718).]
+
+Among the minor poets of the period an honourable place must be given to
+Parnell, who possessed the soul of a poet, but gave limited expression
+to it, for it was only during the later years of a short life that he
+discovered where his genius lay. The friend of Pope, Arbuthnot, and
+Swift, his biography has been written by Johnson, and more discursively
+by his countryman Goldsmith.
+
+Thomas Parnell was born in Dublin, 1679, entered Trinity College at the
+early age of thirteen, and in 1700 obtained the degree of Master of
+Arts. Having taken orders he gained preferment in the Church, became, in
+1706, Archdeacon of Clogher, and through the recommendation of Swift
+obtained also a good living. Parnell was fond of society, and was
+accustomed as often as possible to join the wits in London. He was a
+member of the Scriblerus Club, wrote for the _Spectator_, preached
+eloquent sermons, and had the ambition of a poet. But the loss of his
+wife preyed upon his mind, and he is said, though I believe chiefly on
+Pope's authority, to have given way to intemperance. He died suddenly at
+Chester at the age of thirty-nine in 1718.
+
+Parnell was one of the poets whose fortunes Swift did his best to
+promote. Writing in 1712, he says, 'I gave Lord Bolingbroke a poem of
+Parnell's. I made Parnell insert some compliments in it to his lordship.
+He is extremely pleased with it, and read some parts of it to-day to
+Lord Treasurer, who liked it as much. And indeed he outdoes all our
+poets here a bar's length.' And a month later he writes, 'Lord
+Bolingbroke likes Parnell mightily, and it is pleasant to see that one
+who hardly passed for anything in Ireland, makes his way here with a
+little friendly forwarding.'
+
+_The Hermit_, the _Hymn to Contentment_, an _Allegory on Man_, and a
+_Night Piece on Death_, give Parnell his title to a place among the
+poets. _The Rise of Woman_, and _Health, an Eclogue_, have also much
+merit, and were praised by Pope (but this was to their author) as 'two
+of the most beautiful things he ever read.' The story of _The Hermit_,
+written originally in Spanish, is given in _Howell's Letters_
+(1645-1655), and is admirably told by Parnell, but much that he wrote,
+including a series of long poems on Scripture characters, is poetically
+worthless. His poems, published five years after his death, were edited
+by Pope, who wisely suppressed some pieces unworthy of the poet. Then,
+as now, literary scavengers were at work. In 1758 the suppressed poems
+were published, and called forth the comment from Gray, 'Parnell is the
+dunghill of Irish Grub Street.' To Parnell Pope was indebted for the
+_Essay on Homer_ prefixed to the translation, with which he does not
+seem to have been well pleased. He complained of the stiffness of the
+style, and said it had cost him more pains in the correcting than the
+writing of it would have done.
+
+If Parnell's prose has the defect of stiffness, his lines glide with a
+smoothness that must have satisfied the ear of Pope. The higher
+harmonies of verse were unknown to him, but ease is not without a charm,
+and in illustration of Parnell's gift the final lines of _A Night Piece
+on Death_ shall be quoted:
+
+    'When men my scythe and darts supply,
+    How great a king of fears am I!
+    They view me like the last of things,
+    They make and then they draw my stings.
+    Fools! if you less provoked your fears,
+    No more my spectre form appears.
+    Death's but a path that must be trod,
+    If man would ever pass to God;
+    A port of calms, a state to ease
+    From the rough rage of swelling seas.
+    Why then thy flowing sable stoles,
+    Deep pendent cypress, mourning poles,
+    Loose scarfs to fall athwart thy weeds,
+    Long palls, drawn hearses, covered steeds,
+    And plumes of black that as they tread,
+    Nod o'er the scutcheons of the dead?
+    Nor can the parted body know,
+    Nor wants the soul these forms of woe;
+    As men who long in prison dwell,
+    With lamps that glimmer round the cell,
+    Whene'er their suffering years are run,
+    Spring forth to greet the glittering sun;
+    Such joy, though far transcending sense,
+    Have pious souls at parting hence.
+    On earth and in the body placed,
+    A few and evil years they waste;
+    But when their chains are cast aside,
+    See the glad scene unfolding wide,
+    Clap the glad wing, and tower away,
+    And mingle with the blaze of day.'
+
+[Sidenote: Thomas Tickell (1686-1740).]
+
+Tickell wished to be remembered as the friend of Addison, and with
+Addison his name is indissolubly associated. The poem dedicated to the
+essayist's memory is perhaps over-praised by Macaulay when he says that
+it would do honour to the greatest name in our literature, but it proved
+incontestibly that Tickell, as a poet, was superior to the master whom
+he so loved and honoured. His reputation hangs upon this elegy, which
+Fox pronounced perfect.[34] The _Prospect of Peace_, which passed
+through several editions, had at one time a considerable reputation, not
+assuredly for its poetry, but because it appealed to the spirit of the
+time The style of the poem may be judged from these lines:--
+
+    'Accept, great Anne, the tears their memory draws,
+    Who nobly perished in their sovereign's cause;
+    For thou in pity bidd'st the war give o'er,
+    Mourn'st thy slain heroes, nor wilt venture more.
+    Vast price of blood on each victorious day!
+    (But Europe's freedom doth that price repay.)
+    Lamented triumphs! when one breath must tell
+    That Marlborough conquered and that Dormer fell.'
+
+His _Colin and Lucy_ called forth high praise from Goldsmith as one of
+the best ballads in our language, and Gray terms it the prettiest ballad
+in the world. Three stanzas from this once famous poem shall be
+quoted:--
+
+    '"I hear a voice you cannot hear,
+      Which says I must not stay;
+    I see a hand you cannot see,
+      Which beckons me away.
+    By a false heart and broken vows,
+      In early youth I die;
+    Was I to blame because his bride
+      Was thrice as rich as I?
+
+    '"Ah, Colin, give not her thy vows,
+      Vows due to me alone;
+    Nor thou, fond maid, receive his kiss,
+      Nor think him all thy own.
+    To-morrow in the church to wed,
+      Impatient, both prepare!
+    But know, fond maid, and know, false man,
+      That Lucy will be there!
+
+    '"Then bear my corse, my comrades, bear,
+      This bridegroom blithe to meet,
+    He in his wedding trim so gay,
+      I in my winding-sheet."
+    She spoke, she died; her corse was borne
+      The bridegroom blithe to meet,
+    He in his wedding trim so gay,
+      She in her winding-sheet.'
+
+There is some fancy but no imagination in the machinery of Tickell's
+long poem on _Kensington Gardens_, a title which recalls Matthew
+Arnold's exquisite stanzas. But the pathetic beauty of Arnold's lines
+belongs to a world of poetry wholly unlike that in which even the best
+of the Queen Anne poets lived and moved.
+
+Tickell's translation of the first book of the _Iliad_ led to the
+quarrel already mentioned in the account of Pope. He wrote, also, a
+rather lengthy poem on Oxford, in which there is some absurd criticism
+of insignificant poetasters, and, as a matter of course, an extravagant
+eulogium of Addison.
+
+The few facts recorded of Tickell's life may be summed up in a
+paragraph. He was born in 1686 at Bridekirk, in Cumberland, and entered
+Queen's College, Oxford, in 1701. In 1708 he obtained his M.A. degree,
+and two years later was chosen Fellow. For sixteen years Tickell held
+his fellowship, but resigned it on his marriage in 1726. In a poem
+addressed to the lady before marriage, he asks whether
+
+    'By thousands sought, Clotilda, canst thou free
+    Thy crowd of captives and descend to me?'
+
+Praise which in those days would be regarded as fulsome secured the
+friendship and patronage of Addison, who employed him in public affairs,
+and when he became Secretary of State made Tickell Under-Secretary. To
+him Addison left the charge of editing his works, which were published
+by subscription, and appeared in four quarto volumes in 1721. In 1725 he
+was made secretary to the Lord Justices of Ireland, 'a place of great
+honour,' which he held until his death in 1740. The praise of
+Wordsworth, a poet always chary of expressing approbation, has been
+bestowed upon Tickell. 'I think him,' he said, 'one of the very best
+writers of occasional verses.'
+
+[Sidenote: William Somerville (1692-1742).]
+
+Tickell had written some lines on hunting, which he published as a
+fragment. His contemporary Somerville, selecting the same subject, wrote
+_The Chase_ (1735), a poem in blank verse. He was born at Edston, in
+Warwickshire, and was said, Dr. Johnson writes, 'to be of the first
+family in his county.' He was educated at Winchester and Oxford, and had
+the tastes of a scholar as well as of a country gentleman, which, among
+other accomplishments, included that of hard drinking. We know little
+about him, and what we do know is deplorable, for his friend Shenstone
+writes that he was plagued and threatened by low wretches, and 'forced
+to drink himself into pains of the body in order to get rid of the pains
+of the mind.' He died in 1742, the owner of a good estate, which, owing
+to a contempt for economy, he was never able to enjoy. 'I loved him for
+nothing so much,' said Shenstone, 'as for his
+flocci-nauci-nihili-pili-fication of money.'
+
+In _The Chase_ Somerville had the advantage of knowing his subject, but
+knowledge is not poetry, and the interest of the poem is not due to its
+poetical qualities. He deserves some credit for his skill in handling a
+variety of metres as well as blank verse, in which his principal poem is
+written. In an address _To Mr. Addison_, the couplet,
+
+    'When panting Virtue her last efforts made,
+    You brought your Clio to the virgin's aid,'
+
+is praised by Johnson as one of those happy strokes which are seldom
+attained. In the same poem Shakespeare and Addison are brought together
+in a way that is far from happy:
+
+    'In heaven he sings; on earth your muse supplies
+    Th' important loss, and heals our weeping eyes,
+    Correctly great, she melts each flinty heart
+    With equal genius, but superior art.'
+
+Praise can be too strong even for a poet's digestion, and Somerville,
+who writes a great deal more nonsense in the same strain, should have
+remembered that he was not addressing a fool. If the poetical adulation
+of the time is to be excused, it must be on the ground that a poet had
+to live by patronage and not by the public. In a pecuniary point of view
+his subservience to men in high position was often successful. An almost
+universal custom, it was not regarded as degrading; but the poet must
+have been peculiarly constituted who was not degraded by it.
+
+[Sidenote: John Dyer (1698(?)-1758).]
+
+In the last century any subject was deemed suitable for poetry, and the
+Welsh poet, John Dyer, who was born about 1698, found in his later life
+poetical materials in _The Fleece_ (1757), a poem in four books of blank
+verse. His genius for descriptive poetry and his passionate and
+intelligent delight in natural objects are seen more pleasantly in
+_Grongar Hill_ (published in the same year as Thomson's _Winter_), a
+poem not without grammatical inaccuracies, one of which deforms the
+first couplet, but full of poetical feeling. In an ease of composition
+which runs into laxity he reminds us occasionally of George Wither. His
+chief merit is, that while independent of Thomson, he was inspired by
+the same love, and wrote with the same aim. Dyer is not content with
+bare description, but likes to moralize on the landscape he surveys.
+Thus, when looking on a ruined tower, the poet exclaims:
+
+    'Yet time has seen, that lifts the low,
+    And level lays the lofty brow,
+    Has seen this broken pile compleat,
+    Big with the vanity of state;
+    But transient is the smile of fate!
+    A little rule, a little sway,
+    A sunbeam in a winter's day,'
+    Is all the proud and mighty have
+    Between the cradle and the grave.'
+
+Dyer who is best seen in the octosyllabic metre, chose it also for _The
+Country Walk_, a poem in which, notwithstanding an occasional lapse into
+the conventional diction of the period, the rural pictures are drawn
+from life. He takes the reader into the farm-yard and fields as he
+writes:
+
+    'I am resolved this charming day
+    In the open field to stray,
+    And have no roof above my head
+    But that whereon the gods do tread.
+    Before the yellow barn I see
+    A beautiful variety
+    Of strutting cocks, advancing stout,
+    And flirting empty chaff about;
+    Hens, ducks, and geese, and all their brood,
+    And turkeys gobbling for their food;
+    While rustics thrash the wealthy floor,
+    And tempt all to crowd the door.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    And now into the fields I go,
+    Where thousand flaming flowers glow,
+    And every neighbouring hedge I greet
+    With honey-suckles smelling sweet;
+    Now o'er the daisy meads I stray
+    And meet with, as I pace my way,
+    Sweetly shining on the eye
+    A rivulet gliding smoothly by,
+    Which shows with what an easy tide
+    The moments of the happy glide.'
+
+_An Epistle to a Friend in Town_, records his satisfaction with the
+country retirement in which his days are passed. In a rather awkward
+stanza he says that he is more than content, and is indeed charmed with
+everything, and the lines close with the moralizing that was dear to
+Dyer's heart:
+
+    'Alas! what a folly that wealth and domain
+      We heap up in sin and in sorrow!
+    Immense is the toil, yet the labour how vain!
+      Is not life to be over to-morrow?
+    Then glide on my moments, the few that I have,
+      Smooth-shaded and quiet and even;
+    While gently the body descends to the grave,
+      And the spirit arises to heaven.'
+
+Dyer was an artist as well as a poet, and visited Italy, which suggested
+a poem in blank verse, _The Ruins of Rome_ (1740). After his return to
+England he entered into holy orders, took a wife, who is said to have
+been a descendant of Shakespeare, and settled at Calthorp in
+Leicestershire, which he afterwards exchanged for a living in
+Lincolnshire. There is much to like in Dyer, and he has had the good
+fortune to win the applause of two great poets. Gray says, in a letter
+to Horace Walpole, that he had 'more of poetry in his imagination than
+almost any of our number,' and Wordsworth in a sonnet, _To the Poet,
+John Dyer_, writes:
+
+    'Though hasty Fame hath many a chaplet culled
+    For worthless brows, while in the pensive shade
+    Of cold neglect she leaves thy head ungraced,
+    Yet pure and powerful minds, hearts meek and still,
+    A grateful few, shall love thy modest Lay,
+    Long as the shepherd's bleating flock shall stray
+    O'er naked Snowdon's wide aerial waste;
+    Long as the thrush shall pipe on Grongar Hill!'
+
+[Sidenote: William Shenstone (1714-1764).]
+
+'The true rustic style,' Charles Lamb writes, 'I think is to be found in
+Shenstone,' and he calls his _Schoolmistress_ the 'prettiest of poems.'
+
+William Shenstone was born in 1714 at the Leasowes in Hales-Owen, a spot
+upon which he afterwards expended his skill as a landscape gardener. In
+1732 he went up to Pembroke College, Oxford, and remained there for some
+years without taking a degree. Those years appear to have been devoted
+to poetry. In 1737 Shenstone published a small volume anonymously. This
+was followed by the _Judgment of Hercules_ (1741), and by the
+_Schoolmistress_ (1742). In 1745 he undertook the management of his
+estate, and began, to quote Dr. Johnson's quaint description, 'to point
+his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his walks, and to
+wind his waters; which he did with such judgment and such fancy, as made
+his little domain the envy of the great and the admiration of the
+skilful; a place to be visited by travellers and copied by designers.'
+On this estate, with its lakes and cascades, its urns and poetical
+inscriptions, its hanging woods, and 'wild shaggy precipice,' Shenstone
+appears to have spent all his fortune. He led the life of a dilettante,
+and died unmarried at the age of fifty. His elegies and songs are dead,
+and whatever vitality remains in his verse will be found in the
+_Pastoral Ballad_ and the _Schoolmistress_.
+
+The ballad written in anapæstic verse has an Arcadian grace, against
+which even Johnson's robust intellect was not proof. For the following
+lines he says, 'if any mind denies its sympathy it has no acquaintance
+with love or nature':
+
+    'When forced the fair nymph to forego,
+      What anguish I felt in my heart!
+    Yet I thought--but it might not be so--
+      'Twas with pain that she saw me depart.
+    She gazed as I slowly withdrew,
+      My path I could hardly discern;
+    So sweetly she bade me adieu,
+      I thought that she bade me return.
+
+The _Schoolmistress_, written in imitation of Spenser, has the merits of
+simplicity and homely humour. The village dame is a life-like character,
+and the urchins whom she is supposed to teach, and does sometimes teach
+by chastisement, are cunningly portrayed.
+
+From the verses _Written at an Inn in Henley_ three stanzas may be
+quoted. The last will be already known to readers familiar with their
+Boswell:
+
+    'I fly from pomp, I fly from plate,
+      I fly from falsehood's specious grin!
+    Freedom I love, and form I hate,
+      And choose my lodgings at an inn.
+
+    'Here, waiter! take my sordid ore,
+      Which lacqueys else might hope to win;
+    It buys what courts have not in store,
+      It buys me freedom at an inn!
+
+    'Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round,
+      Where'er his stages may have been,
+    May sigh to think he still has found
+      The warmest welcome at an inn.'
+
+Unhappily this final verse, which Johnson is said to have repeated 'with
+great emotion,' has lost its application. The modern traveller, instead
+of being warmly welcomed at an inn, loses his identity and becomes a
+number.
+
+[Sidenote: Mark Akenside (1721-1770).]
+
+Akenside, who was born at Newcastle, 1721, received his education in
+Edinburgh, where he was sent to prepare for the ministry among the
+Dissenters. He, however, changed his mind, became a medical student, and
+finally, though much disliked for his manners, gained reputation as a
+physician in London. He is stated to have been excessively stiff and
+formal, and a frigid stiffness marks the _Pleasures of Imagination_
+(1744), a remarkable work considering the writer's age, since it is
+without the faults of youth. The poem is founded on Addison's _Essays_
+on the subject in the _Spectator_, and the poet also owes a considerable
+debt to Shaftesbury. Akenside's blank verse has the merits of dignity
+and strength. But the work is as cold as the author's manners were said
+to be, and in spite of what may be called poetical power, as distinct
+from a high order of inspiration, the poem leaves the reader unmoved.
+Pope, who saw it in MS., said that Akenside was 'no everyday writer,'
+which is a just criticism. The _Pleasures of Imagination_ has the merits
+of careful workmanship and of some originality, but the interest which
+it at one time excited is not likely to be revived. In 1757 Akenside
+re-wrote the poem, and I believe that no critic, with the exception of
+Hazlitt, regards the second attempt as an improvement on the first. His
+skill in the use of classical imagery is seen to advantage in the _Hymn
+to the Naiads_ (1746), and he deserves praise, too, for his
+inscriptions, which are distinguished for conciseness and vigour of
+style. The poet, it may be added, wrote a great number of odes that lack
+all, or nearly all, the qualities which should distinguish lyrical
+poetry. Not a spark of the divine fire warms or illuminates these
+reputable verses, but the author states that his chief aim was to be
+correct, and in that he has succeeded.
+
+[Sidenote: David Mallet (1700-1765).]
+
+David Mallet, a friend or acquaintance of Thomson, was contemptible as a
+man and comparatively insignificant as a poet. He did a large amount of
+dirty work, and appears to have made a good income by it. The base
+character of the man was known to Bolingbroke, of whose basest purpose
+he made him the instrument (see c. vii.). Mallet's ballad of _William
+and Margaret_ (1724) is known to many readers, and so is the inferior
+ballad _Edwin and Emma_, which was written many years afterwards. In
+1728 he published _The Excursion_, a poem not sufficiently significant
+to prevent Wordsworth from selecting the same title. In Mallet's poem on
+_Verbal Criticism_ (1733), Johnson states that he paid court to Pope,
+and was rewarded by a travelling tutorship gained through the poet's
+influence. In 1731 his tragedy, _Eurydice_, was acted at Drury Lane. He
+joined Thomson, as we have said elsewhere, in the composition of the
+masque of _Alfred_, and 'almost wholly changed' the piece after
+Thomson's death. _Amyntor and Theodora_, a long poem in blank verse,
+appeared in 1747; _Britannia_, a masque, in 1753, and _Elvira_, a
+tragedy, in 1763. Mallet, who was without qualifications for the task,
+wrote a life of Lord Bacon. He is said to have obtained a pension for
+inflaming the mind of the public against Admiral Byng, and thereby
+hastening his execution.
+
+In Anderson's edition of the poets, Mallet's biography is related with
+more fulness than by Dr. Johnson, and, after frankly recording acts
+which fully justify Macaulay's statement that Mallet's character was
+infamous, the writer adds, 'his integrity in business and in life is
+unimpeached.'
+
+
+SCOTTISH SONG-WRITERS.
+
+When the poets of England were writing satires, moral essays, and
+elaborate didactic treatises, the poets of Scotland were singing, in
+bird-like notes, songs of humour and of love. It is remarkable that the
+Scotch, the shrewdest, hardest, and most business-like people in these
+islands, should be so richly endowed with a gift shared and enjoyed by
+rich and poor alike. The most exquisite of English lyrics fall, where
+culture is wanting, on regardless ears; the songs of Ramsay and of
+Burns, of Lady Anne Lindsay and Jane Elliot, of Hogg and Lady Nairne, of
+Tannahill and Macneil, are household words in Scotland to gentle and
+simple. A few of the choicest songs of Scotland are due to ladies of
+rank, but the larger number have sprung from 'the huts where poor men
+lie.' Ramsay was a barber and wig-maker; Burns, as all the world knows,
+followed the plough; Tannahill was a weaver; Hogg a shepherd; and Robert
+Nicoll the son of a small farmer, 'ruined out of house and hold.'
+
+[Sidenote: Allan Ramsay (1686-1758).]
+
+Allan Ramsay was, born at Leadhills, in Lanarkshire, in 1686, and was
+therefore Pope's senior by two years. He has been called 'the restorer
+of Scottish poetry,' and by his compilation of _The Evergreen_ (1724),
+and of _The Tea-Table Miscellany_, published in the same year, he
+gathered up the wealth of song scattered through the country. _The
+Miscellany_ extended to four volumes, and before the poet's death had
+reached twelve editions. An undying interest belongs to both
+anthologies. _The Evergreen_ was the first poetry Walter Scott perused,
+and in a marginal note on his copy of _The Tea-Table Miscellany_ he
+writes: 'This book belonged to my grandfather, Robert Scott, and out of
+it I was taught _Hardiknute_ by heart before I could read the ballad
+myself. It was the first poem I ever learnt, the last I shall ever
+forget.' The ballad Scott loved so well, I may say in passing, was
+written as a whole or in part by Lady Wardlaw (1677-1727),[35] and
+belongs therefore either to our period or to the later years of the
+seventeenth century.
+
+In 1725 Ramsay published _The Gentle Shepherd_, a pastoral that puts to
+shame the numerous semi-classical and mythological poems which appeared
+under that name in England. It is essentially a rural poem, in which the
+action and language harmonize with what we know, or think we know, of
+country manners and life. There is neither striking invention in the
+plot nor much individuality in the characters, but there is poetical
+harmony throughout, many pretty rustic scenes, and sufficient interest
+to carry the reader pleasantly over the ground. _The Gentle Shepherd_ is
+the work of a poet, and gives a higher impression of Ramsay's power than
+his songs alone would warrant. His lyrical pieces, though not wholly
+without the lilt and charm such verse exacts, are perhaps mainly of
+service in showing the immeasurable superiority of Burns. Ramsay was a
+successful poet, and not too much of a poet to be also a successful man
+of business. He exchanged wig-making for bookselling, kept a shop in the
+High Street of Edinburgh, and finally retired to a villa which he had
+built for himself on the Castle Hill. A good-humoured, care-defying man,
+he enjoyed life in an easy way, and was not disposed to repine when his
+road lay down the hill. In an epistle to a friend he writes:
+
+    'And now in years and sense grown auld,
+    In ease I like my limbs to fauld,
+    Debts I abhor, and plan to be
+    From shackling trade and dangers free;
+    That I may, loosed frae care and strife,
+    With calmness view the edge of life;
+    And when a full ripe age shall crave,
+    Slide easily into my grave.'
+
+Among the Scottish song-writers of the period may be mentioned Robert
+Crawford (1695?-1732), whose love verses, written in a conventional
+strain, are not without music; Lord Binning (1696-1732), the author of a
+pretty song called _Ungrateful Nanny_; and William Hamilton of Bangour
+(1704-1754), who wrote the well-known _Braes of Yarrow_. The most
+charming of Scottish lyrics belong, however, to a later period of the
+century than the age of Pope.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The student who reads the minor poets who figured, in some cases with
+much applause, during the years of Pope's ascendency, will be struck by
+the almost total absence from their works of creative power. These
+rhymers wrote for the age, and illustrate it, but they did not write for
+all time, and a small volume would suffice to hold all their verse which
+is of permanent value. Too often they imagined that by the composition
+of flowing couplets they proved their title to rank with inspired poets.
+They confounded the art of verse-making with the divine art of poetry,
+and were not aware that the substance of their work is prose. Now and
+then the digger in this mine will discover a small nugget of gold, but
+for the most part the interest called forth by the poets mentioned in
+the present chapter, is more historical than poetical, and the reader in
+passing to the great prose writers of the age will be conscious of gain
+rather than of loss.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[31] Cowper's line,
+
+    'Where tempests never beat nor billows roar,'
+
+is not an improvement upon Garth's. Tempests, it has been justly said,
+do not beat.
+
+[32] The _Spectator_, No. 335.
+
+[33] Elwin and Courthope's _Pope_, vol. vii., p. 62.
+
+[34] Edward Young tried his skill on the same theme in a poetical
+epistle to Tickell, but his lines are leaden and his praise absurd.
+Addison's glory was so great, he says, as a statesman and a patriot,
+that
+
+          'It borders on disgrace
+    To say he sung the best of human race.'
+
+
+[35] To Lady Wardlaw Dr. Robert Chambers attributed twenty-five ballads,
+and among them several of the finest we possess, which are regarded as
+ancient by every other authority. If the assumption were proved, this
+lady would hold a distinguished and unique position among the poets of
+the Pope period, but there is absolutely no ground for the theory so
+zealously advocated by Chambers.
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+THE PROSE WRITERS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+JOSEPH ADDISON--SIR RICHARD STEELE.
+
+
+As essayists, the writings of Addison and of Steele are familiar to all
+readers of eighteenth-century literature. Their work in other
+departments may be neglected without much loss; but the student who
+disregards the _Tatler_, the _Spectator_, the _Guardian_, and some of
+the essay-volumes which follow in their wake, will be blind to one of
+the most significant literary features of the period.
+
+The alliance between Addison and Steele was so intimate, that to judge
+of one apart from the other, would be fair to neither. It may be well,
+therefore, after giving the leading facts in the lives of the two
+friends, to bring them together again while considering the work they
+accomplished in their literary partnership. One point, I think, will
+come out clearly in this examination, namely, that while Steele might,
+under very inferior conditions, have produced the _Tatler_ and
+_Spectator_ without Addison, it is highly improbable that Addison, as an
+essayist, would have existed without Steele.
+
+[Sidenote: Joseph Addison (1672-1719).]
+
+Addison lives on the reputation of his prose works, but he thought that
+he was a poet, and was regarded as a poet by his contemporaries. It was
+by verse that he won his earliest reputation, and it was on his Pegasus
+that he rose to be Secretary of State. He was born on May 1st, 1672, at
+Milston, in Wiltshire, a parish of which his father was the rector, and
+was educated at the Charterhouse, where he contracted his memorable
+friendship with Steele. Thence, in 1687, at the boyish age of fifteen,
+he went up to Queen's College, Oxford, and in a few months, thanks to
+his Latin verses, gained a scholarship at Magdalen, of which college ten
+years later he became a fellow.
+
+While at Oxford he acquired, after the fashion of the day, what Johnson
+calls 'the trade of a courtier.' His Latin poem on the _Peace of
+Ryswick_ was dedicated to Montague, and two years later a pension of
+£300 a year, gained through Somers and Montague, enabled him to travel,
+in order that by gaining a knowledge of French and Italian, he might be
+fitted for the diplomatic service. Some time after his return to England
+he published his _Remarks on Several Parts of Italy_ (1705), and
+dedicated the volume to Swift, 'the most agreeable companion, the truest
+friend, and the greatest genius of his age.'
+
+Addison's patrons had now lost their power, and he was left to his own
+exertions. His difficulties did not last long. In 1704 the battle of
+Blenheim called forth several weak efforts from the poetasters, and as
+the Government required verse more worthy of the occasion, the
+Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the recommendation of Montague, now Earl
+of Halifax, applied to Addison, who, in answer to the appeal, published
+_The Campaign_, in 1705. The poem contains the well-known similitude of
+the angel, and also an apt allusion to the great storm that had lately
+destroyed fleets and devastated the country.
+
+    'So when an angel by divine command
+    With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,
+    Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past,
+    Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
+    And, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform,
+    Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.'
+
+_The Campaign_, which has no other passage worth quoting, proved a happy
+hit, and was of such service to the Ministry, that Addison found the way
+to fame and fortune. He was appointed Commissioner of Appeals, and not
+long after Under Secretary of State. In 1707 he accompanied his friend
+and patron, Halifax, on a mission to Hanover, and two years later he was
+appointed Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. In Dublin
+he gained golden opinions. 'I am convinced,' Swift writes, 'that
+whatever Government come over, you will find all marks of kindness from
+any parliament here with respect to your employment; the Tories
+contending with the Whigs which should speak best of you. In short, if
+you will come over again when you are at leisure, we will raise an army
+and make you king of Ireland.' When the Whig Ministry fell in 1710, and
+Addison lost his appointment, he must have gained a fortune, for he was
+able to purchase an estate for £10,000.
+
+In the early years of the century the Italian opera, which had been
+brought into England in the reign of William and Mary, excited the mirth
+and opposition of the wits. Lord Chesterfield, who called it 'too absurd
+and extravagant to mention,' said, 'Whenever I go to the opera I leave
+my sense and reason at the door with my half-guinea, and deliver myself
+up to my eyes and ears.' Steele, Gay, and Pope ridiculed the new-fangled
+entertainment, and Colley Cibber, too, pointed his jest at these
+'poetical drams, these gin-shops of the stage that intoxicate its
+auditors, and dishonour their understanding with a levity for which I
+want a name.' Addison, who has some lively papers on the subject in the
+_Spectator_, undertook to give a faithful account of the progress of
+the Italian opera on the English stage, 'for there is no question,' he
+writes, 'but our great grandchildren will be very curious to know why
+their forefathers used to sit together like an audience of foreigners in
+their own country; and to hear whole plays acted before them in a tongue
+which they did not understand.'
+
+Before writing thus in the _Spectator_, Addison, in order to oppose the
+Italian opera, by what he regarded as a more rational pastime, produced
+his English opera of _Rosamond_, which was acted in 1706, and proved a
+failure on the stage. The music is said to have been bad, and the poetry
+is the work of a writer destitute of lyrical genius. Lord Macaulay, who
+finds a merit in almost everything produced by Addison, praises 'the
+smoothness with which the verses glide, and the elasticity with which
+they bound,' and considers that if he 'had left heroic couplets to Pope,
+and blank verse to Rowe, and had employed himself in writing airy and
+spirited songs, his reputation as a poet would have stood far higher
+than it now does.' The gliding movement of the verse may be admitted;
+but lyric poetry demands the higher qualities of music and imaginative
+treatment, and Addison's 'smoothness,' so far from being a poetical
+gift, is a mechanical acquisition.
+
+In 1713 his _Cato_, with its stately rhetoric and cold dignity, received
+a very different reception. The prologue, written by Pope, is in
+admirable accordance with the spirit of the play. Addison's purpose is
+to exhibit a great man struggling with adversity, and Pope writes:
+
+    'He bids your breasts with ancient ardour rise,
+    And calls forth Roman drops from British eyes;
+    Virtue confessed in human shape he draws,
+    What Plato thought, and God-like Cato was:
+    No common object to your sight displays,
+    But what with pleasure Heaven itself surveys;
+    A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,
+    And greatly falling with a falling state!
+    While Cato gives his little senate laws,
+    What bosom beats not in his country's cause?'
+
+Addison has proved that he could draw a life-like character in his
+representation of Sir Roger de Coverley, but the _dramatis personæ_, who
+act a part, or are supposed to act one, in _Cato_, are mere dummies,
+made to express fine sentiments. There is no flesh and blood in them,
+and owing to the dramatist's regard for unity of place, the play is full
+of absurdities. Yet _Cato_ was received with immense applause. It was
+regarded from a political aspect, and both Whig and Tory strove to turn
+the drama to party account. 'The numerous and violent claps of the Whig
+party,' Pope writes, 'on the one side of the theatre, were echoed back
+by the Tories on the other; while the author sweated behind the scenes
+with concern to find their applause proceeding more from the hand than
+the head.'
+
+In another letter he says: 'The town is so fond of it, that the orange
+wenches and fruit women in the parks offer the books at the side of the
+coaches, and the prologue and epilogue are cried about the streets by
+the common hawkers.' It would be interesting to ascertain what there was
+in the state of public affairs in the spring of 1713, which created this
+enthusiasm. Swift, writing to Stella, alludes to a rehearsal of the
+play, but makes no criticism upon it; and Berkeley, who was in London at
+the time, and had a seat in Addison's box on the first night, is also
+silent about it. In a letter written, as it happens, by Bolingbroke, on
+the day that _Cato_ was produced, he indicates the signs of the time, as
+they appeared to a Tory statesman: 'The prospect before us,' he writes,
+'is dark and melancholy. What will happen no man is able to foretell.'
+
+It was this sense of doubt and insecurity in the nation that gave
+significance to trifles. The political atmosphere was charged with
+electricity. The Tories, though in office, were far from feeling
+themselves secure, and both Harley and Bolingbroke were in
+correspondence with the Pretender. Atterbury, who was heart and soul
+with him, had just been made a bishop, Protestant ascendancy was in
+danger, the security of the country seemed to hang on the frail life of
+the Queen, and the strong party spirit of the time was easily fanned
+into a flame. We cannot now place ourselves in the position of the
+spectators whose passions gave such popularity to _Cato_. Its mild
+platitudes and rhetorical periods, its coldness and sobriety, seem ill
+fitted to arouse the fervour of playgoers, but Addison, whose good luck
+rarely failed him, was especially fortunate in the moment chosen for the
+representation of the play. Had _Cato_ exhibited genius of the highest
+order, it could not have been more successful. Cibber writes that it was
+acted in London five times a week for a month to constantly crowded
+houses, and when the tragedy was acted at Oxford, 'Our house,' he says,
+'was in a manner invested, and entrance demanded by twelve o'clock at
+noon, and before one it was not wide enough for many who came too late
+for places.'[36]
+
+_Cato_ had the good fortune to run in London for thirty-five nights, and
+gained also some reputation on the continent. It is formed on the French
+model, and Addison was therefore praised by Voltaire as 'the first
+English writer who composed a regular tragedy.' He added that _Cato_ was
+'a masterpiece.' If so, it is one of the masterpieces that has long
+ceased to be read. Little could its author have surmised that his
+tragedy, received with universal praise, had but a brief life to live,
+while the Essays which he had already contributed to the _Tatler_ and
+_Spectator_ would make his name familiar to future generations.
+
+Addison's poetry may now be regarded as extinct, and most of the poems
+he wrote are probably unknown to the present generation of readers even
+by name. His Latin verses are pronounced excellent by all competent
+critics, but when a man writes verses in a dead language he does so
+generally to show his scholarship, and not to express his inspiration.
+Latin verse is, as M. Taine says, a faded flower. Now and then, indeed,
+a poem has been written with merits apart from its latinity--witness the
+_Epitaphium Damonis_ of Milton--but Addison, who lacked poetic fire in
+his native language, was not likely to find it in a dead tongue. His
+English poems are generally dull, and sometimes, as in his earliest
+poem, the _Account of the greatest English Poets_ (1694), the tameness
+of the verse is matched by the ignorance of the criticism. The student
+will observe how differently the theme is treated by a true poet like
+Drayton in his _Epistle to Reynolds_; or, like Ben Jonson, in the many
+allusions that he makes to his country's poets. Compare, too, Addison's
+_Letter from Italy_ (1701) with the lovely lines on a like theme in
+Goldsmith's _Traveller_, and the contrast between a verseman and a poet
+is at once apparent. Addison, it may be added, is remembered for his
+hymns, which may be found in most selections of sacred verse, and
+deserve a place in the best of them. As the forerunner of Isaac Watts
+(1674-1748) and of Charles Wesley (1708-1788), he struck upon what at
+that time might, in our country, be almost called a new department of
+literature; and it is remarkable that an age which so dreaded enthusiasm
+should have originated verse which gives utterance to the most emotional
+form of spiritual aspiration. As hymn-writers, Englishmen were more
+than a century behind the best sacred poets of Germany. Luther had
+taught the German people the power of hymnody, but it was during the
+Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), and after its conclusion, that the spirit
+of devotion found full expression in religious verse. Just before the
+engagement at Leipzic, Gustavus Adolphus wrote his well-known battle
+hymn, and the peace was celebrated in a noble hymn by Martin Rinkart. He
+was followed by a succession of sacred singers whose devout utterances
+influenced and in some degree inspired the Wesleys.
+
+    "A verse may find him whom a sermon flies,"
+
+says George Herbert, and the enormous power wielded by Methodism owes a
+large portion of its strength to song.
+
+Amidst much in their writings that is questionable in taste and weak in
+expression, both Watts and Charles Wesley have written hymns which prove
+their incontestible right to a place among the poets, and the influence
+they have exerted over the English-speaking race is beyond the power of
+the literary historian to estimate. The external divisions of the
+Christian Church are numerous; its unity is to be seen in the Hymn Book.
+'Men whose theological views contrast most strongly,' says Mr. Abbey in
+his essay on _The English Sacred Poetry of the Eighteenth Century_,
+'meet on common ground when they express in verse the deeper aspirations
+of the heart and the voice of Christian praise.'
+
+In 1714, on the death of the Queen, Addison was once more in office, and
+held his old position of Irish Secretary. In the following year he
+defended the Whig Government and Whig principles in the _Freeholder_, a
+paper published twice weekly. In it he gives no niggard praise to the
+Government of George I., and to the King himself, for his 'civil
+virtues,' and for his martial achievements. Addison's praise disagrees,
+it need scarcely be said, with the more minute and veracious description
+of the King given by Thackeray, but a party politician in those days
+could scarcely be a faithful chronicler. He could see what he wished to
+see, but found it necessary to shut his eyes when the prospect became
+unpleasant. George was a heartless libertine, but Addison observes with
+great satisfaction that the women most eminent for virtue and good sense
+are in his interest. 'It would be no small misfortune,' he says, 'to a
+sovereign, though he had all the male part of the nation on his side, if
+he did not find himself king of the most beautiful half of his subjects.
+Ladies are always of great use to the party they espouse, and never fail
+to win over numbers to it. Lovers, according to Sir William Petty's
+computation, make at least the third part of the sensible men of the
+British nation, and it has been an uncontroverted maxim in all ages,
+that though a husband is sometimes a stubborn sort of a creature, a
+lover is always at the devotion of his mistress. By this means it lies
+in the power of every fine woman to secure at least half-a-dozen
+able-bodied men to his Majesty's service. The female world are likewise
+indispensably necessary in the best causes to manage the controversial
+part of them, in which no man of tolerable breeding is ever able to
+refute them. Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.'
+
+The essayist thinks it fortunate for the Whigs 'that their very enemies
+acknowledge the finest women of Great Britain to be of that party;' and
+in an amusing but rather absurd way he discourses to maids, wives, and
+widows on the advantages of adhering to the Hanoverian Government. It is
+characteristic of Addison that a political paper like the _Freeholder_
+should be flavoured with the humour and badinage he found so effective
+in the _Spectator_. To the ladies he appeals again and again, but not to
+their reason. He gives them mirth instead of argument, and thinks it
+more likely to prevail with the 'Fair Sex.' The _Freeholder_ has several
+papers worthy of the author in his best moods, the best of them,
+perhaps, being the 'Tory Fox-hunter,' with which, to quote Johnson's
+words, 'bigotry itself must be delighted.' In the year which gave birth
+to the _Freeholder_, _The Drummer_, a comedy, was acted at Drury Lane,
+and ran three nights. The play was not acknowledged by Addison, neither
+was it printed in Tickell's edition of his works; but Steele, who
+published an edition of the play, with a dedication to Congreve, never
+doubted, and there is no reason to doubt, that Addison was the author.
+'The piece,' Mr. Courthope writes, 'is like _Cato_, a standing proof of
+Addison's deficiency in dramatic genius. The plot is poor and trivial,
+nor does the dialogue, though it shows in many passages traces of its
+author's peculiar vein of humour, make amends by its brilliancy for the
+tameness of the dramatic situation.'[37]
+
+After the _Freeholder_ Addison wrote nothing of importance, unless we
+except the essay published after his death _On the Evidences of
+Christianity_. Of this essay it will suffice to quote the judgment of
+his most distinguished eulogist. After observing that the treatise shows
+the narrow limits of Addison's classical knowledge, Lord Macaulay adds:
+'It is melancholy to see how helplessly he gropes his way from blunder
+to blunder. He assigns as grounds for his religious belief stories as
+absurd as that of the Cock Lane Ghost, and forgeries as rank as
+Ireland's Vortigern; puts faith in the lie about the Thundering Legion;
+is convinced that Tiberius moved the senate to admit Jesus among the
+gods, and pronounces the letter of Agbarus, King of Edessa, to be a
+record of great authority. Nor were these errors the effects of
+superstition, for to superstition Addison was by no means prone. The
+truth is, that he was writing about what he did not understand.'
+
+In 1716, after having been made one of the Commissioners for Trades and
+Colonies, he married the Countess Dowager of Warwick, with whom he had
+been acquainted for some years. The marriage, according to the doubtful
+authority of Pope, was not a happy one, and is said to have driven
+Addison to the consolations of the tavern. He did not need them long. In
+1717 Sunderland became Prime Minister, and made Addison a Secretary of
+State, an appointment which he resigned eleven months afterwards; and in
+1719 he died at Holland House at the age of forty-seven, leaving one
+daughter as the memorial of the union. He lies, as is fitting, in the
+great Abbey of which he has written so beautifully.
+
+Tickell's noble tribute to his friend's memory belongs to the undying
+poetry which neither age nor fresher forms of verse can render obsolete.
+It must suffice to quote here a few lines from a poem which, despite
+some conventional expressions common to the time, is worthy of its theme
+throughout:
+
+    'If pensive to the rural shades I rove,
+    His shape o'ertakes me in the lonely grove;
+    'Twas there of Just and Good he reasoned strong,
+    Cleared some great truth, or raised some serious song;
+    There patient showed us the wise course to steer,
+    A candid censor, and a friend severe;
+    There taught us how to live; and (oh! too high
+    The price for knowledge) taught us how to die.'
+
+There are few men of literary eminence in the eighteenth century of whom
+we know so little as of Addison. His own _Spectator_, who never opened
+his lips but in his club, is scarcely more silent than the essayist's
+biographers, so trifling are the details they have to record beyond the
+bare facts of his official and literary career. Steele knew him better,
+and, in spite of an unhappy estrangement at the last, probably loved him
+more than anyone else, and had he written his story, as he once proposed
+doing, the narrative might have been charming; but, alas for Steele's
+resolutions!
+
+That Addison was a shy man we know--Lord Chesterfield said he was the
+most timid man he ever knew--and it speaks well for his resolution and
+strength of purpose that he should have risen notwithstanding this
+timidity to so high a position in public affairs. His want of oratorical
+power was a drawback to his efficiency, and Sir James Macintosh was
+probably right in saying that Addison as Dean of St. Patrick's, and
+Swift as Secretary of State, would have been a happy stroke of fortune,
+putting each into the place most fitted for him. The essayist's reserve,
+while it closed his lips in general society, did not prevent him from
+being one of the most fascinating of companions in the freedom of
+conversation with a few intimate friends. Swift, Steele, and even Pope,
+testify to Addison's irresistible charm in the select society that he
+loved. Young said he could chain the attention of every hearer, and Lady
+Mary Montagu declared that he was the best company in the world.
+
+[Sidenote: Richard Steele (1672-1729).]
+
+Richard Steele was born in Dublin, 1672, of English parents, and
+educated at the Charterhouse, where, as we have said, Addison was at the
+same time a pupil. In 1690 he matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford,
+Addison being then demy at Magdalen. Steele left college without taking
+a degree, and entered the army as a cadet. After a time he obtained the
+rank of captain in Lord Lucas's fusiliers, and wrote his treatise, _The
+Christian Hero_ (1701), with the design, he says, 'principally to fix
+upon his own mind a strong impression of virtue and religion in
+opposition to a stronger propensity towards unwarrantable pleasure.'
+Steele was an honest lover of the things most worthy of love, but his
+frailty too often proved stronger than his virtue, and the purpose of
+_The Christian Hero_ was not answered.
+
+Jeremy Collier's _Short View of the Immorality and Profanity of the
+English Stage_, published in 1698, had made, as it well might, a
+powerful impression, and Steele, who was always ready to inculcate
+morality on other people, wrote four comedies with a moral purpose. _The
+Funeral; or Grief à-la-Mode_ was acted with success at Drury Lane in
+1701, and when published passed through several editions. _The Lying
+Lover_ followed two years later, and was, in the comfortable judgment of
+the author, 'damned for its piety.' This was followed, in 1705, by _The
+Tender Husband_, a play suggested by the _Sicilien_ of Molière, as _The
+Lying Lover_ had been founded on the _Menteur_ of Corneille. Many years
+later Steele's last play, _The Conscious Lovers_ (1722), completed his
+performances as a dramatist. It was dedicated to the King, who is said
+to have sent the author £500. The modern reader will find little worthy
+of attention in the dramas of Steele. His sense of humour enlivens some
+of the scenes, and is, perhaps, chiefly visible in _The Funeral_; but
+for the most part dulness is in the ascendant, and the sentiment is
+frequently mawkish. _The Conscious Lovers_, said Parson Adams, contains
+'some things almost solemn enough for a sermon.' This may be true, but
+we do not desire a sermon in a play, and Steele, who is always a lively
+essayist, loses his liveliness in writing for the stage. It has been
+observed by Mr. Ward that, taking a hint from Colley Cibber, he 'became
+the real founder of that sentimental comedy which exercised so
+pernicious an influence upon the progress of our dramatic literature.'
+'It would be unjust,' he adds, 'to hold him responsible for the
+feebleness of successors who were altogether deficient in the comic
+power which he undoubtedly even as a dramatist exhibits; but in so far
+as their aberrations were the result of his example, he must be held to
+have contributed, though with the best of motives, to the decline of the
+English drama.'[38] One of the prominent offenders who followed in
+Steele's wake was George Lillo (1693-1739), whose highly moral
+tragedies, written for the edification of playgoers, have the kind of
+tragic interest which is called forth by any commonplace tale of crime
+and misery. In Lillo's two most important dramas, _George Barnwell_
+(1731), a play founded on the old ballad, and _The Fatal Curiosity_
+(1736), there is a total absence of the elevation in character and
+language which gives dignity to tragedy. His plays are like tales of
+guilt arranged and amplified from the Newgate Calendar. The author wrote
+with a good purpose, and the public appreciated his work, but it is not
+dramatic art, and has no pretension to the name of literature.
+
+Throughout his life Steele was at war with fortune. His hopefulness was
+inexhaustible, but he learnt no lessons from experience, and escaped
+from one slough to fall into another. He was as unthrifty as Goldsmith,
+whom in many respects he resembles, and his warm, impulsive nature was
+allied to a combativeness and jealousy which sometimes led him to
+quarrel with his best friends. Of his passion for the somewhat exacting
+lady whom he married,[39] and of the 400 and odd notelets addressed by
+the lover-husband to his 'dear, dearest Prue,' and 'absolute Governess,'
+it is enough to say here, that the story told offhand in his own words,
+shows how lovable the man was in spite of the faults which he never
+attempted to conceal. Only about a week before the marriage the lady had
+fair warning of one probable drawback to her happiness as a wife.[40] On
+the morning of August 30th, 1707, Steele advised his 'fair one' to look
+up to that heaven which had made her so sweet a companion, and in the
+evening of that day he wrote:
+
+
+    'DEAR LOVELY MRS. SCURLOCK,
+
+    'I have been in very good company, where your health, under the
+    character of _the woman I loved best_, has been often drunk, so
+    that I may say I am dead drunk for your sake, which is more than
+    I _die for you_.
+
+    'RICH. STEELE.'
+
+
+
+After marriage Steele's extravagance and impecuniosity must have proved
+a severe trial to Prue. At times he would live in considerable style,
+and Berkeley, who writes, in 1713, of dining with him frequently at his
+house in Bloomsbury Square, praises his table, servants, and coach as
+'very genteel.' At other times the family were without common
+necessaries, and on one occasion there was not 'an inch of candle, a
+pound of coal, or a bit of meat in the house.'
+
+On the 12th April, 1709, Steele issued the first number of the
+_Tatler_, its supposed author being the Isaac Bickerstaff, whose name,
+thanks to Swift, had been 'rendered famous through all parts of Europe.'
+The essays appeared every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, for the
+convenience of the post, and at the outset contained political news,
+which Steele, by his government appointment of Gazetteer, was enabled to
+supply. After awhile, however, much to the advantage of the _Tatler_,
+this news was dropped. The articles are dated from White's
+Chocolate-house, from Will's Coffee-house, from the Grecian, and from
+the St. James's. It is probable that the column in Defoe's _Review_,
+containing _Advice from the Scandal Club_, suggested his 'Lucubrations'
+to Steele. If so, it does not detract from his originality of treatment,
+for Defoe's town gossip is poor stuff. Addison, who knew nothing of the
+project beforehand, came, ere long, to his friend's assistance; but it
+was not until about eighty numbers had appeared, that he became a
+frequent contributor, and before that time Steele had made his mark.
+When the essays were afterwards reprinted in four volumes, Steele, who
+was never wanting in gratitude, generously acknowledged the help he had
+received. 'I fared,' he says, 'like a distressed prince who calls in a
+powerful neighbour to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary. When I had
+once called him in, I could not subsist without dependence on him.' The
+_Tatler_ still supplies delightful entertainment, and in the almost
+total absence of amusing and wholesome reading in Steele's time, must
+have proved a welcome companion. Readers who are inundated by what is
+called 'light literature' can with difficulty imagine the dearth
+suffered in Pope's day, when the interminable romances of Calprenède, of
+Mdlle. de Scuderi and her brother, and of Madame la Fayette, were the
+liveliest books considered fit for a modest woman to read. A novel,
+however, in ten volumes, like the _Grand Cyrus_ or _Clélie_, had one
+advantage over the cheap fictions of our time, its interest was not soon
+exhausted.
+
+The _Tatler_ has claims upon the student's attention, apart from the
+entertainment it affords. Steele, who lived from hand to mouth, and
+wrote, as he lived, on the impulse of the moment, had unwittingly begun
+a work destined to form an epoch in English literature. The _Essay_, as
+we now understand the word, dates from the _Lucubrations of Isaac
+Bickerstaff_, and Steele and Addison, who may boast a numerous progeny,
+have in Charles Lamb the noblest of their sons.
+
+On the 2nd January, 1711, Steele wrote the final number of the _Tatler_,
+partly on the plea that the essays would suffice to make four volumes,
+and partly because he was known to be the author, and could not, as Mr.
+Steele, attack vices with the freedom of Mr. Bickerstaff. Addison, who
+had done so much to assist Steele in his first venture, was as ignorant
+of his intention to close the work as he was of its initiation. Two
+months later _The Spectator_ appeared, and this time the friends worked
+in concert. It proved a brilliantly successful partnership. The second
+number, in which the characters of the club are introduced, was written
+by Steele, and to him we owe the first sketch of the immortal Sir Roger
+de Coverley:
+
+'When he is in town he lives in Soho Square. It is said he keeps himself
+a bachelor by reason he was crossed in love by a perverse, beautiful
+widow of the next county to him. Before his disappointment, Sir Roger
+was what you call a fine gentleman, had often supped with my Lord
+Rochester and Sir George Etheridge, fought a duel upon his first coming
+to town, and kicked bully Dawson in a public coffee-house for calling
+him youngster. But being ill-used by the above-mentioned widow, he was
+very serious for a year and a half; and though, his temper being
+naturally jovial, he at last got over it, he grew careless of himself,
+and never dressed afterwards. He continues to wear a coat and doublet of
+the same cut that were in fashion at the time of his repulse, which, in
+his merry humours, he tells us has been in and out twelve times since he
+first wore it.... He is now in his fifty-sixth year, cheerful, gay, and
+hearty, keeps a good house both in town and country; a great lover of
+mankind; but there is such a mirthful cast in his behaviour, that he is
+rather beloved than esteemed. His tenants grow rich, his servants look
+satisfied, all the young women profess love to him, and the young men
+are glad of his company. When he comes into a house he calls the
+servants by their names, and talks all the way upstairs to a visit. I
+must not omit that Sir Roger is a justice of the quorum; that he fills
+the chair at a quarter-session with great abilities; and three months
+ago gained universal applause by explaining a passage in the Game Act.'
+
+In their daily issue, as well as afterwards in volumes, the essays had
+an extensive sale. They were to be found on every breakfast-table, and
+so popular did they prove, that when the imposition of a halfpenny tax
+destroyed a number of periodicals, Steele found it safe to double the
+price of the _Spectator_. The vivacity and humour of the paper were
+visible from the beginning. 'Mr. Steele,' Swift wrote, 'seems to have
+gathered new life, and to have a new fund of wit.' Of 555 papers,
+Addison wrote 274 and Steele 236, while the remaining forty-five were
+the work of occasional contributors. In the full tide of its success,
+and without any assigned reason, the _Spectator_ was brought to a
+conclusion in December, 1712, and in the following spring Steele started
+the _Guardian_, which might have been as fortunate as its predecessor,
+had not the editor's zeal tempted him to diverge to politics. He had
+also a disagreement with his publisher, and the _Guardian_ was allowed
+but a short life of 175 numbers. Of these about fifty were due to
+Addison, and upwards of eighty to Steele.
+
+Steele's political ardour was irrepressible, and a paper in the
+_Guardian_ (No. 128), demanding the abolition of Dunkirk, called forth a
+pamphlet from Swift, in which the weaknesses of his former friend are
+sneered at and denounced with enough of truthfulness to enhance their
+malice. After allowing that Steele has humour, and is no disagreeable
+companion 'after the first bottle,' Swift adds, 'Being the most
+imprudent man alive, he never follows the advice of his friends, but is
+wholly at the mercy of fools and knaves, or hurried away by his own
+caprice, by which he has committed more absurdities in economy,
+friendship, love, duty, good manners, politics, religion, and writing
+than ever fell to one man's share.' A little later, in anticipation of
+the Queen's death, Steele published _The Crisis_ (1714), a political
+pamphlet, which led to his expulsion from the House of Commons. It was
+answered by one of the most masterly of Swift's pamphlets, _The Public
+Spirit of the Whigs_, in which it is suggested that Steele might be
+superior to other writers on the Whig side 'provided he would a little
+regard the propriety and disposition of his words, consult the
+grammatical part, and get some information in the subject he intends to
+handle.'
+
+The reader is chiefly concerned with Steele as an essayist, and it is
+unnecessary to follow his career in the House of Commons and out of it.
+Yet there is one anecdote too characteristic to be omitted in the
+briefest notice of his life. Lady Charlotte Finch had been attacked in
+the _Examiner_ 'for knotting in St. James's Chapel during divine
+service, in the immediate presence both of God and her Majesty, who were
+affronted together.' Steele denounced the calumny in the _Guardian_.
+Upon taking his seat as member for Stockbridge, he was attacked by the
+Tories on account of _The Crisis_, which they deemed an inflammatory
+libel, and defended himself in a speech which occupied three hours. When
+he left the House, Lord Finch, who, like Steele, was a new member, rose
+to make his maiden speech in defence of the man who had defended his
+sister; a nervous feeling caused him to hesitate, and he sat down,
+exclaiming, 'It is strange I cannot speak for this man, though I could
+readily fight for him.' The House cheered these generous words, and Lord
+Finch rising again, made an able speech. The effort was a vain one, and
+Steele lost his seat. A few months later, after the death of Queen Anne,
+he entered the House again as member for Boroughbridge, and having been
+placed in the commission of peace for Middlesex, on presenting an
+address from the county, he received the honour of knighthood.
+
+Meanwhile he had not renounced his vocation of essayist. The _Guardian_
+was followed by the _Englishman_ (1713), the _Englishman_ by the _Lover_
+(1714), and the _Lover_ by the _Reader_ (1714), a journal strongly
+political in character. Of this only nine numbers were issued. Then came
+_Town Talk_, the _Tea Table_, _Chit-chat_, and the _Theatre_. Sir
+Richard appears to have been always in a hurry to break new ground, a
+foible not confined to literature. He was continually starting new
+projects, and never doubted, in spite of numberless failures, that his
+latest effort to make a fortune would be successful.
+
+Notwithstanding his appointments as manager of Drury Lane and as a
+Commissioner in Scotland to inquire into the Estates of Traitors,
+Steele's money difficulties did not lessen as he advanced in life; worse
+still, he had the misfortune to quarrel with his oldest and dearest
+friend. For this he and Addison were alike to blame, and Addison dying a
+few months later, there was no time for reconciliation. In 1718 Steele
+had lost his wife, and some years afterwards his only remaining son.
+Ultimately, broken in health and fortune, Sir Richard retired to
+Carmarthen, and there, in 1729, he died.
+
+'I was told,' says Victor, 'he retained his cheerful sweetness of temper
+to the last; and would often be carried out in a summer's evening, when
+the country lads and lasses were assembled at their rural sports, and
+with his pencil give an order on his agent, the mercer, for a new gown
+to the best dancer.'[41]
+
+All literature worthy of the name is the expression of the writer's
+life, of his aspirations, and of his ultimate aims; and since man is a
+moral being, it cannot be severed from morality. To point a moral, if it
+be within the scope of imaginative art, is subordinate to its main
+purpose. To delight by stimulating the imagination, to give a new beauty
+to existence by widening the realm of thought,--these are some of the
+noblest purposes of literature; and while men and women of creative
+genius are among our wisest teachers, the wisdom we gain from them comes
+to us without direct enforcement. In the last century, however, authors
+of good character, and authors who had no character to boast of, were
+equally impressed with the necessity of adorning their pages with moral
+maxims, and if this moral was not inserted in the body of the work, it
+was inevitable that it should be tacked on to the end of it like a tail
+to a kite. Steele in his artless way had a moral end in view, though his
+method of reaching it was not always wise or even discreet. Addison had
+his moral also. It pervades everything he wrote, but so artfully does
+he make use of it, that the reader is not unpleasantly conscious of a
+purpose. His allegories belong to an obsolete form of literature, but
+one of them at least _The Vision of Mirza_, may be still read with
+pleasure. His Saturday essays, which are nearly always serious in
+character, are the sermons of a layman, expressed in the most lucid
+style and in the purest English. His tales, like his allegories, have
+lost much of their flavour, but the humorous essays, in which he depicts
+the manners of the time, as well as the numbers devoted to the Spectator
+Club and to Addison's beloved Sir Roger, have a perennial charm. There
+is a felicity in the essayist's touch which is beyond imitation,
+although a reader might give, as Johnson suggested, days and nights to
+the study. The style is the man, and to write as Addison wrote it would
+be necessary to reach his moral and intellectual level, to see with his
+shrewd but kindly eyes, and to have his fine sense of humour. His
+faults, too, must be shared by his imitator--the somewhat too delicate
+refinement of a nature that never yields to impulse--the feminine
+sensitiveness that is allied to jealousy. Addison, in the judgment of
+his admirers, comes very near to perfection, and that is an irritating
+quality in a fellow mortal. It is, if it be not paradoxical to say so,
+the defect of his essays. There is nothing definite to find fault with
+in them, but we feel that strength is wanting. The clear and silent
+stream is a beautiful object, but after awhile it becomes monotonous,
+and we long for the swift and impetuous movement of a mountain torrent.
+It would be a thankless task, however, to dwell insistently on the
+deficiencies of a writer who has done so much for literature, and so
+much, too, for what is better than literature. We may wish that he had
+more warmth in him, somewhat more of energy and passion, yet such merits
+would be scarcely consonant with the graceful charm which gives to the
+prose writings of Addison an unrivalled position in Pope's age, and, it
+might be added, in the eighteenth century, were it not for the priceless
+literary gift bestowed upon Oliver Goldsmith.
+
+Steele's fame as a writer has been overshadowed by the more exquisite
+genius of Addison, and his reputation has suffered partly from his own
+frailties and partly from the contemptuous way in which he has been
+treated by the panegyrists and critics of Addison. Pity is closely
+allied to contempt, and Sir Richard has come to be regarded as a
+scapegrace whose chief honour in life was the friendship of the
+accomplished essayist. Yet it was Steele who created the form of
+literature in which Addison earned his laurels, and without which he
+would in the present day be utterly forgotten. Steele was the discoverer
+of a new country, and if Addison took possession of its fairest portion,
+it was after his friend had pointed out the path and made the way easy.
+It would be very unjust, however, to treat of Steele solely as a
+pioneer. His own work, though less perfect than that of Addison, a
+consummate master of composition, is rich in variety and spirit, in
+pathos and in knowledge of the world. Steele is often careless, but he
+is never dull, and writes with a glow of enthusiasm that excites the
+reader's sympathy. Truly does Mr. Dobson say that while Addison's essays
+are faultless in their art and beyond the range of his friend's more
+impulsive nature, 'for words which the heart finds when the head is
+seeking; for phrases glowing with the white heat of a generous emotion;
+for sentences which throb and tingle with manly pity or courageous
+indignation, we must go to the essays of Steele.'[42]
+
+Sir Richard's pathetic touches and artless turns of expression come
+from the heart. He is the most natural of writers, but does not seem to
+be aware that nature, in order to be converted into good literature,
+needs a little clothing. His essays have often a looseness or negligence
+of aim unpardonable in a man who can write so well. A conspicuous
+illustration of this defect may be seen in No. 181 of the _Tatler_, one
+of the most beautiful pieces from Steele's pen.
+
+'The first sense of sorrow,' he writes, 'I ever knew was upon the death
+of my father, at which time I was not quite five years of age; but was
+rather amazed at what all the house meant, than possessed with a real
+understanding why nobody was willing to play with me. I remember I went
+into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping alone by it.
+I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a-beating the coffin and
+calling "Papa," for, I know not how, I had some slight idea that he was
+locked up there. My mother catched me in her arms, and transported
+beyond all patience of the silent grief she was before in, she almost
+smothered me in her embraces; and told me in a flood of tears, "Papa
+could not hear me, and would play with me no more, for they were going
+to put him under ground, whence he could never come to us again." She
+was a very beautiful woman of a noble spirit, and there was a dignity in
+her grief amidst all the wildness of her transport, which, methought,
+struck me with an instinct of sorrow, that before I was sensible of what
+it was to grieve, seized my very soul, and has made pity the weakness of
+my heart ever since.'
+
+Later on in the essay, and still looking back on the past, Steele
+recalls the untimely death of the first object his eyes ever beheld with
+love, and then abruptly dismissing his regrets he carelessly finishes
+the paper with this characteristic passage: 'A large train of disasters
+were coming on to my memory when my servant knocked at my closet door,
+and interrupted me with a letter, attended with a hamper of wine of the
+same sort with that which is to be put to sale on Thursday next at
+Garraway's Coffee-house. Upon the receipt of it I sent for three of my
+friends. We are so intimate that we can be company in whatever state of
+mind we meet, and can entertain each other without expecting always to
+rejoice. The wine we found to be generous and warming, but with such a
+heat as moved us rather to be cheerful than frolicsome. It revived the
+spirits, without firing the blood. We commended it until two of the
+clock this morning, and having to-day met a little before dinner, we
+found that though we drank two bottles a man, we had much more reason to
+recollect than forget what had passed the night before.'
+
+Steele, to quote Johnson's phrase, was 'the most agreeable rake that
+ever trod the rounds of indulgence,' but he had many a fine quality that
+does not harmonize with the character of a rake; and although he hurt
+himself by his follies, he did his best to help others by his genial
+wisdom. If he did not sufficiently regard his own interests, his
+thoughts, as Addison said, 'teemed with projects for his country's
+good.' Savage Landor, with an impulse of somewhat extravagant eulogy,
+exclaimed, 'What a good critic Steele was! I doubt if he has ever been
+surpassed.' This is one of the sayings that will not bear examination.
+Steele had doubtless the fine perception of what is noble in art and
+literature, which some men possess instinctively. He felt what was good,
+but does not appear either to have reached or strengthened his
+conclusions by any process of study.
+
+As an essayist Steele is careless, rapid, emotional, and disposed to be
+on the best terms with himself and with his readers. He makes them sure
+that if they could have met him in his rollicking mood at Will's
+Coffee-house, he would have treated them all round, even if, like
+Goldsmith, he had been forced to borrow the money to do it. But he was
+not always in this reckless humour. His heart was expansive in its
+sympathies and tender as a woman's; his mind was open to all kindly
+influences, and his essays have in them the rich blood and vivid
+utterances of a man who has 'warmed both hands before the fire of life.'
+
+Between Steele's _Guardian_ (1713) and the _Rambler_ of Johnson (1750),
+a period of thirty-seven years, a swarm of periodicals testify to the
+fame of Steele and Addison. The reader curious on the subject will find
+in Dr. Drake's essays a minute account of the numerous essayists who
+flourished, or who made an effort to live, between the close of the
+eighth volume of the _Spectator_ and the beginning of the present
+century. Of these a few have still a place on our shelves, but for the
+most part they enjoyed a butterfly existence, and serve but to prove the
+immeasurable superiority of the writers who created the English Essay.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[36] Cibber's _Apology_, p. 386.
+
+[37] Courthope's _Addison_, p. 150.
+
+[38] _English Dramatic Literature_, vol. ii., p. 603.
+
+[39] 'It is a strange thing,' he writes, 'that you will not behave
+yourself with the obedience people of worse features do, but that I must
+be always giving you an account of every trifle and minute of my time.'
+
+[40] Steele had been previously married to Mrs. Stretch, a widow, who
+possessed an estate in the West Indies; but the lady did not long
+survive the marriage.
+
+[41] Victor's _Original Letters, Dramatic Pieces, and Poems_, vol. i.,
+p. 330.
+
+[42] _Selections from Steele_, by Austin Dobson. Introduction, p. xxx.
+Clarendon Press.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+JONATHAN SWIFT--JOHN ARBUTHNOT.
+
+
+The booksellers who employed the most famous man of letters then living
+(1777), to write the _Lives of the Poets_, selected the authors whose
+biographies were to accompany the poems they proposed to publish. They
+did not know the difference between versemakers and poets; but they
+probably did know what authors of the rhyming tribe were likely to prove
+the most popular. Dr. Johnson, who was then in his sixty-ninth year, was
+willing to write the _Lives_ to order. He added, indeed, three or four
+names to the list which had been given him; but he made no protest, and
+contented himself, as he told Boswell, in saying that a man was a dunce
+when he thought that he was one.
+
+Among the biographies included by Johnson in the _Lives_, appears the
+illustrious name of Swift. He was far indeed from being a dunce; but
+just as certainly he was not a poet, unless the title be given to him by
+courtesy. On the other hand, Swift ranks among the most distinguished
+prose writers of his time--many critics consider him the greatest--and
+he therefore finds his natural place in the prose section of this
+volume.
+
+[Sidenote: Jonathan Swift (1667-1745).]
+
+Swift's life is an extraordinary psychological study, but it will
+suffice to state here the bare outline of his career. He was a
+posthumous child, and born in Dublin of English parents, November 30th,
+1667. When a year old he was kidnapped by his nurse out of pure
+affection, and carried off to Whitehaven, where she remained with the
+child for three years. At the age of six the boy was sent to Kilkenny
+school, and there he had William Congreve (1670-1729), the future
+dramatist, for a schoolfellow. Neither at school nor at Trinity College,
+Dublin, which he entered as a boy of fifteen, did Swift distinguish
+himself, and he left the University in disgrace. At the Revolution he
+found a refuge with his mother at Leicester, and she, through a family
+relationship, obtained a position for her boy in the house of Sir
+William Temple (1628-1698), who was accounted a great man in his own
+day, and was famous alike for statecraft and literature. By many readers
+he will be best remembered as the husband of the charming Dorothy
+Osborne, whose innocently sweet love-letters have not lost their
+freshness in the lapse of two centuries.
+
+There was a degree of servitude in Swift's position of secretary, which
+galled his proud spirit. But Temple, so far from treating him unkindly,
+introduced him to the King, and employed him in 'affairs of great
+importance.' In 1694 he left Temple, went to Dublin, took holy orders,
+and lived as prebend of Kilroot on £100 a year. In 1696 he resigned the
+office and returned to Moor Park, where he remained until Sir William
+Temple's death, in 1699. There he studied hard, ran up a steep hill
+daily for exercise, and cultivated the acquaintance of Esther Johnson,
+the 'Stella' destined to take a strange part in Swift's history, then a
+mere girl, and a companion of Temple's sister, who lived with him after
+his wife's death.
+
+Swift began his literary career by writing Pindaric odes, one of which
+led Dryden to say, and the prediction was amply verified, 'Cousin Swift,
+you will never be a poet.' Probably no man of genius ever wrote worse
+poetry than is to be found in these portentous efforts.
+
+Here is one fair illustration of his flights as an ode writer, and the
+reader will not ask for more:
+
+    'Were I to form a regular thought of Fame,
+      Which is perhaps, as hard to imagine right
+      As to paint Echo to the sight,
+    I would not draw the idea from an empty name;
+      Because, alas! when we all die,
+      Careless and ignorant posterity,
+    Although they praise the learning and the wit,
+      And though the title seems to show
+    The name and man by whom the book was writ,
+      Yet how shall they be brought to know
+    Whether that very name was he, or you, or I?
+      Less should I daub it o'er with transitory praise,
+      And water-colours of these days:
+    These days! where e'en th' extravagance of poetry
+      Is at a loss for figures to express
+    Men's folly, whimsies, and inconstancy,
+      And by a faint description makes them less.
+    Then tell us what is Fame, where shall we search for it?
+    Look where exalted Virtue and Religion sit,
+    Enthroned with heavenly Wit!
+      Look where you see
+      The greatest scorn of learned Vanity!
+      (And then how much a nothing is mankind!
+    Whose reason is weighed down by popular air.
+      Who, by that, vainly talks of baffling death,
+      And hopes to lengthen life by a transfusion of breath,
+      Which yet whoe'er examines right will find
+      To be an art as vain as bottling up of wind!)
+    And when you find out these, believe true Fame is there,
+      Far above all reward, yet to which all is due;
+      And this, ye great unknown! is only known in you.'
+
+It is remarkable that at the very time Swift was perpetrating these
+lyrical atrocities, he was at work on the _Tale of a Tub_, which is
+generally regarded as the most masterly effort of his genius. A critic
+has said that Swift's poetry 'lacks one quality only--imagination,' but
+verse without imagination is like a body without a soul, like a house
+without windows, like a landscape-painting without atmosphere, and no
+license of language will allow us to call Swift a poet. Enough that he
+became a master of rhyme, and used it with extraordinary facility. Dr.
+Johnson's estimate of Swift's powers in this respect is a just one:
+
+'In the poetical works of Dr. Swift there is not much upon which the
+critic can exercise his powers. They are often humorous, almost always
+light, and have the qualities which recommend such compositions, ease
+and gaiety. They are, for the most part, what their author intended. The
+diction is correct, the numbers are smooth, and the rhymes exact. There
+seldom occurs a hard-laboured expression, or a redundant epithet; all
+his verses exemplify his own definition of a good style; they consist of
+proper words in proper places.'
+
+The merits with which Swift's verse is credited are, therefore, not
+poetical merits, unless we accept what Schlegel calls the miserable
+doctrine of Boileau, that the essence of poetry consists in diction and
+versification.
+
+The great bulk of Swift's verse is suggested by the incidents of the
+hour. No subject is too trivial for his pen; but the poems which are
+addressed to Stella, and others which, like _Cadenus and Vanessa_, and
+_On the Death of Dr. Swift_, have a personal interest, are by far the
+most attractive. We see the best side of Swift when he addresses Stella,
+whether in verse or prose. The birthday rhymes he delighted to write in
+her praise have the mark of sincerity, and there is true feeling in the
+lines which describe her as a ministering angel in his sickness:
+
+    'When on my sickly couch I lay,
+    Impatient both of night and day,
+    Lamenting in unmanly strains,
+    Called every power to ease my pains;
+    Then Stella ran to my relief
+    With cheerful face and inward grief;
+    And though by Heaven's severe decree
+    She suffers hourly more than me,
+    No cruel master could require
+    From slaves employed for daily hire,
+    What Stella, by her friendship warmed,
+    With vigour and delight performed;
+    My sinking spirits now supplies
+    With cordials in her hands and eyes,
+    Now with a soft and silent tread
+    Unheard she moves about my bed.
+    I see her taste each nauseous draught
+    And so obligingly am caught,
+    I bless the hand from whence they came,
+    Nor dare distort my face for shame.'
+
+The poem in which Swift imagines what will take place upon his death, is
+full of satiric humour, combined with that vein of bitterness that is
+never long absent from his writings. His humour is always allied to
+sadness; his mirth often sounds like a cry of misery. In this poem he
+pictures his gradual decay, and how his special friends, anticipating
+the end, will show their tenderness by adding largely to his years:
+
+    'He's older than he would be reckoned,
+    And well remembers Charles the Second.
+    He hardly drinks a pint of wine,
+    And that I doubt is no good sign.
+    His stomach too begins to fail,
+    Last year we thought him strong and hale,
+    But now he's quite another thing,
+    I wish he may hold out till Spring.'
+
+No enemy can match a friend, Swift adds, in portending a great
+misfortune:
+
+    'He'd rather choose that I should die
+    Than his prediction prove a lie,
+    No one foretells I shall recover,
+    But all agree to give me over.'
+
+So he dies, and the first question asked is, 'What has he left and who's
+his heir?' and when these questions are answered, the Dean is blamed for
+his bequests. The news spreads to London and is told at Court:
+
+    'Kind Lady Suffolk, in the spleen,
+    Runs laughing up to tell the Queen.
+    The Queen so gracious, mild, and good,
+    Cries, "Is he gone? 'tis time he should."'
+
+But the loss of the Dean will cause a brief regret to his most intimate
+friends:
+
+    'Poor Pope will grieve a month; and Gay
+    A week; and Arbuthnot a day.
+    St. John himself will scarce forbear
+    To bite his pen and drop a tear.
+    The rest will give a shrug, and cry,
+    "I'm sorry--but we all must die."'
+
+Why grieve, indeed, at the death of friends, since no loss is more easy
+to supply, and in a year the Dean will be forgotten, and his wit be out
+of date.
+
+    'Some country squire to Lintot goes,
+    Inquires for "Swift in Verse and Prose."
+    Says Lintot, "I have heard the name;
+    He died a year ago." "The same."
+    He searches all the shop in vain.
+    "Sir, you may find them in Duck Lane,
+    I sent them with a load of books
+    Last Monday to the pastrycook's.
+    To fancy they could live a year!
+    I find you're but a stranger here.
+    The Dean was famous in his time,
+    And had a kind of knack at rhyme.
+    His way of writing now is past,
+    The town has got a better taste."'
+
+Enough has been transcribed to show Swift's art in this poem, which is
+of considerable, but not of wearisome length. Perhaps ten or twelve
+pieces, in addition to those already mentioned, will repay the student's
+attention. One of the worthiest is a _Rhapsody on Poetry_. _Baucis and
+Philemon_, too, is a lively piece that pleased Goldsmith, and will
+please every reader. It was much altered from the original draught at
+Addison's suggestion; but the alterations are not improvements.[43] _The
+City Shower_ is a piece of Dutch painting, reminding us of Crabbe. _Mrs.
+Harris's Petition_ is an admirable bit of fooling; _Mary the Cook-Maid's
+Letter_, is in its way inimitable; and so, too, is the amusing talk of
+'my lady's waiting-woman' in _The Grand Question Debated_.
+
+It is difficult, unhappily, to pursue one's way through Swift's poems,
+without being repelled again and again by the filth in which it pleases
+him to wade. _The Beast's Confession_, which has been reprinted in the
+_Selections from Swift_ (Clarendon Press), is not obscene, like _The
+Lady's Dressing-Room_, _Strephon and Chloe_, and other poems of the
+class; but it has the inhumanity which deforms the description of the
+Houyhnhnms. Strange to say, in private life Swift appears to have been
+not only moral in conduct, but refined in conversation, and he is even
+said to have rebuked Stella on one occasion for a slightly coarse
+remark. His imagination was diseased, and he was himself always
+apprehensive of the calamity under which he became at last 'a driveller
+and a show.' 'I shall be like that tree,' he said once to the poet
+Young, 'I shall die at the top.'
+
+It has been already said that _The Tale of a Tub_ was written at Moor
+Park. It appeared in 1704, and although published anonymously and never
+owned, the book effectually stood in the way of Swift's high preferment
+in the Church. Queen Anne declined, and not without reason, to make its
+author a bishop.
+
+It is a satire of amazing power, written by a man who takes, as Swift
+took throughout life, a misanthropical view of human nature, and who
+agrees with the cynical judgment of Carlyle, that men are mostly fools.
+Swift, however, did not consider fools useless, but observes that they
+'are as necessary for a good writer as pen, ink, and paper.' Never was
+volume written which betrayed in larger characters the opinions and
+disposition of its author. Swift was consistent in defending the
+National Church as a political institution; but in the _Tale of a Tub_
+he does so with weapons an atheist might use if he possessed the skill.
+The author maintains that in his ridicule of the Church of Rome and of
+Protestant dissenters, he is only displaying the abuses which deform the
+Christian Church; but no defence can be urged for his wild and
+irreverent method of turning subjects into ridicule which by a vast
+number of people are regarded as sacred. In judging of Swift's satire
+from a moral standing-point, one test, as Mr. Leslie Stephen observes,
+may be supposed to guide our decision. 'Imagine the _Tale of a Tub_ to
+be read by Bishop Butler and by Voltaire, who called Swift a _Rabelais
+perfectionné_. Can anyone doubt that the believer would be scandalized,
+and the scoffer find himself in a thoroughly congenial element? Would
+not any believer shrink from the use of such weapons, even though
+directed against his enemies?'[44]
+
+Although the wit poured out with such profusion in the _Tale of a Tub_,
+in so far as it offends the moral sense, fails to give pleasure, the
+reader is astonished, as Swift in later life was himself, at the genius
+displayed in this allegory, the argument of which may be told in a few
+words.
+
+A man is supposed to have three sons by one wife, and all at a birth. On
+his deathbed he leaves to each of them a new coat, which he says will
+grow with their growth, and last as long as they live. In his will he
+leaves directions, saying how the coats are to be used, and warning them
+against neglecting his instructions. For some years all goes well, the
+will is studied and followed, and the brothers, Peter (the Church of
+Rome), Martin (the Church of England), and Jack (the Calvinist), live in
+unity. How by degrees they misinterpret their father's will, how Peter
+begins by adding topknots to his coat, and afterwards grows so
+scandalous that his brothers resolve to leave him, and then fall out
+between themselves, is told with abundant wit. A great part of the
+volume consists of digressions written in Swift's most vigorous style,
+and with the cynical humour in which he has no competitor.
+
+It is always interesting to observe the influence of a work of genius on
+other minds, and in connection with the _Tale of a Tub_ a story told of
+his boyhood by William Cobbett is worth recording:
+
+'I was trudging through Richmond,' he writes, 'in my blue smock-frock,
+and my red garters tied under my knees, when, staring about me, my eyes
+fell upon a little book in a bookseller's window, on the outside of
+which was written, "_Tale of a Tub_, price threepence." The title was so
+odd that my curiosity was excited.... It was something so new to my mind
+that though I could not at all understand some of it, it delighted me
+beyond description; and it produced what I have always considered a sort
+of birth of intellect. I read on till it was dark, without any thought
+of supper or bed.' Cobbett adds, that having read till he could see no
+longer, he put the volume in his pocket, and 'tumbled down' by the side
+of a haystack, 'where I slept till the birds in Kew Gardens awakened me
+in the morning; when off I started to Kew, reading my little book.'
+
+One of the greatest masters of prose in the language has also recorded
+the impression made upon him by this wonderful book. At the age of
+eighty-three Landor wrote: 'I am reading once more the work I have read
+oftener than any other prose work in our language.... What a writer! Not
+the most imaginative or the most simple, not Bacon or Goldsmith had the
+power of saying more forcibly or completely whatever he meant to say.'
+'Simplicity,' said Swift, 'is the best and truest ornament of most
+things in human life;' and Landor, commenting on Swift's style, observes
+that 'he never attempted to round his sentences by redundant words,
+aware that from the simplest and the fewest arise the secret springs of
+genuine harmony.'
+
+The volume containing the _Tale of a Tub_ had also within its covers the
+_Battle of the Books_, which was suggested by a controversy that
+originated in France, and had been carried on by Sir W. Temple in
+England, as to the relative merits of the Ancients and the Moderns. Out
+of this, too, arose a discussion by some _savants_, with Richard Bentley
+(1662-1742), the greatest scholar of the age, at their head, with regard
+to the genuineness of the _Epistles of Phalaris_, a subject discussed in
+Macaulay's essay on Temple in his usually brilliant style. Swift, in the
+_Battle of the Books_ sides with Temple and with Charles Boyle, the
+nominal editor of the _Epistles_, who, in the famous _Reply to Bentley_,
+fought behind the shield of Atterbury. In a combat, which takes place in
+the Homeric style, the enemies of the Ancients, Bentley and Wotton, are
+slain by one lance upon the field. The mighty deed was achieved by
+Boyle. 'As when a slender cook has trussed a brace of woodcocks, he with
+iron skewer pierces the tender sides of both, their legs and wings close
+pinioned to their ribs, so was this pair of friends transfixed, till
+down they fell joined in their lives, joined in their deaths; so closely
+joined, that Charon would mistake them both for one, and waft them over
+Styx for half his fare.' The humour of the piece is delightful, and it
+matters not a whit for the enjoyment of it, that the wrong heroes gain
+the victory.
+
+In 1708 Swift produced several pamphlets or tracts, and in one of them,
+the _Argument against Abolishing Christianity_, he found ample scope for
+the irony of which he was so consummate a master.
+
+'Great wits,' he writes, 'love to be free with the highest objects; and
+if they cannot be allowed a God to revile or renounce, they will speak
+evil of dignities, abuse the Government, and reflect upon the ministry;
+which I am sure few will deny to be of much more pernicious
+consequence;' and he observes, in concluding the argument: 'Whatever
+some may think of the great advantages to trade by this favourite
+scheme, I do very much apprehend that in six months' time the Bank and
+East India Stock may fall at least one _per cent._ And since that is
+fifty times more than ever the wisdom of our age thought fit to venture
+for the preservation of Christianity, there is no reason we should be at
+so great a loss merely for the sake of destroying it.'
+
+An amusing piece which appeared also at this time from Swift's pen, is
+of literary interest. Under the name of Isaac Bickerstaff he predicted
+the death, upon a certain day, of Partridge, a notorious astrologer and
+almanac maker. When the day arrived his decease was announced, and he
+was afterwards decently buried by Swift, despite a loud protest from the
+poor man that he was not only alive, but well and hearty. The town took
+up the joke, all the wits joined in it, and Steele, who started the
+_Tatler_ in the following year (1709), found it of advantage to assume
+the name of Bickerstaff, which these squibs had made so popular. Swift
+loved practical jokes, and sometimes yielded to a license that bordered
+on buffoonery. He was now in London, charged with a mission from the
+Irish Church, and hoping for Church preferment himself. With the latter
+object in view he published the _Sentiments of a Church of England Man_
+(1708). Two years later, vexed at heart at being unable to gain for the
+Irish clergy privileges enjoyed by their English brethren, and foiled,
+too, in his ambition, Swift forsook the Whig party, which he had never
+loved, and going over to the Tories, fought their battle for some years
+with so masterly a pen, as to become a great power in the country.
+
+Some time before his return to London in 1710, a weekly Tory paper had
+been started by Bolingbroke and Prior called _The Examiner_, and in
+opposition to it, upon September 14th in that year, Addison produced the
+_Whig Examiner_ which lived a brief life of five numbers and died on the
+8th of October. Three weeks later, on the 2nd November, after thirteen
+numbers of the _Examiner_ had been published, Swift took up the pen, and
+from that date to June 14th, 1711, every paper was from his hand. Never
+before had a political journal exercised such power. In his change of
+party Swift was sincere in purpose, but unscrupulous in his methods of
+pursuing it, and to gain his ends told lies with a vigour that has
+rarely been surpassed. He is never delicate in his treatment of
+opponents, and when finer weapons would be useless, strikes with a
+sledge hammer. That such a writer, a master of every method most
+effective in controversy, should have been valued by the statesmen of
+the day is not surprising. When he forsook the Whig camp there was no
+opponent to pit against him, for neither Addison with his delicate
+humour, nor Steele with his brightness and versatility, could grapple
+with an enemy like this.
+
+Swift's arrogance in these days of his power was that of a despot. He
+was doing great things for ministers, and took care that they should
+know it. He was proud of his self-assertion, proud of being rude. Great
+men, and great ladies too, who wished for his acquaintance, had to make
+the first advances. He caused Lady Burlington to burst into tears by
+rudely ordering her to sing. 'She should sing or he would make her.' 'I
+was at court and church to-day,' he tells Stella, 'I generally am
+acquainted with about thirty in the drawing-room, and am so proud I make
+all the lords come up to me.' On one occasion he sent the Lord Treasurer
+into the House of Commons to call out the principal Secretary of State
+in order to say that he would not dine with him if he intended to dine
+late. He relates, too, how he warned St. John not to appear cold to him,
+for he would not be treated like a school-boy, and if he heard or saw
+anything to his disadvantage to let him know in plain words, and not to
+put him in pain by the change of his behaviour, for it was what he would
+hardly bear from a crowned head. 'If we let these great ministers
+pretend too much,' he says, 'there will be no governing them.' And in a
+letter to Pope he makes the following confession: 'All my endeavours
+from a boy to distinguish myself were only for want of a great title and
+fortune that I might be treated like a lord ... whether right or wrong
+it is no great matter; and so the reputation of great learning does the
+work of a blue ribbon, and of a coach and six horses.'
+
+It would be out of place in this volume to dwell on Swift's feats as a
+political writer; for us the most interesting fact connected with the
+years 1710-14 is that during that eventful period of Swift's life, in
+which he was hobnobbing with Ministers of State and doing them infinite
+service by his pen, he was writing at odd moments his inimitable
+_Journal to Stella_, and gaining the love which ended so tragically, of
+Hester Vanhomrigh. This strange chapter in Swift's life is closely bound
+up with his literary history, and must therefore be briefly noticed.
+
+At Moor Park Swift, who was more than twenty years her senior, had seen
+Esther Johnson growing up into womanhood. He had been to her as a
+master, a position he always liked to assume towards women.[45] When he
+settled in Ireland it was arranged that Esther and her companion, Mrs.
+Dingley, should also live there. Her preceptor, in his regard for
+propriety, appears never to have seen Esther apart from the useful
+Dingley, and his letters are apparently addressed to both of them, but
+Esther knew, as we know, that all the tenderness and affectionate humour
+they contain was meant for her alone. Swift never writes as a lover, but
+the kind of love he gave to 'Stella' sufficed to bind her to him for
+life. If there were moments when she wished to escape from his power,
+the wish was hopeless. Having once submitted to his fascination, she was
+held by it to the end. Hester Vanhomrigh, who was about ten years
+younger than Stella, felt the same spell, and having a far less
+restrained nature than Miss Johnson, gave free expression to the passion
+which devoured her. Between his two admirers, for such they were, Swift
+had a difficult course to steer. To Stella he was linked by strong ties
+of companionship, and to her, according to some authorities, he was
+secretly married. Whether this were the case or not she had the larger
+claims upon him, and if one of the twain had to be sacrificed, Vanessa
+must be the victim.
+
+In _Cadenus and Vanessa_ (1713) a poem which every student of Swift will
+read, the author strove to achieve an impossibility. His aim was to
+ignore the lover and to assume the character of a master to an
+intelligent and favourite pupil, or of a father to a daughter. His
+dignity and age, he says, forbade the thought of warmer feelings.
+
+    'But friendship in its greatest height,
+    A constant rational delight,
+    On Virtue's basis fixed to last
+    When love's allurements long are past,
+    Which gently warms but cannot burn,
+    He gladly offers in return;
+    His want of passion will redeem
+    With gratitude, respect, esteem;
+    With that devotion we bestow
+    When goddesses appear below.'
+
+And this was Swift's method of dealing with a woman who confessed the
+'inexpressible passion' she had for him, and that his 'dear image' was
+always before her eyes. 'Sometimes,' she wrote, 'you strike me with that
+prodigious awe, I tremble with fear; at other times a charming
+compassion shines through your countenance which moves my soul.' Swift
+had acted far more than indiscreetly in encouraging a friendship with
+Vanessa, and when she followed him to Dublin, in the neighbourhood of
+which she had some property, he knew not how to escape from the snare
+his own folly had laid. To Stella he had given 'friendship and esteem,'
+but, as he is careful to add, 'ne'er admitted love a guest;' the same
+cold gift was offered to Vanessa, but in vain. According to a report,
+the authority of which is doubtful, Miss Vanhomrigh wrote to Stella, in
+1723, asking if she was Swift's wife. She replied that she was, and sent
+the letter she had received to Swift. In a towering passion he rode to
+Vanessa's house, threw the letter on the table, and left again without
+saying a word. The blow was fatal, and Vanessa died soon afterwards,
+revoking her will in Swift's favour and leaving to him the legacy of
+remorse. Having told in outline this episode in Swift's story, I return
+to the _Journal to Stella_, which dates from September 2nd, 1710, to
+June 6th, 1713.
+
+Little did Swift imagine that the chit-chat he was writing every day for
+Esther Johnson's sake would be read and enjoyed by thousands who care
+little or nothing for the party questions upon which the strenuous
+efforts of his intellect were expended. The early years of the
+eighteenth century contain nothing more delightful than this _Journal_.
+Its gossip, its nonsense, its freshness and ease of style, the
+tenderness concealed, or half-revealed, in its 'little language,' and
+the illustrations it supplies incidentally of the manners of the court
+and town, these are some of the charms that make us turn again and again
+to its pages with ever-increasing pleasure. We enjoy Swift's egotism and
+trivialities, as we enjoy the egotism of Pepys or Montaigne, and can
+imagine the eagerness with which the _Letters_ were read by the lovely
+woman whose destiny it was to receive everything from Swift save the
+love which has its consummation in marriage. The style of the _Journal_
+is not that of an author composing, but of a companion talking; and it
+is all the more interesting since it reveals Swift's character under a
+pleasanter aspect than any of his formal writings. We see in it what a
+warm heart he had for the friends whom he had once learnt to love, and
+with what zeal he exerted himself in assisting brother-authors, while
+receiving little beyond empty praise from ministers himself.
+
+In the winter of 1713-14 Swift joined the Scriblerus Club, an
+association of such wits as Pope, Parnell, Arbuthnot, and Gay, and it
+was about this time that his friendship with Pope began. The members
+proposed writing a satire between them, and when Swift was exiled to
+Dublin as Dean of St. Patrick's, he pursued indirectly the suggestion of
+the Scriblerus wits by writing _Gulliver's Travels_ (1726), a book that
+has made his name known throughout Europe, and in all the lands where
+English literature is read. Although Swift did not hesitate to make use
+of hints and descriptions which he had met with in the course of his
+reading, this is one of the most original works of fiction ever written,
+and one of the wittiest. Yet like almost everything that Swift wrote, it
+is deformed by grossness of expression, and in the latter portion by a
+malignant contempt for human nature which betrays a diseased
+imagination. The stories of the Lilliputians and Brobdingnags, purified
+from coarse allusions, are the delight of children; but the description
+of the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos excites disgust and indignation. He said
+that his object in writing the satire was to vex the world, and he has
+succeeded.
+
+'It cannot be denied,' says Sir Walter Scott, one of the sanest and
+healthiest of imaginative writers, 'that even a moral purpose will not
+justify the nakedness with which Swift has sketched this horrible
+outline of mankind degraded to a bestial state; since a moralist ought
+to hold with the Romans that crimes of atrocity should be exposed when
+punished, but those of flagitious impurity concealed. In point of
+probability, too--for there are degrees of probability, proper even to
+the wildest fiction--the fourth part of _Gulliver_ is inferior to the
+three others.... The mind rejects, as utterly impossible, the
+supposition of a nation of horses, placed in houses which they could not
+build, fed with corn which they could neither sow, reap, nor save,
+possessing cows which they could not milk, depositing that milk in
+vessels which they could not make, and, in short, performing a hundred
+purposes of rational and social life for which their external structure
+altogether unfits them.'[46]
+
+Neither morality, nor a regard for probability are so outraged in the
+story of the Lilliputians and Brobdingnags.
+
+Having once accepted Swift's assumption of the existence of little
+people not six inches high, and of a country in which the inhabitants
+'appeared as tall as an ordinary spire-steeple,' the exactness and
+verisimilitude of the narrative, with its minute geographical details,
+make it appear so reasonable that a young reader may feel inclined to
+resent the criticism of an Irish bishop who said that 'the book was full
+of improbable lies, and for his part he hardly believed a word of it.'
+It is curious to note that Swift, who made a strange vow in early life
+'not to be fond of children, or let them come near me hardly,' should
+have done more to delight them than any author of his century, with the
+exception, perhaps, of Defoe. Gay and Pope wrote a joint letter to Swift
+on the appearance of the _Travels_, pretending that they did not know
+the author, and advising him to get the book if it had not yet reached
+Ireland. 'From the highest to the lowest,' they declare, 'it is
+universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery.... It has
+passed Lords and Commons _nemine contradicente_, and the whole town,
+men, women, and children, are quite full of it.' A book which attained
+in the author's lifetime a wellnigh unprecedented popularity should
+have yielded him a large profit. What it did yield we do not know, but
+in a letter dated 1735, in which, perhaps, he alludes to the _Travels_,
+Swift says, 'I never got a farthing for anything I writ, except once,
+about eight years ago, and that by Mr. Pope's prudent management for
+me.'
+
+The injustice done to Ireland in the last century, as short-sighted as
+it was cruel, is described at large in the second volume of Mr. Lecky's
+_History_. Swift, who hated Ireland, felt a righteous indignation at the
+misgovernment which threatened the country with ruin, and some of his
+most powerful phillipics were secretly written in her defence.
+
+In 1720 he issued a pamphlet urging the Irish to use only Irish
+manufactures: 'I heard the late Archbishop of Tuam,' he writes, 'mention
+a pleasant observation of somebody's, that Ireland would never be happy
+till a law were made for burning everything that came from England,
+except their people and their coals. I must confess, that as to the
+former, I should not be sorry if they would stay at home; and for the
+latter, I hope, in a little time we shall have no occasion for them
+
+    "Non tanti mitra est, non tanti judicis ostrum--"
+
+but I should rejoice to see a staylace from England be thought
+scandalous, and become a topic for censure at visits and tea-tables.'
+
+The pamphlet is a forcible attack on the oppression under which Ireland
+laboured, and the Government answered it by prosecuting the printer.
+Nine times the jury were sent back by the Chief Justice before they
+consented to bring in a 'special verdict,' and ultimately the
+prosecution was dropped.
+
+Two years later the English Government granted a patent to a man of the
+name of Wood to issue a new copper coinage for Ireland to an
+extravagant amount, out of which, in return for bribes to the Duchess of
+Kendal, it was supposed that the speculator would make a considerable
+profit at Ireland's expense. The country was aroused, and Swift, by the
+issue of the _Drapier's Letters_, purporting to come from a Dublin
+draper, roused the passions of the people to a white heat. It was known
+perfectly well from whom the _Letters_ came, but no one would betray
+Swift, and when the printer was thrown into prison the jury refused to
+convict. The battle was fought with vigour, Swift conquered, and the
+patent was withdrawn. A brief passage from the fourth and final letter
+'To the Whole People of Ireland' shall be quoted. It will be seen that
+the writer is not afraid of plain speaking. After saying that the king
+cannot compel the subject to take any money except it be sterling gold
+or silver, he adds:
+
+    'Now here you may see that the vile accusation of Wood and his
+    accomplices, charging us with disputing the King's prerogative
+    by refusing his brass, can have no place--because compelling the
+    subject to take any coin which is not sterling is no part of the
+    King's prerogative, and I am very confident, if it were so, we
+    should be the last of his people to dispute it, as well from
+    that inviolable loyalty we have always paid to his Majesty, as
+    from the treatment we might in such a case justly expect from
+    some, who seem to think we have neither common sense nor common
+    senses. But, God be thanked, the best of them are only our
+    fellow-subjects, and not our masters. One great merit I am sure
+    we have which those of English birth can have no pretence
+    to--that our ancestors reduced this kingdom to the obedience of
+    England; for which we have been rewarded with a worse
+    climate--the privilege of being governed by laws to which we do
+    not consent--a ruined trade--a House of Peers without
+    jurisdiction--almost an incapacity for all employments--and the
+    dread of Wood's halfpence. But we are so far from disputing the
+    king's prerogative in coining, that we own he has power to give
+    a patent to any man for setting his royal image and
+    superscription upon whatever materials he pleases, and liberty
+    to the patentee to offer them in any country from England to
+    Japan; only attended with one small limitation--that nobody
+    alive is obliged to take them.'
+
+With much humour, in the last paragraph of the letter, Swift undertakes
+to show that Walpole is against Wood's project 'by this one invincible
+argument, that he has the universal opinion of being a wise man, an able
+minister, and in all his proceedings pursuing the true interest of the
+King his master; and that as his integrity is above all corruption, so
+is his fortune above all temptation.'
+
+Swift's arguments in the _Drapier's Letters_ are sophistical, his
+statements grossly exaggerated, and his advice sometimes shameless, as,
+for instance, in recommending what is now but too well known as
+'boycotting.' The end, however, was gained, and the Dean was treated
+with the honours of a conqueror. On his return from England in 1726, a
+guard of honour conducted him through the streets, and the city bells
+sounded a joyful peal. Wherever he went he was received with something
+like royal honours, and when Walpole talked of arresting him, he was
+told that 10,000 soldiers would be needed to make the attempt
+successful. The Dean's hatred of oppression and injustice had its
+limits. He defended the Test Act, and assailed all dissenters with
+ungovernable fury. It was his aim to exclude them from every kind of
+power.
+
+In 1729, with a passion outwardly calm and in a moderate style, which
+makes his amazing satire the more appalling, Swift published _A Modest
+Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from
+being a Burden to their Parents or Country and for making them
+Beneficial to the Public_. A more hideous piece of irony was never
+written; it is the fruit of an indignation that tore his heart. The
+_Proposal_ is, that considering the great misery of Ireland, young
+children should be used for food. 'I grant,' he says,'this food will be
+somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they
+have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title
+to the children. 'A very worthy person, he says, considers that young
+lads and maidens over twelve would supply the want of venison, but 'it
+is not improbable that some scrupulous people might be apt to censure
+such a practice (although, indeed, very unjustly), as a little bordering
+upon cruelty; which I confess has always been with me the strongest
+objection against any project, how well soever intended.' The
+business-like way in which the argument is conducted throughout, adds
+greatly to its force. Swift has written nothing so terrible as this
+satire, and nothing that surpasses it in power.
+
+The Dean was fretting away his life when he wrote this pamphlet. Two
+years before he had paid his last visit to the country where, as he said
+in a letter to Gay, he had made his friendships and left his desires. On
+the death of George I. he visited England, vainly hoping to gain some
+preferment there through the aid of Mrs. Howard, the mistress of George
+II., and returned to 'wretched Dublin,' to lose the woman he had loved
+so well and treated so strangely, and to 'die in a rage like a poisoned
+rat in a hole.' After Stella's death, in 1728, Swift's burden of
+misanthropy was never destined to be lightened. His rage and gloom
+increased as the years moved on, and in penning his lines of savage
+invective against the Irish House of Commons, the Dean had a fit and
+wrote no more verse. Here is a specimen of his _sæva indignatio_:
+
+    'Could I from the building's top
+    Hear the rattling thunder drop,
+    While the devil upon the roof
+    (If the devil be thunder-proof)
+    Should with poker fiery red
+    Crack the stones and melt the lead;
+    Drive them down on every skull,
+    While the den of thieves is full;
+    Quite destroy that harpies' nest,
+    How might then our isle be blest!'
+
+It should be observed at the same time that even in his declining days,
+when his heart was heavy with bitterness, Swift indulged in practical
+jokes and in the most trivial pursuits. _Vive la bagatelle_ was his cry,
+but it was the cry of a man who had as deep a contempt for the wiser
+pursuits of life as for its frivolities. Of the mirth that is the
+natural outcome of a cheerful nature, the Dean knew nothing. His
+hilarity was but a vain attempt to escape from despair. In 1740 he
+writes of being very miserable, extremely deaf, and full of pain.
+Sometimes he gave way to furious bursts of temper, and for several years
+before the end came, he fell into a state resembling idiocy. Swift died
+on October 19th, 1745, leaving his money to a hospital for lunatics,
+
+    'And showed by one satiric touch
+    No nation needed it so much.'
+
+A brilliant writer, who has undertaken to prove the 'glaring injustice'
+of the popular estimate of Swift, and by his forcible epithets has
+strengthened the grounds on which that estimate is built, observes that
+Swift's 'philosophy of life is ignoble, base, and false,' that 'his
+impious mockery extends even to the Deity,' and that 'a large portion of
+his works exhibit, and in intense activity, all the worst attributes of
+our nature--revenge, spite, malignity, uncleanness.'[47]
+
+This harsh judgment is essentially a true one; but Swift's was a
+many-sided character. He was a misanthrope, with deep, though very
+limited affections, a man frugal to eccentricity, with a benevolence at
+once active and extensive. His powerful intellect compels our
+admiration, if not our sympathy. His irony, his genius for satire and
+humour, his argumentative skill, his language, which is never wanting in
+strength, and is as clear as the most pellucid of mountain
+streams--these gifts are of so rare an order, that Swift's place in the
+literary history of his age must be always one of high eminence.
+Doubtless, as a master of style, he has been sometimes over-praised. If
+we regard the writer's end, it must be admitted that his language is
+admirably fitted for that end. What more then, it may be asked, can be
+needed? The reply is, that in composition, as in other things, there are
+different orders of excellence. The kind, although perfect, may be a low
+kind, and Swift's style wants the 'sweetness and light,' to quote a
+phrase of his own, which distinguish our greatest prose writers. It
+lacks also the elevation which inspires, and the persuasiveness that
+convinces while it charms. With infinitely more vigour than Addison,
+Swift, apart from his _Letters_, has none of Addison's attractiveness.
+No style, perhaps, is better fitted to exhibit scorn and contempt; but
+its author cannot express, because he does not possess, the sense of
+beauty.
+
+Unlike Pope, Swift was a man of affairs rather than of letters. He wrote
+neither for literary fame nor for money. His ambition was to be a ruler
+of men, and in imperious will he was strong enough to make a second
+Strafford. 'When people ask me,' said Lord Carteret, 'how I governed
+Ireland, I say that I pleased Dr. Swift, "_quæsitam meritis sume
+superbiam_."' As a political pamphleteer he succeeded, because he was
+savagely in earnest, and had the special genius of a combatant. If
+argument was against him he used satire; if satire failed he tried
+invective; his armoury was full of weapons, and there was not one of
+them he could not wield. He loved power, and exercised it on the
+ministers who needed the services of his pen. And, as we have already
+said, he dispensed his favours like a king! Swift's commanding genius
+gives even to his most trivial productions a measure of vitality. The
+student of our eighteenth century literature is arrested by the man and
+his works, and to treat either him or them with indifference would be to
+neglect a significant chapter in the history of the time.
+
+[Sidenote: John Arbuthnot (1667-1735).]
+
+John Arbuthnot, one of the most prominent of the Queen Anne wits, and
+the warm friend of Swift and Pope, was born at Arbuthnot, near Montrose,
+in 1667. He studied medicine at Aberdeen, and having taken his doctor's
+degree at St. Andrews, came, after the wont of ambitious Scotchmen, to
+seek his fortune in London, where in 1700 he published an _Essay on the
+Usefulness of Mathematical Learning_, and having won high reputation as
+a man of science, was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. A few years
+later he was made Physician Extraordinary to Queen Anne; and it was not
+long before he had as high a repute among men of letters as with men of
+science. He suffered frequently from illness; but no pain, it has been
+said, could extinguish his gaiety of mind. In the last century Hampstead
+was a favourite resort of invalids. Arbuthnot had sent Gay there on one
+occasion, and thither in 1734 he went himself, so ill that he 'could
+neither sleep, breathe, eat, nor move.' Contrary to his expectation he
+regained a little strength, and lived until the following spring. 'Pope
+and I were with him,' Lord Chesterfield wrote, 'the evening before he
+died, when he suffered racking pains.... He took leave of us with
+tenderness, without weakness, and told us that he died not only with the
+comfort, but even the devout assurance of a Christian.'
+
+There is not one of Pope's circle who holds a more enviable position
+than Arbuthnot. In strength of intellect and readiness of wit Swift only
+was his equal, and in classical learning he was Swift's superior. Like
+Othello, Arbuthnot was of a free and open nature, and his friends clung
+to him with an affection that was almost womanly. He had the fine
+impulses of Goldsmith combined with the manliness and practical sagacity
+of Dr. Johnson, and Johnson recognized in this celebrated physician a
+kindred spirit. 'I think Dr. Arbuthnot,' he said, 'the first man among
+the wits of the age. He was the most universal genius, being an
+excellent physician, a man of deep learning, and a man of much humour.'
+His genius and generous qualities were amply acknowledged by his
+contemporaries, Pope calls Arbuthnot 'as good a doctor as any man for
+one that is ill, and a better doctor for one that is well;' Swift said
+he had every virtue which could make a man amiable; Berkeley wrote of
+him as a great philosopher who was reckoned the first mathematician of
+the age and had the character 'of uncommon virtue and probity,' and
+Chesterfield, who declared that his knowledge and 'almost inexhaustible
+imagination' were at every one's service, added that 'charity,
+benevolence, and a love of mankind appeared unaffectedly in all he said
+and did.'
+
+Strange to say we know little of Arbuthnot but what is to be gleaned
+from the correspondence of his friends, and it is only of late years
+that an attempt has been made to write the doctor's biography, and to
+collect his works.[48] To edit these works satisfactorily is a difficult
+and a doubtful task--several of Arbuthnot's writings having been
+produced in connection with Swift, Pope, and Gay. So indifferent was he
+to literary fame, that his children are said to have made kites of
+papers in which he had jotted down hints that would have furnished good
+matter for folios. His most famous work is _The History of John Bull_
+(1713), which Macaulay considered the most humorous political satire in
+the language. It was designed to help the Tory party at the expense of
+the Duke of Marlborough, whose genius as a military leader was probably
+equal to that of Wellington, while he fell far below the 'Great Duke' in
+the virtues which form a noble character. The irony and dry humour of
+the satire remind one of Swift, and, like Arbuthnot's _Art of Political
+Lying_, is so much in Swift's vein throughout that M. Taine may be
+excused for attributing both of these pieces to the Dean of St.
+Patrick's.
+
+The _History of John Bull_ is not fitted to attain lasting popularity.
+It will be read from curiosity and for information; but the keen
+excitement, the amusement, and the irritation caused by a brilliant
+satire of living men and passing events can be but vaguely imagined by
+readers whose interest in the statecraft of the age is historical and
+not personal. Arbuthnot, like Swift, belonged to the Tory camp, and both
+did their utmost to depreciate the great General who never knew defeat,
+and to promote the designs of Harley. When Arbuthnot produced his
+satire, all the town laughed at the representation of Marlborough as an
+old smooth-tongued attorney who loved money, and was said by his
+neighbours to be hen-pecked, 'which was impossible by such a
+mild-spirited woman as his wife was.' That an 'honest plain-dealing
+fellow' like John Bull the Clothier, should be deceived by such wily men
+of business as Lewis Baboon of France, and Lord Strutt of Spain, and
+also that other tradesmen should be willing to join John and Nic Frog,
+the linen-draper of Holland, in the lawsuit, provided that Bull and
+Frog, or Bull alone, would bear the law charges, is made to appear
+likely enough; and Scott says truly that 'it was scarce possible so
+effectually to dim the lustre of Marlborough's splendid achievements as
+by parodying them under the history of a suit conducted by a wily
+attorney who made every advantage gained over the defendant a reason for
+protracting law procedure, and enhancing the expense of his client.' In
+this long lawsuit everybody is represented as gaining something except
+_John Bull_, whose ready money, book debts, bonds, and mortgages go into
+the lawyer's pockets. Whether the nickname of _John Bull_ originated
+with Arbuthnot or was merely adopted by him is not known.
+
+Arbuthnot was an active member of the Scriblerus Club, and wrote the
+larger portion of the _Memoirs of Martin Scriblerus_ (1741), the design
+of which was, as Pope said, to ridicule false tastes in learning, in the
+character of a man 'that had dipped into every art and science, but
+injudiciously in each.' Dr. Johnson says of this work that no man can be
+wiser, better, or merrier for remembering it. Perhaps he is right; but
+the _Memoirs_ contain some humorous points which, if they do not create
+merriment, may yield some slight amusement. The pedant's endeavours to
+make a philosopher of his child are sufficiently ludicrous. He is
+delighted to find that the infant has the wart of Cicero and the very
+neck of Alexander, and hopes that he may come to stammer like
+Demosthenes, 'and in time arrive at many other defects of famous men.'
+As the boy grows up his father invents for him a geographical suit of
+clothes, and stamps his gingerbread with the letters of the Greek
+alphabet, which proved so successful a mode of teaching the language,
+that on the very first day the child 'ate as far as iota.' He also
+taught him as a diversion 'an odd and secret manner of stealing,
+according to the custom of the Lacedemonians, wherein he succeeded so
+well that he practised it till the day of his death.' Martin studies
+logic, philosophy, and medicine, and discovers that the seat of the soul
+is not confined to one place in all persons, but resides in the stomach
+of epicures, in the brain of philosophers, in the fingers of fiddlers,
+and in the toes of rope-dancers. His discoveries, it may be added, are
+made 'without the trivial help of experiments or observations.'
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[43] _Life of Jonathan Swift_, by John Forster, vol. i., pp. 164-174.
+Mr. Forster did not live to produce more than one volume of a work to
+which for many years he had given 'much labour and time.'
+
+[44] _English Men of Letters--Jonathan Swift_, by Leslie Stephen, p. 43.
+
+[45] Mrs. Pendarves writes (1733) 'The day before we came out of town we
+dined at Doctor Delany's, and met the usual company. The Dean of St.
+Patrick's was there _in very good humour_, he calls himself "_my
+master_," and corrects me when I speak bad English or do not pronounce
+my words distinctly. I wish he lived in England, I should not only have
+a great deal of entertainment from him, but improvement.'--_Life and
+Correspondence of Mrs Delany_, vol. i., p. 407.
+
+[46] _Life of Swift_, p. 299.
+
+[47] _Jonathan Swift, a Biographical and Critical Study_, by J. Churton
+Collins, p. 267.
+
+[48] See _The Life and Works of Dr. Arbuthnot_, by George A. Aitken.
+Oxford, Clarendon Press.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+DANIEL DEFOE--JOHN DENNIS--COLLEY CIBBER--LADY MARY WORTLEY
+    MONTAGU--EARL OF CHESTERFIELD--LORD LYTTELTON--JOSEPH SPENCE.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Daniel Defoe (1661-1731).]
+
+The most voluminous writer of his century is popularly remembered as the
+author of one book, published in old age. Everybody has read _Robinson
+Crusoe_, and knows the name of its author; but few readers outside the
+narrow circle of literary students are aware of Defoe's exhaustless
+labours as a politician, social reformer, projector, pamphleteer, and
+novelist.
+
+It would be well for the author's reputation if we knew less about him
+than we do. There was a time when he was regarded as a noble sufferer in
+the cause of civil and religious liberty. His faults were credited to
+his age while his virtues were supposed to place him on an eminence far
+above the time-servers who despised him. He has been praised as a man
+courageously living for great aims, who was maligned by the malice of
+party, and to whose memory scant justice has been done. 'No one,' says
+Henry Kingsley, 'could come up to the standard of his absolute
+precision,' and his 'inexorable honesty alienated everyone.' These words
+were written in 1868. Four years previously, however, the discovery of
+six letters in the State Paper Office, in Defoe's own hand, had entirely
+destroyed his character for inexorable honesty, and the researches of
+his latest and most exhaustive biographer,[49] who regards his hero's
+vices as virtues, do but serve to give greater prominence to the
+baseness of his conduct. Defoe, by his own confession, was for many
+years in the pay of the Government for secret services, taking shares in
+Tory papers and supervising them as editor, in order to defeat the aims
+of the party to which he professed to be allied, and of the proprietors
+with whom he was in partnership. Thus in 1718, he writes as a plea that
+his labours should be remembered: 'I am, Sir, for this service, posted
+among Papists, Jacobites, and enraged High Tories--a generation who I
+profess my very soul abhors; I am obliged to hear traitorous expressions
+and outrageous words against his majesty's person and government, and
+his most faithful servants, and smile at it all as if I approved it; I
+am obliged to take all the scandalous and indeed villainous papers that
+come, and keep them by me as if I would gather materials from them to
+put them into the _News_; nay, I often venture to let things pass which
+are a little shocking that I may not render myself suspected. Thus I bow
+in the House of _Rimmon_, and must humbly recommend myself to his
+lordship's protection, or I may be undone the sooner, by how much the
+more faithfully I execute the commands I am under.' It would not be fair
+to judge Defoe altogether by the moral standard of our own day, but the
+part he played as a servant and spy of the government would have been an
+act of baseness in any age, and of this he seems to have been conscious.
+
+Daniel Foe, who about 1703 assumed the prefix of De, for no assignable
+reason, was the son of a butcher and Nonconformist in Cripplegate, who
+had the youth educated for the ministry. Daniel, however, preferred a
+more exciting occupation, and took part in the unfortunate expedition of
+the Duke of Monmouth. Escaping from that peril he began business as a
+hose factor in Cornhill, and carried it on until he failed about the
+year 1692. Already he had learnt to use the pen, and a loyal pamphlet
+secured for him a public appointment which lasted for some years. He was
+also connected with a brick manufactory at Tilbury. Meanwhile he wrote
+for the press, and showed himself the possessor of a clear and masculine
+style, which could be 'understanded of the people.'
+
+In 1698 Defoe published his _Essay on Projects_, 'which perhaps,'
+Benjamin Franklin says, 'gave me a turn of thinking that had an
+influence on some of the principal future events of my life.'
+
+One of the most interesting projects in the book is the proposal to form
+an Academy on the French model. In 1712 Swift wrote a pamphlet (the only
+piece he published with his name) entitled _A proposal for correcting,
+improving, and ascertaining the English tongue_, in which he suggests
+the foundation of an Academy under the protection of the Queen and her
+ministers. The idea it will be seen had been anticipated fifteen years
+before.
+
+    'The peculiar study of the Academy of France,' Defoe writes,
+    'has been to refine and correct their own language, which they
+    have done to that happy degree that we see it now spoken in all
+    the courts of Christendom as the language allowed to be most
+    universal. I had the honour once to be a member of a small
+    society who seemed to offer at this noble design in England; but
+    the greatness of the work and the modesty of the gentlemen
+    concerned prevailed with them to desist from an enterprise which
+    appeared too great for private hands to undertake. We want
+    indeed a Richelieu to commence such a work, for I am persuaded
+    were there such a genius in our kingdom to lead the way, there
+    would not want capacities who could carry on the work to a
+    glory equal to all that has gone before them. The English tongue
+    is a subject not at all less worthy the labours of such a
+    society than the French, and capable of a much greater
+    perfection. The learned among the French will own that the
+    comprehensiveness of expression is a glory in which the English
+    tongue not only equals, but excels its neighbours.... It is a
+    great pity that a subject so noble should not have some as noble
+    to attempt it; and for a method what greater can be set before
+    us than the Academy of Paris, which, to give the French their
+    due, stands foremost among all the great attempts in the learned
+    part of the world.'
+
+Defoe also projected a Royal Military Academy, and an academy for women
+which should have only one entrance and a large moat round it. With
+these precautions, spies, he observes, would be unnecessary, since, in
+his opinion, 'there needs no other care to prevent intriguing than to
+keep the men effectually away.' He had the Eastern notion of guarding
+women from danger by preventing the access to it, yet he could write:
+
+    'A woman of sense and manners is the finest and most delicate
+    part of God's creation; the glory of her Maker, and the great
+    instance of His singular regard to man, His darling creature, to
+    whom He gave the best gift either God could bestow or man
+    receive. And it is the sordidest piece of folly and ingratitude
+    in the world to withhold from the sex the due lustre which the
+    advantages of education gives to the natural beauty of their
+    minds. A woman well bred and well taught, furnished with the
+    additional accomplishments of knowledge and behaviour, is a
+    creature without comparison; her society is the emblem of
+    sublime enjoyments; her person is angelic and her conversation
+    heavenly.... She is every way suitable to the sublimest wish,
+    and the man that has such a one to his portion has nothing to do
+    but to rejoice in her and be thankful.'
+
+In verse Defoe published the _True Born Englishman_ (1701), in defence
+of King William and his Dutch followers:
+
+    'William's the name that's spoke by every tongue,
+    William's the darling subject of my song;
+    Listen, ye virgins, to the charming sound,
+    And in eternal dances hand it round.
+    Your early offerings to this altar bring,
+    Make him at once a lover and a king.'
+
+The nonsense deepens as the rhyme goes on. For William every tender vow
+is to be made, he is to be the first thought in the morning, and his
+name will act as a charm, affrighting the infernal powers and guarding
+from the terror of the night.
+
+The poem proved very popular, and Defoe writes that had he been able to
+enjoy the profit of his own labour he would have gained above £1,000. He
+printed nine editions at the price of one shilling a copy, but meanwhile
+twelve surreptitious editions were published and sold for a few pence, a
+fraud for which he says he had no remedy but patience. Throughout his
+busy life of authorship he was indeed continually victimized by pirates.
+
+While in verse Defoe extolled the king as if he were a demi-god, he did
+William good service by his pamphlets, and was in some degree admitted
+into his confidence.
+
+Up to the king's death in 1702 his course appears to have been
+straightforward; after the accession of Anne he acted a less honourable
+part. No fault can be found with his design that year in writing _The
+Shortest Way with the Dissenters_, a piece of irony unsurpassed in that
+age until the publication of Swift's _Modest Proposal_, twenty-seven
+years later. The satire was at first accepted as a serious argument. The
+Dissenters were alarmed, and the most bigoted of High Churchmen
+delighted. Then, Defoe's aim being discovered, both parties joined in
+the cry for vengeance. He was condemned to stand for three days in the
+pillory, and was afterwards imprisoned in Newgate. To the 'hieroglyphic
+state machine, contrived to punish Fancy in,' the undaunted man
+addressed a hymn which was hawked about the streets, and the mob instead
+of pelting him with offensive missiles, covered him with flowers.
+'Earless on high stood unabashed Defoe,' says Pope. He was unabashed,
+but he was not earless.
+
+In Newgate he remained until 1704, when he was released by Harley. In
+prison he wrote a minutely circumstantial account of the great storm
+commemorated in Addison's _Campaign_. How much of Defoe's narrative is
+truth and how much invention it is impossible to say. The fact that he
+solemnly vouches for the accuracy of his statements inclines one to
+believe that they are not to be trusted, for this was always Defoe's
+_rôle_ as a writer of fiction. His first and most deliberate effort is
+to impose upon his readers, and in this art he is without a rival.
+
+While in Newgate he began his _Review_, a political journal of great
+ability. The first number was published in February, 1704, and it
+existed, though not in its original form, for more than nine years.
+
+'When it is remembered that no other pen was ever employed than that of
+Defoe, upon a work appearing at such frequent intervals, extending over
+more than nine years, and embracing, in more than five thousand printed
+pages, essays on almost every branch of human knowledge, the achievement
+must be pronounced a great one, even if he had written nothing else. If
+we add that between the dates of the first and last numbers of the
+_Review_ he wrote and published no less than eighty other distinct
+works, containing 4,727 pages, and perhaps more not now known, the
+fertility of his genius must appear as astonishing as the greatness of
+his capacity for labour.'[50]
+
+Defoe was permitted to leave his prison upon condition that he should
+act in the secret service of the Government, and his work was that of an
+hireling writer unburdened by principle. When Harley was ejected he made
+himself useful to Godolphin; when Godolphin was dismissed he went back
+to Harley, and 'the spirit of the _Review_ changed abruptly.' A more
+useful man for the work he had undertaken could not be found. His
+dexterity, his boldness, his knowledge of men and of affairs, his
+readiness as a writer, and it must be added his unscrupulousness, fitted
+him admirably for services which had to be done in secret.
+
+Much that he did openly was deserving of high praise. He was tolerant in
+an intolerant age, he did his best to forward the Union of England and
+Scotland, his patriotic spirit was not feigned, his words are often
+weighty with wisdom, and it has been truly said, that 'his powerful
+advocacy was enlisted in favour of almost every practicable scheme of
+social improvement that came to the front in his time.'[51]
+
+With equal truth the writer adds that Defoe was 'a wonderful mixture of
+knave and patriot.' The knavery is seen to some extent in his method of
+workmanship as a man of letters. In _A True Relation of the Apparition
+of one Mrs. Veal[52] the next day after her Death to one Mrs. Bargrave
+at Canterbury, 8th September, 1705_ (1706) Defoe's art of mystification
+is skilfully practised.
+
+'This relation,' he says in the Preface, 'is matter of fact, and
+attended with such circumstances as may induce any reasonable man to
+believe it. It was sent by a gentleman, a Justice of Peace at Maidstone,
+in Kent, and a very intelligent person, to his friend in London as it is
+here worded; which discourse is here attested by a very sober and
+understanding gentleman, who had it from his kinswoman who lives in
+Canterbury, within a few doors of the house in which the within-named
+Mrs. Bargrave lives ... and who positively assured him that the whole
+matter as it is related and laid down is really true, and what she
+herself had in the same words, as near as may be, from Mrs. Bargrave's
+own mouth.'
+
+In addition to this circumstantial statement, the veritable appearance
+of the ghostly lady is confirmed by the fact that she wore a scoured
+silk gown, newly made up, which, as Mrs. Bargrave told a friend, she
+felt and commended. 'Then Mrs. Watson cried out, "you have seen her
+indeed, for none knew but Mrs. Veal and myself that the gown was
+scoured."' The ghost came chiefly for the purpose of recommending
+Drelincourt's volume, _A Christian's Defence Against the Fear of Death_,
+then in its third edition. The fourth edition contained Mrs. Bargrave's
+story. 'I am unable to say,' Mr. Lee writes, 'when Defoe's "Apparition"
+became a necessary appendage to the book; but think, that since the
+eleventh edition, to the present time, Drelincourt has never been
+published without it.'
+
+When in 1719, at the age of fifty-nine, he produced his first and
+greatest work of fiction, _Robinson Crusoe_, he aimed by the constant
+reiteration of commonplace details to give a matter-of-fact aspect to
+the narrative, and in most of his later novels, with the exception of
+_Colonel Jack_ (1722), which he allows to be in part a 'moral romance,'
+Defoe boldly maintains that his relations are in every respect true to
+biography and to history. To make this more probable he overloads his
+pages with a number of business-like statements, and with affairs so
+insignificant and sordid that only his genius can save the narrative
+from being wearisome. To inculcate morality he carries his readers into
+the worst dens of vice--his heroes being pickpockets, pirates, and
+convicts, and his heroines depraved women of the lowest order. The
+interest felt in _Captain Singleton_ (1720), in _Moll Flanders_ (1722),
+in _Colonel Jack_ (1722), and in _Roxana_ (1724), is to be found in the
+minute record of their shameless adventures, their miseries and vices.
+When the characters reform, Defoe's occupation is gone. The atmosphere
+the reader is forced to breathe in these tales is indeed so oppressive
+that he will be glad to escape from it into the pure and exhilarating
+air of a Shakespeare or a Scott.
+
+A critic has asserted that as models of fictitious narrative these tales
+are supreme, but it is impossible to agree with this judgment. The
+highest imaginative art is not deceptive art. The fact that Lord Chatham
+thought the _Memoirs of a Cavalier_[53] (1720) a true history, is not to
+the credit of the work as fiction. As well, it has been said, might you
+claim the highest genius for the painter, whose fruit and flowers were
+so deceptively painted as to tempt birds to peck at the canvas.
+
+Whatever interest the reader feels in Defoe's 'secondary novels,' of
+which _Roxana_ is the most powerful, is due to scenes which disgust as
+much as they impress. The vividness with which they are depicted is
+undeniable, but one does not desire to inspect filth with a microscope.
+Happily _Robinson Crusoe_, on which the author's fame rests, is a
+thoroughly healthy book that still holds its place as the best, or one
+of the best, volumes ever written for boys. There is genius as well as
+extraordinary skill in the way this admirable story is told, but it is
+not among the fictions which are read with as much pleasure in old age
+as in youth. Defoe's amazing gift of invention does not compensate for
+the want of a creative and elevating imagination.
+
+_The History of the Plague in London_ (1722) stands next to _Robinson
+Crusoe_ in literary merit. Had Defoe been a witness, as he pretends to
+have been, of the scenes which he describes, the record could not be
+more vivid. It professes to have been 'written by a citizen who
+continued all the while in London,' and 'lived without Aldgate Church
+and Whitechapel Bars, on the left hand or north side of the street.' In
+this case, as in others, the circumstantial character of the narrative
+led readers to regard it as a true history, and Dr. Mead, in his
+_Discourse on the Plague_ (1744), quotes the book as an authority.
+
+Highly characteristic of Defoe's style, and of his art as a moralist is
+the _Religious Courtship_, also published in 1722. It is the fictitious
+history of a family told partly in dialogue, and so written as to
+attract the reader in spite of repetitions and of reflections as
+praiseworthy as they are commonplace. It appeals to a class whose
+attention would not be won by fine literature, and has not appealed in
+vain, for the book, after passing through a large number of editions,
+has not yet lost its popularity. Morally the work is unobjectionable,
+though not a little narrow, and it is strange that it should have
+appeared about the same time as a story so offensively coarse as _Moll
+Flanders_.
+
+The most veracious book written by Defoe is _A Tour through the Whole
+Island of Great Britain, By a Gentleman_, 1724, in three volumes. The
+full title of the work is too long to quote, but it may be observed that
+the promises it holds out under five headings are satisfactorily
+fulfilled. The _Tour_ bears the marks of having been written with great
+care and from personal observation throughout. Defoe states that before
+publishing the book he had made seventeen large circuits or separate
+journeys, and three general tours through the whole island. It contains
+curious information as to the state of England and Scotland one hundred
+and seventy years ago, and readers interested in our social progress and
+the industrial life of the country will find much to interest them in
+the traveller's shrewd observations and careful details. The love of
+mountain and lake scenery felt by Gray more than forty years later was a
+passion unknown to Defoe and to most of his contemporaries. In the
+_Tour_ Westmoreland is described as the wildest, most barbarous and
+frightful country of any which the author had passed over. He observes
+that it is 'of no advantage to represent horror,' and the impassable
+hills with their snow-covered tops 'seemed,' he says, 'to tell us all
+the pleasant part of England was at an end.' The _Tour_ exhibits Defoe's
+literary gift of expressing what he has to say in the clearest language.
+A homely style which fulfils its purpose has a merit deserving of
+recognition. For steady work upon the road the sober hackney is of more
+service than the race-horse.
+
+Defoe was a husband and father and a man of affairs, yet, like his own
+Crusoe, he lived a lonely life, and in 1731, owing to some strange
+circumstance of which there is no record, died a lonely death at a
+lodging-house at Moorfields. He has been called the father of the
+English novel, and deserves the title, although on a slighter scale
+Steele and Addison preceded him as writers of fiction. As a novelist he
+is without refinement, without ideality, without passion; he looks at
+life from a low level, but in the narrow territory of which he is
+master--the art of realistic invention--his power of insight is
+incontestible. Defoe adopted a method dear in our day to some of the
+least worthy of French novelists, who while aiming to copy Nature debase
+her. For Nature must be interpreted by Art, since only thus can we
+obtain a likeness that shall be both beautiful and true. Defoe,
+nevertheless, has contributed one book of lasting value to the
+literature of his country, and such a gift, in the eyes of the literary
+chronicler, hides a multitude of faults.
+
+[Sidenote: John Dennis (1657-1733-4).]
+
+John Dennis was born in London and educated at Harrow and Caius College,
+Cambridge. His relations with Pope give him a more prominent position
+among men of letters than he would otherwise deserve, and mark with
+unpleasing distinctness the coarse methods of literary warfare adopted
+in Pope's day. The poet began the attack in his _Essay on Criticism_.
+Dennis had written a tragedy called _Appius and Virginia_, and Pope, who
+had a grudge against him for not admiring his _Pastorals_, showed his
+spite in the following lines:
+
+    'But Appius reddens at each word you speak,
+    And stares tremendous, with a threatening eye,
+    Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.'
+
+It was perilous in Pope to allude to the personal defects of an
+antagonist, and Dennis attacked him coarsely in return as a 'young,
+squab, short gentleman, an eternal writer of amorous pastoral madrigals,
+and the very bow of the god of Love.' 'He has reason,' he adds, 'to
+thank the good gods that he was born a modern; for had he been born of
+Grecian parents, and his father by consequence had by law the absolute
+disposal of him, his life had been no longer than one of his poems--the
+life of half a day.'
+
+Dennis's pamphlet on the _Essay_ caused Pope some pain when he heard of
+it, 'But it was quite over,' he told Spence, 'as soon as I came to look
+into his book and found he was in such a passion.'
+
+The critic, however, was a thorn in Pope's flesh for many a year, and
+the poet showed his irritation by assaulting him in prose and verse.
+Dennis was equally ready, although not equally capable of returning the
+poet's blows, and when free from the impotence of anger, made several
+shrewd critical thrusts which his antagonist felt keenly.
+
+Dennis aspired to be a poet and dramatist. He wrote a bombastic poem in
+blank verse called _The Monument_, sacred to the immortal memory of 'the
+good, the great, the god-like, William III.'; a poem, also in blank
+verse, and still more 'tremendous,' to quote his favourite word, on the
+_Battle of Blenheim_, in which he frequently invokes his soul to say and
+sing a thousand things far beyond his soul's reach--and a poem equally
+laboured and grandiloquent, on the Battle of Ramillies, in which there
+are passages that read like a burlesque of Milton. Dennis observes in
+his _Grounds of Criticism in Poetry_ (1704) that 'poetry unless it
+pleases, nay, and pleases to a height, is the most contemptible thing in
+the world.' This is just criticism, but the writer did not recognize
+that his own verse was contemptible. In this essay, which contains many
+sound critical remarks and an appreciation of Milton seldom felt at that
+time, he has the bad taste to quote as an illustration of the sublime, a
+passage from his own paraphrase of the Te Deum:
+
+    'Where'er at utmost stretch we cast our eyes
+    Through the vast frightful spaces of the skies,
+    Ev'n there we find Thy glory, there we gaze
+    On Thy bright Majesty's unbounded blaze;
+    Ten thousand suns prodigious globes of light
+    At once in broad dimensions strike our sight;
+    Millions behind, in the remoter skies,
+    Appear but spangles to our wearied eyes;
+    And when our wearied eyes want farther strength
+    To pierce the void's immeasurable length
+    Our vigorous towering thoughts still further fly,
+    And still remoter flaming worlds descry;
+    But even an Angel's comprehensive thought
+    Cannot extend so far as Thou hast wrought;
+    Our vast conceptions are by swelling, brought,
+    Swallowed and lost in Infinite, to nought.'
+
+It is significant of Dennis's judgment of his own verse that these
+inflated lines follow one of the loveliest passages contained in
+_Paradise Lost_. Milton describes the moon unveiling her peerless light;
+and the poet-critic exhibits in juxtaposition his 'vigorous towering
+thoughts' about the stars. The comparison forced upon the reader is
+unfortunate.
+
+His tragedies, _Iphigenia_ (1704), _Liberty Asserted_ (1704), _Appius
+and Virginia_ (1709), and a comedy called _A Plot and No Plot_ (1697)
+were brought upon the stage. _Liberty Asserted_, which was received with
+applause due to the violence of its attacks upon the French, although
+called a tragedy, does not end tragically. The heroine's patriotism is
+so fervid that she professes herself willing, while loving one man, to
+marry another whom she does not love, if her country deems him the more
+worthy.
+
+Among other poetical attempts, Dennis addressed a Pindaric Ode to
+Dryden, and the great poet, with the flattery which he was always ready
+to lavish on his well-wishers, called him 'one of the greatest masters'
+in that kind of verse. 'You have the sublimity of sense as well as
+sound,' he wrote, 'and know how far the boldness of a poet may lawfully
+extend.'
+
+It may be added that Dennis on one occasion successfully opposed one of
+the ablest controversialists of the age. In _The Absolute Unlawfulness
+of Stage Entertainments fully demonstrated_, William Law attacked
+dramatic representations, not on account of the evils at that time
+associated with them, but as 'in their own nature grossly sinful.' 'To
+suppose an innocent play,' Law says, 'is like supposing innocent lust,
+sober rant, or harmless profaneness,' and throughout the pamphlet this
+strain of fierce hostility is maintained.
+
+'Law,' says his biographer,'measured his strength with some of the very
+ablest men of his day, with men like Hoadly and Warburton, and Tindal
+and Wesley; and it may safely be said that he never came forth from the
+contest defeated. But, absurd as it may sound, it is perfectly true that
+what neither Hoadly nor Warburton, nor Tindal, nor Wesley could do, was
+done by John Dennis.... "Plays," wrote Law, "are contrary to Scripture
+as the devil is to God, as the worship of images is to the second
+commandment." To this Dennis gave the obvious and unanswerable retort
+that "when St. Paul was at Athens, the very source of dramatic poetry,
+he said a great deal publicly against the idolatry of the Athenians, but
+not one word against their stage. At Corinth he said as little against
+theirs. He quoted on one occasion an Athenian dramatic poet, and on
+others Aratus and Epimenides. He was educated in all the learning of the
+Grecians, and could not but have read their dramatic poems; and yet, so
+far from speaking a word against them, he makes use of them for the
+instruction and conversion of mankind."'
+
+Dennis's pamphlet, _The Stage defended from Scripture, Reason,
+Experience, and the Common Sense of Mankind for Two Thousand Years_, was
+published in 1726. In his latter days he suffered from two grievous
+calamities, poverty and blindness. In 1733 Vanbrugh's play, _The
+Provoked Husband_, was acted for his benefit, and his old enemy Pope
+wrote the prologue, of which the sarcasm is more conspicuous than the
+kindness. There is a story, to which allusion is made in the _Dunciad_,
+that Dennis had invented some kind of theatrical thunder, and how, being
+once present at a tragedy, he fell into a great passion because his art
+had been appropriated, and cried out ''Sdeath! that is _my_ thunder.'
+The critic was also known to have an intense hatred of the French and of
+the Pope, and these peculiarities are not forgotten in the prologue.
+
+After saying that Dennis lay pressed by want and weakness, his doubtful
+friend adds:
+
+    'How changed from him who made the boxes groan,
+    And shook the stage with thunders all his own!
+    Stood up to dash each vain Pretender's hope,
+    Maul the French tyrant, or pull down the Pope!
+    If there's a Briton then, true bred and born,
+    Who holds Dragoons and wooden shoes in scorn;
+    If there's a critic of distinguished rage;
+    If there's a senior who contemns this age;
+    Let him to-night his just assistance lend,
+    And be the Critic's, Briton's, Old Man's friend.'
+
+Dennis got £100 by this benefit, but had little time in which to spend
+it, for he died about a fortnight afterwards at the age of
+seventy-seven. Upon his death Aaron Hill wrote some memorial verses, in
+which he prophesies that, while the critic's frailties will be no longer
+remembered,
+
+    'The rising ages shall redeem his name,
+    And nations read him into lasting fame.'
+
+It will be seen that the poets did not all treat Dennis unkindly. If
+praise were substantial food, he would have had enough to sustain him
+from 'glorious John' alone.
+
+[Sidenote: Colley Cibber (1671-1757).]
+
+Colley Cibber holds a more prominent place than Dennis in the list of
+men whom Pope selected for attack. He could not have chosen one more
+impervious to assault. The poet's anger excited Cibber's mirth, his
+satire contributed to his content. The comedian's unbounded
+self-satisfaction and good humour, his vivacity and spirits, were proof
+against Pope's malice. Graceless he may have been, but a dullard the
+mercurial 'King Colley' was not.
+
+Born in 1671, he disappointed the hopes of his father, the famous
+sculptor, and at the age of eighteen made his first appearance on the
+stage. As actor and as dramatist, the theatre throughout his life was
+Cibber's all-absorbing interest. His first play, _Love's Last Shift_
+(1696), kept possession of the stage for forty years, and his best play,
+_The Careless Husband_ (1704), received a like welcome. As an actor he
+was also successful, and played for £50 a night, the highest sum ever
+given at that time to any English player. His career was as long as it
+was prosperous. 'Old Cibber plays to-night,' Horace Walpole wrote in
+1741, 'and all the world will be there.'
+
+It was only as Poet Laureate, for he could not write poetry, that Cibber
+displayed his inferiority. The honour was conferred in 1730, two years
+after Gay had produced the _Beggar's Opera_, when Pope was in the height
+of his fame, when Thomson had published his _Seasons_ and Young _The
+Universal Passion_. Pope, as a Roman Catholic, was out of the running,
+but there were poets living who would have saved the office from the
+disgrace brought upon it by Cibber. 'As to Cibber,' Swift wrote to Pope,
+'if I had any inclination to excuse the Court, I would allege that the
+Laureate's place is entirely in the Lord Chamberlain's gift; but who
+makes Lord Chamberlains is another question.' The sole result of the
+appointment that deserves to be recorded is an epigram by Johnson, as
+just as it is severe:
+
+    'Augustus still survives in Maro's strain,
+    And Spenser's verse prolongs Eliza's reign;
+    Great George's acts let tuneful Cibber sing,
+    For Nature formed the Poet for the King!'
+
+Of poetry there is no trace in the five volumes of his dramatic works;
+there are few touches of nature, and little genuine wit, but these
+defects are to some extent supplied by sparkling dialogue and lively
+badinage. Cibber is often sentimental, and when he is sentimental he is
+odious. His attempts to express strong emotion and honourable feeling
+excite laughter instead of sympathy, and on this account it is difficult
+to accept without some deduction Mr. Ward's favourable judgment of _The
+Careless Husband_,[54] which, if it be one of the cleverest of Cibber's
+dramas, is also one of the most conspicuous for this defect. Here, as
+elsewhere, Cibber should have left sentiment alone. Imagine a lover
+exclaiming to a relenting mistress, 'Oh, let my soul thus bending to
+your power, adore this soft descending goodness!' or a man conversing in
+the following strain with a wife who has discovered and forgiven his
+infidelities:
+
+    '_Sir Charles._ Come, I will not shock your softness by any
+    untimely blush for what is past, but rather soothe you to a
+    pleasure at my sense of joy for my recovered happiness to come.
+    Give then to my new-born love what name you please, it cannot,
+    shall not be too kind. Oh! it cannot be too soft for what my
+    soul swells up with emulation to deserve. Receive me then entire
+    at last, and take what yet no woman ever truly had, my conquered
+    heart.
+
+    '_Lady Easy._ Oh, the soft treasure! Oh, the dear reward of
+    long-desiring love--thus, thus to have you mine is something
+    more than happiness, 'tis double life and madness of abounding
+    joy....
+
+    '_Sir Charles._ Oh, thou engaging virtue! But I'm too slow in
+    doing justice to thy love. I know thy softness will refuse me;
+    but remember, I insist upon it--let thy woman be discharged this
+    minute.'
+
+It has been said that Cibber wrote genteel comedy because he lived in
+the best society. If this assertion be true, the reader of his plays
+will decide that the best society of those days was unrefined and
+immoral, and that genteel comedy can be extremely vulgar. Cibber's
+dramas are coarse in incident, and often offensive in suggestion. The
+language is frequently gross, and even when he writes, or professes to
+write, with a moral purpose, his method may justly offend a rigid
+moralist. Moreover his comedy, like that of the dramatists of the
+Restoration, is of a wholly artificial type. Human nature has
+comparatively little place in it, and the fine ladies and gentlemen, the
+fops and fools who play their parts in his scenes, belong to a world
+which has no existence off the boards of the theatre.
+
+His one work which is still read by all students of the drama, and by
+many who are not students, is the _Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley
+Cibber_ (1740), which Dr. Johnson, who sneered at actors, allowed to be
+very entertaining. It is that, and something more, for it contains much
+just and generous criticism. Cibber was the author or adapter of about
+thirty plays, and in the latter vocation did not spare Shakespeare.
+
+[Sidenote: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762).]
+
+Letter writing, a delightful branch of literature, attained its highest
+excellence in the eighteenth century. It is an art which gains most, if
+the paradox may be allowed, by being artless. The carefully studied
+epistle, written with a view to publication, may have its value, but it
+cannot have the charm of a letter written in the familiar intercourse of
+friendship. It is the correspondence prompted by the heart which reaches
+the heart of the reader. The humour, the gaiety, the tenderness, and the
+chatty details that make a letter attractive, should be prompted by the
+feelings and events of the hour. Carefully constructed sentences and
+rhetorical flourishes ring hollow; to write for effect is to write
+badly, and to make a display of knowledge is to reveal an ignorance of
+the art.
+
+For letter writing, although the most natural of literary gifts, is not
+wholly due to nature. It is the outcome of many qualities which need
+cultivation; the soil that produces such fruit must have been carefully
+tilled. In our day epistolary correspondence has been in great measure
+destroyed by the penny post and by rapidity of communication. In the
+last century postage was costly: and although the burden was frequently
+and unjustly lightened by franks, the transmission of letters was slow
+and uncertain. Letters, therefore, were seldom written unless the writer
+had something definite to say, and had leisure in which to say it. Much
+time was spent in the occupation, letters were carefully preserved as
+family heirlooms, and thus it has come to pass that much of our
+knowledge of the age, and very much of the pleasure to be gained from a
+study of the period, is due to its letter writers. The list of them is a
+striking one, for it includes the names of Swift and Steele, of Pope and
+Gay, of Bolingbroke and Chesterfield, of Mrs. Delany and Mrs. Thrale,
+and of the three gifted rivals in the art, Gray, Horace Walpole, and
+Cowper.
+
+In the band of authors famous for their correspondence, Lady Mary
+Wortley Montagu holds a conspicuous place. Reference has been already
+made to the Pope correspondence, large in bulk and large too in
+interest. To this Lady Mary contributed slightly, and the greater
+portion of her letters were addressed to her husband, to her sister,
+Lady Mar, and to her daughter, the Countess of Bute. She was shrewd
+enough to know their value: 'Keep my letters,' she wrote, 'they will be
+as good as Madame de Sévigné's forty years hence;' and they are,
+perhaps, as good as letters can be which are written with a sense of
+their value, which Madame de Sévigné's were not. Lady Mary, who may be
+said to have belonged to the wits from her infancy, for in her eighth
+year she was made the toast of the Kit Kat Club, was not only a beauty,
+but a woman of some learning and of the keenest intelligence. At twenty
+she translated the _Encheiridion_ of Epictetus. She was a great reader
+and a good critic, unless, which often happened, political prejudices
+warped her judgment. She had considerable facility in rhyming, and both
+with tongue and pen cultivated many enmities, the deadliest of her foes
+being the poet who was at one time her most ardent admirer. The story of
+Lady Mary's career, with its vicissitudes and singularities, may be read
+in Lord Wharncliffe's edition of her _Life and Letters_. She is a
+prominent figure in the literature of the period, and made several
+passing contributions to it, but apart from a few facile and far from
+decent verses her letters are the sole legacy she has left behind her
+for the literary student. Some of them, and especially those addressed
+to her sister the Countess of Mar, are often coarse; those to her
+daughter the Countess of Bute exhibit good sense, and all abound in
+lively sallies, interesting anecdotes, and the personal allusions which
+give a charm to correspondence. The section containing the letters
+written during her husband's embassy to Constantinople (1716-1718) is
+perhaps the best known.
+
+Among the strangest of Lady Mary's letters are those addressed to her
+future husband, whom she requests to settle an annuity upon her in
+order to propitiate her friends. In one of them she describes her
+father's purpose to marry her as he thought fit without regarding her
+inclinations, and observes that having declined to marry 'where it is
+impossible to love,' she is bidden to consult her relatives: 'I told my
+intention to all my nearest relations. I was surprised at their blaming
+it to the greatest degree. I was told they were sorry I would ruin
+myself; but if I was so unreasonable they could not blame my F. [father]
+whatever he inflicted on me. I objected I did not love him. They made
+answer they found no necessity of loving; if I lived well with him that
+was all was required of me; and that if I considered this town I should
+find very few women in love with their husbands and yet a many happy. It
+was in vain to dispute with such prudent people.'
+
+This incident is characteristic of the period, but Lady Mary's letters
+to Wortley Montagu are more characteristic of the woman who had her own
+views of female propriety, and of the right method of love-making. To
+escape from the man she hated, she eloped with Wortley, and if, in
+story-book phrase, the curiously-matched couple 'lived happily ever
+afterwards,' it was probably because for more than twenty years they
+lived apart.
+
+Of the following letter, written in her old age, it has been aptly said
+that 'the graceful cynicism of Horace and Pope has perhaps never been
+more successfully reproduced in prose.'[55]
+
+    'Daughter, daughter! Don't call names; You are always abusing my
+    pleasures, which is what no mortal will bear. Trash, lumber and
+    stuff are the titles you give to my favourite amusement. If I
+    called a white staff a stick of wood, a gold key gilded brass,
+    and the ensigns of illustrious orders coloured strings, this
+    may be philosophically true, but would be very ill received. We
+    have all our playthings; happy are they that can be contented
+    with those they can obtain; those hours are spent in the wisest
+    manner that can easiest shade the ills of life, and are the
+    least productive of ill-consequences.... The active scenes are
+    over at my age. I indulge with all the art I can my taste for
+    reading. If I would confine it to valuable books, they are
+    almost as rare as valuable men. I must be content with what I
+    can find. As I approach a second childhood, I endeavour to enter
+    into the pleasures of it. Your youngest son is perhaps at this
+    very moment riding on a poker with great delight, not at all
+    regretting that it is not a gold one, and much less wishing it
+    an Arabian horse which he would not know how to manage. I am
+    reading an idle tale, not expecting wit or truth in it, and am
+    very glad it is not metaphysics to puzzle my judgment, or
+    history to mislead my opinion. He fortifies his health by
+    exercise; I calm my cares by oblivion. The methods may appear
+    low to busy people; but if he improves his strength, and I
+    forget my infirmities, we both attain very desirable ends.'
+
+Lady Mary, it may be added, deserves to be remembered for her courage in
+trying inoculation on her own children, and then introducing it into
+this country. This was in 1721, seventy-eight years before Jenner
+discovered a more excellent way of grappling with the small pox.
+
+[Sidenote: Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773).]
+
+Lord Chesterfield's position in the literature of the period is also
+among the letter writers. He was emphatically a man of affairs, and as
+Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1745, gained a high reputation. He entered
+upon his labours with the resolution to be independent of party, and
+during his brief administration did all that man could do for the
+benefit of the country. In his public career, Chesterfield has the
+reputation of an orator who spoke 'most exquisitely well;' he was an
+able diplomatist, and probably no man of the time took a wider interest
+in public affairs. In a corrupt age, too, he appears to have been
+politically incorruptible: 'I call corruption,' he writes, 'the taking
+of a sixpence more than the just and known salary of your employment
+under any pretence whatsoever.' The reform of the Calendar, in which he
+was assisted by two great mathematicians, Bradley and the Earl of
+Macclesfield, is also one of his honourable claims to remembrance.
+
+On the other hand, Chesterfield, whom George II. called 'a tea-table
+scoundrel,' was an inveterate gambler, he mistook vice for virtue,
+practised dissimulation as an art, and studied men's weaknesses in order
+that he might flatter them. One of the chief ends of man, in the Earl's
+opinion, was to shine in society; we need not therefore wonder that
+Johnson, with his sturdy honesty, revolted from Chesterfield's
+insincerity, and we have to thank the Earl's character for, perhaps, the
+noblest piece of invective in the language. If, however, he neglected
+Johnson at the time when his help would have been of service, he
+appreciated the society of men of letters, and took his part among the
+wits of the age. 'I used,' he tells his son, 'to think myself in company
+as much above me when I was with Mr. Addison and Mr. Pope as if I had
+been with all the princes in Europe.'
+
+As an essayist, although Chesterfield cannot compete with Addison or
+Steele, he is far from contemptible, and his twenty-three papers in the
+_World_ (1753-1756) may still be read with pleasure. His literary
+reputation is based upon the _Letters_ (1774)[56] to his illegitimate
+son written for the purpose of making him a fine gentleman, but the
+young man had no aptitude for the part. His father offered him 'a
+present of the Graces,' and he despised the gift. The _Letters_, which
+Johnson denounced in language better fitted for his day than for ours,
+abound in worldly sagacity and wise counsels; the best that can be said
+of them from a moral point of view is that they show the extremely low
+standpoint of the writer. He is honestly desirous of benefiting his son
+and advancing his interest in life, and so far as morality will do this
+it is earnestly inculcated. 'A real man of fashion,' he says, 'observes
+decency; at least neither borrows nor affects vices; and, if he
+unfortunately has any, he gratifies them with choice, delicacy and
+secrecy.' He observes that an intrigue with a woman of fashion is an
+amusement which a man of sense and decency may pursue with a proper
+regard for his character; gallantry without debauchery being 'the
+elegant pleasure of a rational being.'
+
+Chesterfield's son, who was educated for a diplomatist, is told that the
+art of pleasing is more necessary in his profession than perhaps in any
+other. 'Make your court particularly, and show distinguished attentions
+to such men and women as are best at Court, highest in the fashion and
+in the opinion of the public; speak advantageously of them behind their
+backs, in companies who you have reason to believe will tell them
+again.'
+
+The necessity for dissimulation, constantly enjoined by his father was
+not forgotten by Philip Stanhope. So effectually did he conceal his
+marriage that the Earl was not aware of it until after his son's death.
+
+[Sidenote: George Lyttelton (1708-1773).]
+
+George Lyttelton, afterwards Lord Lyttelton, has a place among the poets
+in the collections of Anderson and Chalmers. Some of his best verses
+were written when a school-boy at Eton, and are worthy of a clever
+school-boy. The _Monody_ on his wife's death has the merit of sincere
+feeling, expressed in one or two passages poetically. In 1747 he
+published his _Dissertation on the Conversion of St. Paul_, 'a
+treatise,' says Dr. Johnson, 'to which infidelity has never been able to
+fabricate a specious answer.' He made himself conspicuous in parliament
+as an opponent of Walpole, and after the fall of that minister was
+appointed one of the Lords of the Treasury. In 1760 Lyttelton published
+his _Dialogues of the Dead_, a volume for which he owes much to Fénelon.
+This was followed a few years later by a History of Henry II. in three
+volumes, upon which great labour was expended. He is said to have had
+the whole history printed twice over, and many sheets four or five
+times, an amusement which cost him £1,000. The work is praised by Mr. J.
+R. Green as 'a full and sober account of the time.'
+
+Lyttelton died at Hagley Park in his sixty-fourth year. Close to Hagley,
+Shenstone had his little estate of the Leasowes, and the poet is said to
+have cherished the absurd fancy that Lord Lyttelton was envious of its
+beauty. He is now chiefly remembered as the patron of Thomson, whom he
+called 'one of the best and most beloved' of his friends.
+
+[Sidenote: Joseph Spence (1698-1768).]
+
+Joseph Spence, a warm friend and admirer of Pope in the poet's later
+life, had the happy peculiarity of keeping free from the party
+animosities of the time. His course throughout was that of a gentleman,
+and to him we owe the little volume of _Anecdotes_ which every student
+of Pope has learnt to value. Spence had much of Boswell's curiosity and
+hero-worship, but there is neither insight into character in his pages,
+nor any trace of the dramatic skill which makes Boswell's narrative so
+delightful. At the same time there is every indication that he strove
+to give the sayings of the poet, as far as possible, in his own words.
+Johnson and Warton saw the _Anecdotes_ in manuscript, but strange to
+say, the collection was not published until 1820, when two separate
+editions appeared simultaneously. The publication by Spence in 1727 of
+_An Essay on Pope's Translation of Homer's Odyssey_ led to an
+acquaintance which soon became intimate between the poet and his critic.
+Apart from literature, they had more than one point of interest in
+common. Like Pope, Spence was devoted to his mother, and like Pope he
+had a passion for landscape gardening. His mild virtues and engaging
+disposition are said to be portrayed in the _Tales of the Genii_, under
+the character of Fincal the Dervise of the Groves. In 1747 he published
+his _Polymetis, an Enquiry into the agreement between the Works of the
+Roman Poets and the Remains of Ancient Artists_. Under the _nom de
+plume_ of Sir Harry Beaumont, Spence produced a volume of _Moralities or
+Essays, Letters, Fables and Translations_ (1753), and in the following
+year an account of the blind poet Blacklock. For a learned tailor,
+Thomas Hill by name, he also performed a similarly kind office,
+comparing him in _A Parallel in the Manner of Plutarch_ with the famous
+linguist Magliabecchi. Spence was made Professor of Poetry at Oxford in
+1728, and held the post for ten years. His end was a sad one. He was
+accidentally drowned in a canal in the garden which he had loved so
+well.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[49] _Daniel Defoe: his Life and recently discovered Writings, extending
+from 1716 to 1729._ By William Lee. 3 vols.
+
+[50] Lee's _Defoe_, vol. i., p. 85. Of Defoe's fertility and capacity
+for work there cannot be a question; but the biographer's stupendous
+catalogue of his publications--254 in number--contains many which are
+ascribed to him solely on what Mr. Lee regards as internal evidence.
+
+[51] _English Men of Letters--Daniel Defoe._ By William Minto. P. 170.
+
+[52] See note on page 248.
+
+[53] There can be no doubt, I think, despite Mr. Lee's arguments, that
+the work is as much a fiction as any other historical novel. That it may
+be based upon some authentic document is highly probable, although it is
+not necessary to agree with his biographer, that 'to claim for Defoe the
+authorship of the _Cavalier_, as a work of pure fiction, would be
+equivalent to a claim of almost superhuman genius.'
+
+[54] Ward's _History of English Dramatic Literature_, vol. ii., p. 597.
+
+[55] _Four Centuries of English Letters_, edited and arranged by W.
+Baptiste Scoones, p. 214.
+
+[56] These _Letters_ were not published until after the earl's death,
+but many of them belong, chronologically, to our period. The first
+letter of the series was written in 1738.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+FRANCIS ATTERBURY--LORD SHAFTESBURY--BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE--LORD
+    BOLINGBROKE--BISHOP BERKELEY--WILLIAM LAW--BISHOP
+    BUTLER--BISHOP WARBURTON.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Francis Atterbury (1662-1732).]
+
+During the first half of the eighteenth century the position held by
+Bishop Atterbury was one of high eminence. Addison ranked him with the
+most illustrious geniuses of his age; Pope said he was one of the
+greatest men in polite learning the nation ever possessed; Doddridge
+called him the glory of English orators; and Johnson said that for style
+his sermons are among the best.
+
+Unfortunately Atterbury's literary gifts, like his oratory, lack the
+merit of permanence, and his sermons, more conspicuous for eloquence
+than for weightiness of matter, although extremely popular at the time,
+have long ceased to be read. His prominence among the Queen Anne
+wits,--and he was admired by them all,--is a sufficient reason for
+saying a few words about him in these pages.
+
+He was born in 1662, and, like Prior, educated at Westminster under the
+famous Dr. Busby. Thence he went to Christ Church, Oxford, where he
+gained a good reputation. He undertook the tutorship of the Hon. C.
+Boyle, a young man of more spirit than judgment, who had the audacity to
+enter the lists with Bentley in a matter of scholarship. For this rash
+deed Atterbury must be held responsible. Sir William Temple had
+published a foolish but eloquently written essay in defence of the
+ancient writers in comparison with the modern. In this essay he praises
+warmly the _Letters of Phalaris_. Of these letters Boyle, with the help
+of Atterbury and other members of Christ Church, published a new edition
+to satisfy the demand caused by Temple's essay. Bentley, roused to reply
+by a remark of Boyle in his preface, proved that the _Letters_ were not
+only spurious but contemptible. Under his pupil's name Atterbury replied
+to Bentley's _Dissertations_, and to the discussion, as the reader will
+remember, Swift added wit if not argument.
+
+For the moment Boyle's, or rather Atterbury's success, was great, for
+wit and rhetoric are powerful persuasives. The authors, too, had the
+Christ Church men to back them, the arch-critic having treated them with
+contempt. Atterbury's share in the work, as he tells Boyle, "consisted
+in writing more than half the book, in reviewing a great part of the
+rest, and in transcribing the whole." His _Examination of Dr. Bentley's
+Dissertations_ (1698) is a brilliant piece of work, and 'deserves the
+praise,' says Macaulay, 'whatever that praise may be worth, of being the
+best book ever written by any man on the wrong side of a question of
+which he was profoundly ignorant.' Having taken holy orders, Atterbury
+became a court preacher, and ample clerical honours fell to his share.
+In 1700 he published a book entitled, _The Rights, Powers, and
+Privileges of an English Convocation Stated and Vindicated_, which was
+warmly applauded by High Churchmen. In 1701 he was appointed Archdeacon
+of Totness, and afterwards Prebend of Exeter. He became the favourite
+chaplain of Queen Anne, and when Prince George died proved the power of
+his eloquence by representing 'his unassuming virtues in such high
+relief that his widow could not help feeling her irreparable loss.'
+
+Atterbury was made successively Dean of Carlisle and of Christ Church,
+and in 1713 succeeded Sprat as Dean of Westminster and Bishop of
+Rochester. Before making Swift's acquaintance he recommended his friend
+Trelawney, Bishop of Exeter, to read the _Tale of a Tub_, a book which
+is to be valued, 'in spite of its profaneness,' as 'an original in its
+kind, full of wit, humour, good sense, and learning.' Atterbury's taste
+for literature was not always so discriminative. He advised Pope, as has
+been already stated, to 'polish' _Samson Agonistes_, declared that all
+verses should have instruction at the bottom of them, and told the poet,
+as though he had discovered a merit, that his poetry was 'all over
+morality from the beginning to the end of it.' He ventured occasionally
+into the verse-making field himself, and wrote a song to Silvia, in
+which, after admitting that he had loved before as men worship strange
+deities, he adds:
+
+    'My heart, 'tis true, has often ranged,
+      Like bees on gaudy flowers,
+    And many a thousand loves has changed,
+      Till it was fixed on yours.
+
+    'But, Silvia, when I saw those eyes,
+      'Twas soon determined there;
+    Stars might as well forsake the skies,
+      And vanish into air.
+
+    'When I from this great rule do err,
+      New beauties to adore,
+    May I again turn wanderer,
+      And never settle more.'
+
+The close friendship between Atterbury and Pope did honour to both men,
+and when Pope went to London he would 'lie at the deanery.' There,
+unknown to his friend, the bishop carried on his Jacobite intrigues,
+and there may still be seen, in a residence made famous by more than one
+great name, a secret room in which Atterbury concealed his treasonable
+correspondence. The poet did not believe that his friend was guilty, but
+it has been well known since the publication of the Stuart papers, more
+than forty years ago, that the splendid defence made by Atterbury at his
+trial in the House of Lords was based upon a falsehood. For years the
+bishop appears to have corresponded, under feigned names and by the help
+of ciphers, with 'the king over the water;' but the plot which led to
+his imprisonment and ultimate exile was not discovered until 1722, when
+he was arrested for high treason. At his trial he called God to witness
+his innocence; and when Pope took leave of him in the Tower he told the
+poet he would allow him to call his sentence a just one if he should
+ever find that he had dealings with the Pretender in his exile. Pope
+gave evidence at his trial, and, as he told Spence, lost his
+self-possession and made two or three blunders.
+
+Atterbury was exiled in June, 1723. On reaching Calais he heard that
+Bolingbroke had just arrived there on his way to England, having had a
+royal pardon. 'Then I am exchanged,' he said.
+
+The pathetic story of his banishment, and of his devoted daughter's
+illness and voyage to the south of France, where after a union of a few
+hours, she died in her father's arms, is full of the most touching
+details, and may be read in Atterbury's correspondence. 'She is gone,'
+the bishop wrote, 'and I must follow her. When I do, may my latter end
+be like hers! It was my business to have taught her to die; instead of
+it, she has taught me.' Like Fielding's account of his _Voyage to
+Lisbon_, the letters give a picture of the time, and of travelling
+discomforts and difficulties of which we, in these more fortunate days,
+know nothing. The bishop, who did not long survive his daughter, died in
+1732, but before the end came he defended himself admirably from the
+accusation of Oldmixon, a libeller who stands in the pillory of the
+_Dunciad_, that he had helped to garble Clarendon's _History_. The body
+was carried to England and privately buried by the side of his daughter
+in Westminster Abbey. The eloquence of Atterbury's sermons--there are
+four volumes of them in print--has not secured to them a lasting place
+in literature, but they are distinguished by purity of style, and have
+enough of _unction_ to make them highly effective as pulpit discourses.
+In book form, too, they were for a long time popular, and reached an
+eighth edition about thirty years after the bishop's death. The eloquent
+sermon on the death of Lady Cutts endows the lady with such an array of
+virtues, that one is inclined to wonder how so many rare qualities could
+have been exhibited in so brief a life:
+
+    'She excelled in all the characters that belonged to her, and
+    was in a great measure equal to all the obligations that she lay
+    under. She was devout without superstition; strict, without ill
+    humour; good-natured, without weakness; cheerful, without
+    levity; regular, without affectation. She was to her husband the
+    best of wives, the most agreeable of companions, and most
+    faithful of friends; to her servants the best of mistresses; to
+    her relations extremely respectful; to her inferiors very
+    obliging; and by all that knew her, either nearly or at a
+    distance, she was reckoned and confessed to be one of the best
+    of women. And yet all this goodness and all this excellence was
+    bounded within the compass of eighteen years and as many days;
+    for no longer was she allowed to live among us. She was snatched
+    out of the world as soon almost as she had made her appearance
+    in it, like a jewel of high price just shown a little, and then
+    put up again, and we were deprived of her by that time we had
+    learnt to value her. But circles may be complete though small;
+    the perfection of life doth not consist in the length of it.'
+
+As a friend of literature and of men of letters, Atterbury claims the
+student's recognition, and the five volumes of his correspondence
+deserve to be consulted.
+
+[Sidenote: Anthony, third Lord Shaftesbury (1671-1713).]
+
+'I will tell you,' writes the poet Gray, 'how Lord Shaftesbury came to
+be a philosopher in vogue: first, he was a lord; secondly, he was as
+vain as any of his readers; thirdly, men are very prone to believe what
+they do not understand; fourthly, they will believe anything at all
+provided they are under no obligation to believe it; fifthly, they love
+to take a new road, even when that road leads nowhere; sixthly, he was
+reckoned a fine writer, and seemed always to mean more than he said.
+Would you have any more reasons? An interval of above forty years has
+pretty well destroyed the charm.'
+
+One hundred and thirty-five years have gone by since Gray wrote his
+estimate of Lord Shaftesbury, whose _Characteristics of Men, Manners,
+Opinions, Times_ (1711) passed through several editions in the last
+century. The first volume consists of: _A Letter concerning Enthusiasm_,
+_An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour_ and _Advice to an Author_;
+Vol. ii. contains _An Inquiry concerning Virtue and Merit_ (1699), and
+_The Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody_ (1709), and Vol. iii. contains
+_Miscellaneous Reflections_ and the _Judgments of Hercules_.
+
+Shaftesbury was a Deist, and while professing to honour the Christian
+faith, which he terms 'our holy religion,' exercises his wit and
+casuistry and command of English to undermine it. Pope, who shows in the
+_Essay on Man_ that he had read the _Characteristics_, said that to his
+knowledge 'the work had done more harm to revealed religion in England
+than all the works of infidelity,' a judgment which may seem
+extravagant, for Shaftesbury is too vague and rhetorical greatly to
+influence thoughtful readers, and too much of a 'virtuoso,' to use his
+own words, for readers of another class; yet the fact that the work
+passed, as we have said, through several editions, shows that the author
+had a considerable public to whom he could appeal. Moreover, it is clear
+that what Mr. Balfour calls 'the shallow optimism' of his creed was not
+deemed so inconsiderable then as it now appears, or Berkeley would not
+have deemed it necessary to controvert his arguments in the third
+Dialogue of his _Alciphron_. Like Berkeley, Shaftesbury occasionally
+makes use of the dialogue very effectively, but he has not the bishop's
+incisiveness. His style, though often faulty, and giving one the
+impression that the author is affected, and wishes to say fine things,
+is at its best fresh and lucid. The reader will observe that whatever be
+the topic Shaftesbury professes to discuss, his one aim is to assert his
+principles as a free-thinking and free-speaking philosopher. His
+inferences, his illustrations, his criticisms, and exaltation of the
+'moral sense,' are all so many underhanded blows at the faith which he
+never openly opposes.
+
+Thus his essay on the _Freedom of Wit and Humour_ is chiefly written in
+defence of raillery in the discussion of serious subjects, when managed
+'with good breeding,' and for 'a liberty in decent language to question
+everything' amongst gentlemen and friends. He regards ridicule as the
+antidote to enthusiasm, believes in the harmony and perfection of
+nature, and considers that evil only exists in our ignorance. Mr. Leslie
+Stephen, whose impartiality in estimating an author like Shaftesbury
+will not be questioned, calls him a wearisome and perplexed writer,
+whose rhetoric is flimsy, but who has 'a true vigour and originality
+which redeems him from contempt.'
+
+Judged by his influence on the age Shaftesbury's place in the history of
+literature and of philosophy is an important one. Seed springs up
+quickly when the soil is prepared for it, and Shaftesbury by his belief
+in the perfectibility of human nature through the aid of culture,
+appealed, as Mandeville also did from a lower and opposite platform, to
+the views current in polite society. According to Shaftesbury men have a
+natural instinct for virtue, and the sense of what is beautiful enables
+the virtuoso to reject what is evil and to cleave to what is good. Let a
+man once see that to be wicked is to be miserable, and virtue will be
+dear for its own sake apart from the fear of punishment or the hope of
+reward. He found salvation for the world in a cultivated taste, but had
+no gospel for the men whose tastes were not cultivated.
+
+Voltaire sneered at the optimism of the _Essay on Man_ and of the
+_Characteristics_. 'Shaftesbury,' he says, 'who made the fable
+fashionable, was a very unhappy man. I have seen Bolingbroke a prey to
+vexation and rage, and Pope, whom he induced to put this sorry jest into
+verse, was as much to be pitied as any man I have ever known; mis-shapen
+in body, dissatisfied in mind, always ill, always a burden to himself,
+and harassed by a hundred enemies to his very last moment.'
+
+[Sidenote: Bernard de Mandeville (1670?-1733).]
+
+Bernard de Mandeville gained much notoriety by his _Fable of the Bees,
+or Private Vices, Public Benefits_ (1723). The book opens with a poem in
+doggrel verse called _The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves turned honest_, the
+purport of which is to show that as the bees became virtuous, they
+ceased to be successful. He closes with the moral that
+
+    'To enjoy the world's conveniences,
+    Be famed in war, yet live in ease,
+    Without great vices is a vain
+    Utopia, seated in the brain.
+    Fraud, Luxury, and Pride must live,
+    While we the benefits receive.'
+
+In the prose which follows the fable, Mandeville may at least claim the
+credit of being outspoken, and he does not scruple to say that modesty
+is a sham and that what seems like virtue is nothing but self-love. 'I
+often,' he says, 'compare the virtues of good men to your large china
+jars; they make a fine show, but look into a thousand of them, and you
+will find nothing in them but dust and cobwebs.'
+
+While declaring that he is far from encouraging vice, he regards it as
+essential to the well-being of society. The degradation of the race
+excites his amusement, and the fact that he cannot see a way of escape
+from it, causes no regret. Shaftesbury's arguments excited the mirth of
+a man who believed neither in present nor future good 'Two systems,' he
+says, 'cannot be more opposite than his lordship's and mine. His
+notions, I confess, are generous and refined. They are a high compliment
+to human kind, and capable, by the help of a little enthusiasm, of
+inspiring us with the most noble sentiments concerning the dignity of
+our exalted nature. What pity it is that they are not true.'
+
+The author of the _Fable of the Bees_ writes coarsely for coarse
+readers, and the arguments by which he supports his graceless theory
+merit the infamy generally awarded to them.[57] The book was attacked by
+Warburton and Law, and with much force and humour by Berkeley, in the
+second Dialogue of _Alciphron_. But the bishop, to use a homely phrase,
+does not hit the right nail on the head. Instead of arguing that virtue
+and goodness are realities, while evil, being unreal and antagonistic to
+man's nature, is an enemy to be fought against and conquered, Berkeley
+takes a lower ground, and is content to show in his reply to Mandeville
+that virtue is more profitable to a state than vice. He annihilates many
+of Mandeville's arguments in a masterly style, but it was left to the
+author of the _Serious Call_ to strike at the root of Mandeville's
+fallacy, and to show how the seat of virtue, if I may apply Hooker's
+noble words with regard to law, 'is the bosom of God, her voice the
+harmony of the world; all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the
+very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from
+her power.'
+
+[Sidenote: Lord Bolingbroke (1678-1751).]
+
+The life of Henry St. John was a mass of contradictions. He was a
+brilliant politician who affected to be a wise statesman, a traitor to
+his country while pretending to be a patriot, an orator whose lips
+distilled honied phrases which his actions belied, a man of insatiable
+ambition who masked as a philosopher, a profligate without shame, a
+faithless friend, and an unscrupulous opponent. Blessed with every charm
+of manner, features, and voice, with a taste for literature and a large
+faculty of acquisition, he was a slave to the meanest vices. A Secretary
+of State at thirty-two, no man probably ever entered upon public life
+with brighter prospects, and the secret of all his failures was due to
+the want of character. 'Few people,' says Lord Hervey, 'ever believed
+him without being deceived or trusted him without being betrayed; he was
+one to whom prosperity was no advantage, and adversity no instruction.'
+
+It is said that his genius as an orator was of a high order and this we
+can believe the more readily since the style of his works is distinctly
+oratorical. In speech so much depends upon voice and manner that it is
+possible for a shallow thinker to be an extremely attractive speaker;
+Bolingbroke's speeches have not been preserved, and we may therefore
+continue, if we please, to hold with Pitt, that they are the most
+desirable of all the lost fragments of literature; his writings, far
+more showy than solid, do not convey a lofty impression of intellectual
+power. Obvious truths and well-worn truisms are uttered in high-sounding
+words, but in no department of thought can it be said that Bolingbroke
+breaks new ground. Much that he wrote was for the day and died with it,
+and if his more ambitious efforts, written with an eye to posterity,
+cannot justly be described as unreadable, they contain comparatively
+little which makes them worthy to be read.
+
+His defence of his conduct in _A Letter to Sir William Windham_, written
+in 1717, but not published until after the author's death, though
+worthless as a defence, is a fine piece of special pleading in
+Bolingbroke's best style. It could deceive no one acquainted with the
+part played by the author before the death of Queen Anne, and afterwards
+in exile, but it afforded him an opportunity for attacking his former
+colleague, Oxford, with all the weapons available by an unscrupulous and
+powerful assailant. He declares in this letter that he preferred exile
+rather than to make common cause with the man whom he abhorred. Writing
+of Oxford as a colleague in the government of the country he observes in
+a skilfully turned passage:
+
+    'The ocean which environs us is an emblem of our government; and
+    the pilot and the minister are in similar circumstances. It
+    seldom happens that either of them can steer a direct course,
+    and they both arrive at their port by means which frequently
+    seem to carry them from it. But as the work advances the conduct
+    of him who leads it on with real abilities clears up, the
+    appearing inconsistencies are reconciled, and when it is once
+    consummated, the whole shows itself so uniform, so plain, and so
+    natural, that every dabbler in politics will be apt to think he
+    could have done the same. But on the other hand the man who
+    proposes no such object, who substitutes artifice in the place
+    of ability, who, instead of leading parties and governing
+    accidents, is eternally agitated backwards and forwards by both,
+    who begins every day something new, and carries nothing on to
+    perfection, may impose awhile on the world: but a little sooner
+    or a little later the mystery will be revealed, and nothing will
+    be found to be couched under it but a thread of pitiful
+    expedients, the ultimate end of which never extended farther
+    than living from day to day. Which of these pictures resembles
+    Oxford most you will determine.'
+
+It has been said with somewhat daring exaggeration, that Burke never
+produced anything nobler than this passage, and the writer regards the
+whole composition of the _Letter to Windham_ as almost faultless.[58]
+
+That it is Bolingbroke's masterpiece may be readily admitted, but in
+this _Letter_, as elsewhere, the merits of Bolingbroke's style are those
+of the popular orator who conceals repetitions, contradictory
+statements, and emptiness of thought under a dazzling display of
+rhetoric. That he had splendid gifts and exhibited an extraordinary
+ingenuity of resource was acknowledged by friend and foe. At one time
+taking a distinguished part in European affairs, at another artfully
+intriguing, sometimes posing as a moralist and philosopher while a slave
+to debauchery, and at other times affecting a love of retirement while a
+slave to ambition--Bolingbroke acted a part which made him one of the
+most conspicuous figures of the time. He knew how to fascinate men of
+greater genius than he possessed, and how to guide men intellectually
+his superiors. The witchcraft of his wit and the charm of his manners no
+longer disturb the judgment. As a statesman Bolingbroke is now
+comparatively despised, as a man of letters he is generally regarded as
+a brilliant pretender, and if his name survives in the history of
+literature it is chiefly due to the friendship of Pope. Unfortunately
+the memory of this celebrated friendship is associated with one of the
+most ignoble acts of Bolingbroke's life. When Pope lay dying,
+Bolingbroke wept over his friend exclaiming, 'O great God, what is man!'
+and Spence relates that upon telling his lordship how Pope whenever he
+was sensible said something kindly of his friends as if his humanity
+outlasted his understanding, Bolingbroke replied, '"It has so! I never
+in my life knew a man that had so tender a heart for his particular
+friends or a more general friendship for mankind. I have known him these
+thirty years, and value myself more for that man's love than"--sinking
+his head and losing himself in tears.' His sorrow was speedily changed
+to anger. Pope, no doubt in admiration of his friend's genius, had
+privately printed 1,500 copies of his _Patriot King_, one of
+Bolingbroke's ablest but most sophistical works. The philosopher had
+only allowed a few copies to be printed for his friends, and the
+discovery of Pope's conduct roused his indignation. In 1749 he put a
+corrected copy of the work into Mallet's hands for publication with an
+advertisement in which Pope is treated with contempt. He had not the
+courage to assail the memory of his friend openly, and hired an
+unprincipled man to do it. The poet had acted trickily, after his wonted
+habit, though in all likelihood with the design of doing Bolingbroke a
+service. It was a fault to be forgiven by a friend, but Bolingbroke,
+after nursing his anger for five years, gave vent to it in this
+contemptible and underhand way. He died two years afterwards, and in
+1754 the posthumous publication of Bolingbroke's _Philosophical
+Writings_ by Mallet, aroused a storm of indignation in the country,
+which his debauchery and political immorality had failed to excite.
+Johnson's saying on the occasion is well-known:
+
+'Sir, he was a scoundrel and a coward; a scoundrel for charging a
+blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward because he had not
+resolution to fire it off himself, but left half-a-crown to a beggarly
+Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death.'
+
+The most noteworthy estimate of Bolingbroke's character made in our day
+comes from the pen of Mr. John Morley,[59] who describes as follows his
+position as a man of letters. 'He handled the great and difficult
+instrument of written language with such freedom and copiousness, such
+vivacity and ease, that in spite of much literary foppery and falsetto,
+he ranks in all that musicians call execution, only below the three or
+four highest masters of English prose. Yet of all the characters in our
+history Bolingbroke must be pronounced to be most of a charlatan; of all
+the writing in our literature, his is the hollowest, the flashiest, the
+most insincere.' This is true. By his 'execution,' consummate though it
+be, he is unable to conceal his insincerity and shallowness.
+'Bolingbroke,' said Lord Shelburne, was 'all surface,' and in that
+sentence his character is written.
+
+'People seem to think,' said Carlyle, 'that a style can be put off or
+put on, not like a skin, but like a coat. Is not a skin verily a product
+and close kinsfellow of all that lies under it,--exact type of the
+nature of the beast, not to be plucked off without flaying and death?'
+
+Two years after the publication of the _Philosophical Writings_, Edmund
+Burke, then a young man of twenty-four, published _A Vindication of
+Natural Society_, in a _Letter to Lord----. By a late noble writer_, in
+which Lord Bolingbroke's style is imitated, and his arguments against
+revealed religion applied to exhibit 'the miseries and evils arising to
+mankind from every species of Artificial Society.' So close is the
+imitation of Bolingbroke's style and mode of argument in this piece of
+irony, that it was for a time believed to be a genuine production, and
+Mallet found it necessary to disavow it publicly.
+
+Of Bolingbroke's Works, the _Dissertation on Parties_ appeared in 1735.
+_Letters on Patriotism_, and _Idea of a Patriot King_, in 1749; _Letters
+on the Study of History_, in 1752; _Letter to Sir W. Windham_, 1753, and
+the _Philosophical Writings_, as already stated, in 1754.
+Chronologically, therefore, he would belong to the Handbook which deals
+with the latter half of the century, were it not that his most important
+works were posthumous, and that Bolingbroke's intimate relations with
+Pope place him among the most conspicuous figures belonging to Pope's
+age.
+
+[Sidenote: George Berkeley (1685-1753).]
+
+Among the men of high intellect who flourished in the age of Pope,
+George Berkeley is one of the most distinguished. Born in 1685 of poor
+parents, in a cottage near Dysert Castle, in Kilkenny, he went up to
+Trinity College, Dublin, in 1700, and there, first as student, and
+afterwards as tutor, he remained for thirteen years. In the course of
+them he was ordained, and gained a fellowship. In 1709 he published his
+_Essay on Vision_, and in the following year the _Principles of Human
+Knowledge_, works which thus early made him famous as a philosopher, and
+a puzzle to many who failed to understand his 'new principle' with
+regard to the existence of matter.
+
+In 1712 Berkeley visited England, probably for the first time, and was
+introduced to the London wits. Already in these youthful days there was
+in him much of that magic power which some men exercise unconsciously
+and irresistibly. Swift felt the spell, called Berkeley a great
+philosopher, and spoke of him to all the Ministers; while Atterbury,
+upon being asked what he thought of him, exclaimed: 'So much
+understanding, so much knowledge, so much innocence, and such humility,
+I did not think had been the portion of any but angels till I saw this
+gentleman.' An incident occurred, it is conjectured during the course of
+this visit, which led to memorable results. He dined once with Swift at
+Mrs. Vanhomrigh's, and met her daughter Hester. Many years later,
+_Vanessa_ destroyed the will she had made in Swift's favour, and left
+half of her property to Berkeley. While in London the future bishop was
+warmly welcomed by Steele, and wrote several essays for him in the
+_Guardian_ against the Freethinkers, and especially against Anthony
+Collins (1676-1729), whose arguments in his _Discourse on Freethinking_
+(1713) are ridiculed in the _Scriblerus Memoirs_. Collins, it may be
+observed here, wrote a treatise several years later on the _Grounds of
+the Christian Religion_ (1724) which called forth thirty-five answers.
+During this visit Berkeley also published one of his most original
+works, _Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous_, a book marked by that
+consummate beauty of style for which he is distinguished.
+
+In November, 1713, the Earl of Peterborough was sent on an embassage to
+the King of Sicily, and on Swift's recommendation took Berkeley with him
+as his chaplain and secretary. Ten months were spent on this occasion in
+France and Italy. Another continental tour followed, in the course of
+which Berkeley wrote to Arbuthnot of his ascent of Vesuvius, and to Pope
+of his life at Naples. Five years were spent abroad, and he returned to
+England to learn of the failure of the South Sea Scheme. In his _Essay
+towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain_ (1721), the main argument
+is the obvious one, that national salvation is only to be secured by
+individual uprightness. He deplores 'the trifling vanity of apparel'
+which we have learned from France, advocates the revival of sumptuary
+laws, considers that we are 'doomed to be undone' by luxury, and by the
+want of public spirit, and declares that 'neither Venice nor Paris, nor
+any other town in any part of the world ever knew such an expensive
+ruinous folly as our masquerade.'
+
+In the summer of this year he was again in London, and Pope asked him to
+spend a week in his 'Tusculum.' One promotion followed another until
+Berkeley became Dean of Derry, with an income of from £1,500 to £2,000 a
+year. He did not hold this dignified position long, having conceived the
+magnificent but Utopian idea of founding a Missionary College in the
+Bermudas--the 'Summer Isles' celebrated in the verse of Waller and of
+Marvell--for the conversion of America.
+
+And now Berkeley exhibited his amazing power of influencing other men.
+The members of the Scriblerus Club laughed at the Dean's project, but so
+powerful was his eloquence, that 'those who came to scoff remained to
+subscribe.' Moreover, with Sir Robert Walpole as Prime Minister, he
+actually obtained a grant from the State of £20,000 in order to carry
+out the project, the king gave a charter, and to crown all, Sir Robert
+put his own name down for £200 on the list of subscribers. 'The scheme,'
+says Mr. Balfour, 'seems now so impracticable that we may well wonder
+how any single person, let alone the representatives of a whole nation,
+could be found to support it. In order that religion and learning might
+flourish in America, the seeds of them were to be cast in some rocky
+islets severed from America by nearly six hundred miles of stormy ocean.
+In order that the inhabitants of the mainland and of the West Indian
+colonies might equally benefit by the new university, it was to be
+placed in such a position that neither could conveniently reach it.'[60]
+Berkeley, who had recently married, left England for Rhode Island, where
+he stayed for about three years and wrote _Alciphron_ (1732), in which
+he attacks the freethinkers under the title of _Minute Philosophers_.
+Then on learning from Walpole that the promised money 'would most
+undoubtedly be paid as soon as suits public convenience' which would be
+never, he returned to England, and through the Queen's influence was
+made Bishop of Cloyne. In that diocese eighteen years of his life were
+spent. In the course of them he published the _Querist_ (1735-1737), an
+_Essay on the Social State of Ireland_ (1744), and, in the same year,
+_Siris_, which contains the bishop's famous recipe for the use of tar
+water followed by much philosophical disquisition. The remedy, which was
+afterwards praised by the poet Dyer in _The Fleece_, became instantly
+popular. 'We are now mad about the water,' Horace Walpole wrote; 'the
+book contains every subject from tar water to the Trinity; however, all
+the women read it, and understand it no more than if it were
+intelligible.' Editions of _Siris_ followed each other in rapid
+succession, and it was translated into French and German. The work is
+that of an enthusiast, and it should be read not for its argument, but
+for its wealth of suggestiveness, and for what Mr. Balfour calls 'a
+certain quality of moral elevation and speculative diffidence alien both
+to the literature and the life of the eighteenth century.' Berkeley had
+himself the profoundest faith in the panacea which he advocated. 'From
+my representing tar water,' he writes, 'as good for so many things,
+some, perhaps, many conclude it is good for nothing. But charity
+obligeth me to say what I know, and what I think, howsoever it may be
+taken. Men may conjecture and object as they please, but I appeal to
+time and experience.'
+
+In his latter days Berkeley, feeling his health failing, desired to
+resign his bishopric and retire to Oxford, and there--while still bishop
+of Cloyne, for the king would not accept his resignation--the
+philosopher, who was blest, to use Shakespeare's fine epithet, with a
+'tender-hefted nature,' passed away in 1753, leaving behind him one of
+the most fragrant of memories.
+
+That Berkeley was a philosophical thinker from his earliest manhood is
+evident from his _Commonplace Book_ published for the first time in the
+Clarendon Press edition of his works (vol. iv., pp. 419-502).
+
+He delighted in recondite thought as much as most young men delight in
+action, and as a philosopher he is said to have commenced his studies
+with Locke, whose famous _Essay_ appeared in 1690. Of Plato, too,
+Berkeley was an ardent admirer, and the spirit of Plato pervades his
+works. His _Essay towards a New Theory of Vision_ contains some
+intimations of the famous metaphysical theory which was developed a
+little later in the _Treatise on Human Knowledge_.
+
+A good deal of foolish ridicule was excited by this book. Berkeley was
+supposed to maintain the absurd paradox that sensible things do not
+exist at all. The reader will remember how Dr. Johnson undertook to
+refute the postulate by striking his foot against a stone, while James
+Beattie (1735-1803), the poet and moral philosopher, in a volume for
+which he was rewarded with a pension of £200 a year, denounced
+Berkeley's philosophy as 'scandalously absurd.' 'If,' he writes, 'I
+were permitted to propose one clownish question, I would fain ask ...
+Where is the harm of my believing that if I were to fall down yonder
+precipice and break my neck, I should be no more a man of this world? My
+neck, Sir, may be an idea to you, but to me it is a reality, and a very
+important one too. Where is the harm of my believing that if in this
+severe weather I were to neglect to throw (what you call) the idea of a
+coat over the ideas of my shoulders, the idea of cold would produce the
+idea of such pain and disorder as might possibly terminate in my real
+death? What great offence shall I commit against God or man, church or
+state, philosophy or common sense if I continue to believe that material
+food will nourish me, though the idea of it will not, that the real sun
+will warm and enlighten me, though the liveliest idea of him will do
+neither; and that if I would obtain here peace of mind and
+self-approbation, I must not only form ideas of compassion, justice and
+generosity, but also really exert those virtues in external
+performance?'[61]
+
+Beattie continues in this foolish strain to throw contempt upon a system
+which he had not taken the trouble to understand, and upon one of the
+sanest and noblest of English philosophers, and he does so without a
+thought that the absurdity is due to his own ignorance and not to the
+theory of Berkeley. The author of the _Minstrel_ was an honest man and a
+respectable poet, but he prided himself too much on what he called
+common sense, and failed to see that in the search after truth other and
+even higher faculties may be also needed. Moreover, Berkeley, so far
+from being an enemy to common sense, endeavours, as he says, to
+vindicate it, although in so doing, he 'may perhaps be obliged to use
+some _ambages_ and ways of speech not common.' A significant passage may
+be quoted from the _Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous_ (1713)
+in illustration of his method and style so far indeed as a short extract
+can illustrate an argument sustained by a long course of reasoning.
+
+    '_Phil._ As I am no sceptic with regard to the nature of things,
+    so neither am I as to their existence. That a thing should be
+    really perceived by my senses, and at the same time not really
+    exist is to me a plain contradiction; since I cannot prescind or
+    abstract even in thought, the existence of a sensible thing from
+    its being perceived. Wood, stones, fire, water, flesh, iron, and
+    the like things, which I name and discourse of, are things that
+    I know. And I should not have known them but that I perceived
+    them by my senses; and things perceived by the senses are
+    immediately perceived; and things immediately perceived are
+    ideas; and ideas cannot exist without the mind; their existence
+    therefore consists in being perceived; when therefore they are
+    actually perceived there can be no doubt of their existence....
+    I might as well doubt of my own being, as of the being of those
+    things I actually see and feel.
+
+    '_Hyl._ Not so fast, _Philonous_; you say you cannot conceive
+    how sensible things should exist without the mind. Do you not?
+
+    '_Phil._ I do.
+
+    '_Hyl._ Supposing you were annihilated, cannot you conceive it
+    possible that things perceivable by sense may still exist?
+
+    '_Phil._ I can; but then it must be in another mind. When I deny
+    sensible things an existence out of the mind, I do not mean my
+    mind in particular, but all minds. Now, it is plain they have an
+    existence exterior to my mind; since I find them by experience
+    to be independent of it. There is therefore some other mind
+    wherein they exist, during the intervals between the times of my
+    perceiving them; as likewise they did before my birth, and
+    would do after my supposed annihilation. And as the same is true
+    with regard to all other finite created spirits, it necessarily
+    follows there is an _omnipresent, eternal Mind_, which knows and
+    comprehends all things, and exhibits them to our view in such a
+    manner, and according to such rules, as He Himself hath
+    ordained, and are by us termed the _Laws of Nature_.'
+
+    'Truth is the cry of all,' says Berkeley in the final paragraph
+    of _Siris_, 'but the game of a few. Certainly, where it is the
+    chief passion, it doth not give way to vulgar cares and views,
+    nor is it contented with a little ardour, active perhaps to
+    pursue, but not so fit to weigh and revise. He that would make a
+    real progress in knowledge, must dedicate his age as well as
+    youth, the latter growth as well as firstfruits at the altar of
+    truth.'
+
+Elsewhere in this famous treatise he writes:
+
+    'It cannot be denied that with respect to the universe of things
+    we in this mortal state are like men educated in Plato's cave,
+    looking on shadows with our backs turned to the light. But
+    though our light be dim and our situation bad, yet if the best
+    use be made of both, perhaps something may be seen. Proclus, in
+    his commentary on the theology of Plato, observes there are two
+    sorts of philosophers. The one placed body first in the order of
+    beings, and made the faculty of thinking depend thereupon,
+    supposing that the principles of all things are corporeal; that
+    body most really or principally exists, and all other things in
+    a secondary sense and by virtue of that. Others making all
+    corporeal things to be dependent upon soul or mind, think this
+    to exist in the first place, and primary senses and the being of
+    bodies to be altogether derived from, and presuppose that of the
+    mind.'
+
+This was Berkeley's creed, and his great aim throughout is to prove the
+phenomenal nature of the things of sense, or in other words the
+non-existence of independent matter. He makes, he says, not the least
+question that the things we see and touch really exist, but what he does
+question is the existence of matter apart from its perception to the
+mind. Hobbes said that the body accounted for the mind, and that matter
+was the deepest thing in the universe, while to Berkeley the only true
+reality consists in what is spiritual and eternal.
+
+'The great idealist,' says an able writer, 'certainly never denied the
+existence of matter in the sense in which Johnson understood it. As the
+touched, the seen, the heard, the smelled, the tasted, he admitted and
+maintained its existence as readily and completely as the most
+illiterate and unsophisticated of mankind,' and he adds that the
+peculiar endowment for which Berkeley was distinguished 'far beyond his
+predecessors and contemporaries, and far beyond almost every philosopher
+who has succeeded him, was the eye he had _for facts_, and the singular
+pertinacity with which he refused to be dislodged from his hold upon
+them.'[62]
+
+Pope's age produced a few great masters of style, and among them
+Berkeley holds an undisputed place. He succeeded, too, in the most
+difficult department of intellectual labour, since to express abstruse
+thought in language as beautiful as it is clear is the rarest of gifts.
+
+'His works are beyond dispute the finest models of philosophic style
+since Cicero. Perhaps they surpass those of the orator, in the wonderful
+art by which the fullest light is thrown on the most minute and
+evanescent parts of the most subtle of human conceptions.'[63]
+
+[Sidenote: William Law (1686-1761).]
+
+William Law was born in 1686 at King's Cliffe in Northamptonshire, and
+entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge, as a Sizar in 1705. He obtained a
+Fellowship, and received holy orders in 1711, but having made a speech
+offensive to the heads of houses, he was degraded. Law believed in the
+divine right of kings, and on the death of Queen Anne, declared his
+principles as a non-juror. In 1717 he published his first controversial
+work, _Three Letters to the Bishop of Bangor_; Hoadly, the famous
+bishop, having, in his opponent's judgment, uttered lax and
+latitudinarian views with regard to the Church of which he was one of
+the chief pastors. These _Letters_ have been highly praised for wit as
+well as for argument, and Dean Hook, writing of the Bangorian
+Controversy in his _Church Dictionary_, states that 'Law's _Letters_
+have never been answered and may, indeed, be regarded as unanswerable.'
+Law was also the most powerful assailant of Warburton's _Divine
+Legation_, which he opposed with a burning zeal that was not always
+wise. But as a controversialist he was an infinitely stronger man than
+his opponent, and unlike Warburton, he never debased controversy by
+scurrility, which the bishop generally found a more potent weapon than
+argument.
+
+On the publication, in 1723, of Dr. Mandeville's _Fable of the Bees_, it
+was vigorously attacked by Law. In this masterly pamphlet, instead of
+attempting to refute the physician by showing that virtue is more
+profitable to the State than vice, and that, therefore, private vices
+are not public benefits, Law takes a higher ground, and asserts that
+morality is not a question of profit and loss, but of conscience.
+Mandeville maintains that man is a mere animal governed by his passions;
+his opponent, on the other hand, argues that man is created in the image
+of God, that virtue 'is a law to which even the divine nature is
+subject,' and that human nature is fitted to rise to the angels, while
+Mandeville would lower it to the brutes.
+
+John Sterling, writing to F. D. Maurice of the first section of Law's
+remarks, says: 'I have never seen in our language the elementary
+grounds of a rational ideal philosophy, as opposed to empiricism, stated
+with nearly the same clearness, simplicity, and force,' and it was at
+Sterling's suggestion that Maurice published a new edition of Law's
+argument with an introductory essay (1844).
+
+The following passage from the _Remarks on the Fable of the Bees_ will
+illustrate Law's method as a polemic:
+
+    'Deists and freethinkers are generally considered as
+    unbelievers; but upon examination they will appear to be men of
+    the most resigned and implicit faith in the world; they would
+    believe _transubstantiation_, but that it implies a believing in
+    God; for they never resign their reason, but when it is to yield
+    to something that opposes salvation. For the Deist's creed has
+    as many articles as the Christian's, and requires a much greater
+    suspension of our reason to believe them. So that if to believe
+    things upon no authority, or without any reason, be an argument
+    of credulity, the freethinker will appear to be the most easy,
+    credulous creature alive. In the first place, he is to believe
+    almost all the same articles to be false which the Christian
+    believes to be true.
+
+    'Now, it may easily be shown that it requires stronger acts of
+    faith to believe these articles to be false, than to believe
+    them to be true. For, taking faith to be an assent of the mind
+    to some proposition, of which we have no certain knowledge, it
+    will appear that the Deist's faith is much stronger, and has
+    more of credulity in it, than the Christian's. For instance, the
+    Christian believes the resurrection of the dead, because he
+    finds it supported by such evidence and authority as cannot
+    possibly be higher, supposing the thing was true; and he does no
+    more violence to his reason in believing it, than in supposing
+    that God may intend to do some things, which the reason of man
+    cannot conceive how they will be effected.
+
+    'On the contrary, the Deist believes there will be no
+    resurrection. And how great is his faith, for he pretends to no
+    evidence or authority to support it; it is a pure naked assent
+    of his mind to what he does not know to be true, and of which
+    nobody has, or can give him, any full assurance. So that the
+    difference between a Christian and a Deist does not consist in
+    this, that the one assents to things unknown, and the other does
+    not; but in this, that the Christian assents to things unknown
+    on account of evidence; the other assents to things unknown
+    without any evidence at all. Which shows that the Christian is
+    the rational believer and the Deist the blind bigot.'
+
+It is probable that Law, like other writers on the orthodox side, did
+not sufficiently take into account the service rendered by the Deists in
+arousing a spirit of inquiry. Free-thinking is right thinking, and 'it
+was a result of the Deistic controversy, which went far to make up many
+evils in it, that in the end it widened and enlarged Christian
+thought.'[64]
+
+The author's next and weakest work, _On the Unlawfulness of Stage
+Entertainments_ (1726), is mentioned elsewhere.[65]
+
+In the same year he published _Christian Perfection_, a profoundly
+earnest but puritanically narrow work, in which our earthly life is
+regarded simply as the road to another. 'There is nothing that deserves
+a serious thought,' he writes, 'but how to get out of the world and make
+it a right passage to our eternal state.' No man ever practised what he
+preached with more sincerity and persistency than William Law, but it
+can hardly be doubted that he narrowed the range of his influence by the
+views he expressed with regard to culture and to all human learning. He
+forgot that, without the logic, the wit, the irony, the singular force
+and lucidity of style displayed in his own writings, he would have
+lost the power as a religious teacher which he was so eager to exercise.
+
+Literature _quâ_ literature Law regarded with contempt, and he is said
+to have looked upon the study even of Milton as waste of time. Yet his
+biographer states what seems likely enough, considering the fine
+qualities of Law's own writings, that 'no author was ever a favourite
+with him, unless he was a man of literary merit.'
+
+In 1727, and probably before that date, Law held the position of tutor
+to Edward Gibbon, whose famous son, the historian, in his
+_Autobiography_, gives to him the high praise of having left in the
+family 'the reputation of a worthy and pious man, who believed all that
+he professed, and practised all that he enjoined.'
+
+Law accompanied his pupil to Cambridge, and it is conjectured that
+during this residence at the university he wrote what Gibbon justly
+called his 'master work,' _A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life_
+(1729), the most impressive book of its class produced in the eighteenth
+century. The historian's father was a man of feeble character. He left
+Cambridge without a degree, and went on his travels, the tutor meanwhile
+remaining in the family house at Putney, where he seems to have gathered
+round him a number of disciples.
+
+The _Serious Call_ had an immediate and strong influence on many
+thoughtful men, and Law's book stimulated in no common measure the
+religious life of the country. John Wesley spoke of it as a treatise
+hardly to be excelled in the English tongue 'either for beauty of
+expression, or for justness and depth of thought.' Whitefield, Venn, and
+Thomas Scott, the commentator, acknowledged their indebtedness to the
+work, and Dr. Johnson, speaking of his youthful days, said: 'I became a
+sort of lax _talker_ against religion, for I did not much _think_
+against it; and this lasted till I went to Oxford, when I took up Law's
+_Serious Call to a Holy Life_, expecting to find it a dull book (as such
+books generally are), but I found Law quite an over-match for me; and
+this was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest.' The first Lord
+Lyttelton, the historian and friend of Thomson, is said to have taken up
+the book one night at bed-time, and to have read it through before he
+went to bed; but, perhaps, the most unimpeachable evidence in its favour
+comes from the pen of Gibbon, who writes: 'Mr. Law's precepts are rigid,
+but they are founded on the Gospel. His satire is sharp, but it is drawn
+from the knowledge of human life, and many of his portraits are not
+unworthy of the pen of La Bruyère. If he finds a spark of piety in his
+reader's mind he will soon kindle it to a flame.'
+
+Law's art as a portrait painter will be seen in the following sketch of
+Flavia:
+
+    '_Flavia_ would be a miracle of piety if she was but half so
+    careful of her soul as she is of her body. The rising of a
+    _pimple_ on her face, the sting of a gnat, will make her keep
+    her room two or three days, and she thinks they are very rash
+    people that do not take care of things in time. This makes her
+    so over careful of her health that she never thinks she is well
+    enough, and so over indulgent that she never can be really well.
+    So that it costs her a great deal in sleeping draughts and
+    waking draughts, in spirits for the head, in drops for the
+    nerves, in cordials for the stomach, and in saffron for her tea.
+
+    'If you visit _Flavia_ on the Sunday, you will always meet good
+    company, you will know what is doing in the world, you will hear
+    the last lampoon, be told who wrote it, and who is meant by
+    every name that is in it. You will hear what plays were acted
+    that week, which is the finest song in the opera, who was
+    intolerable at the last assembly, and what games are most in
+    fashion. _Flavia_ thinks they are atheists who play at cards on
+    the Sunday, but she will tell you the nicety of all the games,
+    what cards she held, how she played them, and the history of all
+    that happened at play, as soon as she comes from church. If you
+    would know who is rude and ill-natured, who is vain and foppish,
+    who lives too high and who is in debt; if you would know what is
+    the quarrel at a certain house, or who and who are in love; if
+    you would know how late Belinda comes home at night, what
+    clothes she has bought, how she loves compliments, and what a
+    long story she told at such a place; if you would know how cross
+    Lucius is to his wife, what ill-natured things he says to her,
+    when nobody hears him; if you would know how they hate one
+    another in their hearts though they appear so kind in public;
+    you must visit _Flavia_ on the Sunday. But still she has so
+    great a regard for the holiness of the Sunday, that she has
+    turned a poor old widow out of her house as a _profane wretch_,
+    for having been found once mending her clothes on the Sunday
+    night.'
+
+Between the years 1733-37, owing to his acquaintance with the writings
+of the famous mystic, Jacob Boehme, Law became a mystic himself. The
+'blessed Jacob' as he calls him exercised an influence which colours all
+his later writings and lasted till his death. In 1740 he retired to his
+native village and to solitude; but after a while two wealthy and devout
+ladies, one of them a widow, the other the historian's aunt, Miss Hester
+Gibbon, joined him in his retreat and devoted to charitable objects
+their labours and their fortunes. 'Out of a joint income of not less
+than three thousand pounds a year, only about three hundred pounds were
+spent upon the frugal expenses of the household and the simple personal
+wants of the three inhabitants. The whole of the remainder was spent
+upon the poor.'[66] Report says, let us hope it may be scandal, that
+after the master's death the love of earthly vanities revived in two of
+his pupils. His favourite niece had a new dress every month, and Miss
+Gibbon 'appeared resplendent in yellow stockings.' This is not the place
+to follow Law's self-denying career, neither are we concerned with the
+volumes which contain his later views. Admirably written though they be,
+these works do not belong to the field of literature. Law lived in
+vigour both of mind and body to a good old age, and died in 1761.
+
+[Sidenote: Joseph Butler (1692-1752).]
+
+Joseph Butler, whose _Sermons_ (1726), and _Analogy of Religion Natural
+and Revealed to the Constitution and Course of Nature_ (1736), are among
+the highest contributions to theology produced in the last century,
+called the imagination 'a forward, delusive faculty,' and he could have
+boasted that it was a faculty of which no trace is to be found in his
+works. Moreover, he is generally regarded as wholly destitute of style,
+and in a sense this is true, for Butler is so intent upon what he has to
+say that he cares little how he says it. His sense of beauty if he
+possessed it, was absorbed in a supreme allegiance to truth, and his
+life was that of a Christian philosopher intent upon one object. His
+sermons, preached at the Rolls Chapel, which contain the germ of his
+philosophy, are too closely packed with argument and too recondite in
+thought to fit them for pulpit discourses. The _Analogy_, which occupied
+seven years of Butler's life, is better known and more generally
+interesting. 'There is,' he says, 'a much more exact correspondence
+between the natural and the moral world than we are apt to take notice
+of.' His aim is to show that the difficulties which meet us in
+Revelation are to be found also in nature, that as our happiness or
+misery in this world largely depends upon conduct, so it is reasonable
+to suppose, apart from what Revelation teaches, that we are also in a
+state of probation with regard to a future life. As youth is an
+education for mature age, so may the whole of our earthly life be an
+education for a future existence.
+
+    'And if we were not able at all to discern how or in what way
+    the present life could be our preparation for another, this
+    would be no objection against the credibility of its being so.
+    For we do not discern how food and sleep contribute to the
+    growth of the body; nor could have any thought that they would
+    before we had experience. Nor do children at all think on the
+    one hand that the sports and exercises, to which they are so
+    much addicted, contribute to their health and growth; nor, on
+    the other, of the necessity which there is for their being
+    restrained in them; nor are they capable of understanding the
+    use of many parts of discipline, which, nevertheless, they must
+    be made to go through in order to qualify them for the business
+    of mature age. Were we not able, then, to discover in what
+    respects the present life could form us for a future one, yet
+    nothing would be more supposable than that it might, in some
+    respects or other, from the general analogy of Providence. And
+    this, for aught I see, might reasonably be said, even though we
+    should not take in the consideration of God's moral government
+    over the world. But, take in this consideration, and
+    consequently, that the character of virtue and piety is a
+    necessary qualification for the future state, and then we may
+    distinctly see how and in what respects the present life may be
+    a preparation for it.
+
+Butler's style is uniform throughout, and if it have no other merit, may
+be praised for honesty. It is wholly free from the artifices of the
+rhetorician; if it is wanting in charm, it is never weak; if it is
+sometimes obscure, it must be remembered that the author does not write
+for readers who find it a trouble to think. The bishop's obscurity was
+not due to negligence. 'Confusion and perplexity in writing,' he says,
+'is indeed without excuse; because anyone may, if he pleases, know
+whether he understands and sees through what he is about; and it is
+unpardonable for a man to lay his thoughts before others when he is
+conscious that he himself does not know whereabouts he is, or how the
+matter before him stands. It is coming abroad in disorder, which he
+ought to be dissatisfied to find himself in at home.'
+
+Butler weighed his thoughts rather than his words in an age when many
+distinguished writers were tempted to regard form as of more consequence
+than substance. It must be admitted, however, that if the ideal of fine
+literature be the expression of beautiful and richly suggestive thoughts
+in a style elevated by the imagination, and by a sense of rhythmical
+harmony, Bishop Butler's place is not among men of letters. His profound
+sense of the seriousness of life limited his range; but as a thinker,
+what he lost in versatility he probably gained in depth. The _Analogy_
+is a striking instance of a great work wholly without imagination, while
+full of the intellectual life which sustains the student's attention.
+There is not a dull page in the book, or one in which the author's
+meaning cannot be grasped by thoughtful readers. The work is full of
+weighty sayings on the power of conscience, the rule of right which a
+man has within him, the force of habit, the necessity of action in
+relation to belief, and the uselessness of passive impressions. It has
+been said that the defect of the eighteenth century theology 'was not in
+having too much good sense, but in having nothing besides,' and the
+straining after good sense, so prominent in Pope's age, affected alike,
+men of letters, philosophers, and theologians. The virtue was carried to
+excess and is conspicuous in Butler. He has his weaknesses both as a
+philosopher and a theologian, but the reader of the _Analogy_ and of the
+three sermons on Human Nature, will be conscious that he is in the
+presence of a great mind.
+
+[Sidenote: William Warburton (1698-1779).]
+
+William Warburton, Pope's commentator, was born at Newark-upon-Trent in
+1698, and died as Bishop of Gloucester in 1779. The main argument of his
+principal work, _The Divine Legation of Moses_ (1738-41), is based upon
+the astounding paradox that the legation of Moses must have been divine
+because he never invoked the promises or threatenings of a future state.
+The book is remarkable for its arrogance and lack of 'sweet
+reasonableness.' It claims no attention from the student of English
+literature, neither would Warburton himself were it not for his
+association with Pope. Allusion has been already made to Crousaz's
+hostile criticism of the _Essay on Man_ (1737) on the ground that it led
+to fatalism, and was destructive of the foundations of natural religion.
+Warburton, who had previously denounced the 'rank atheism' of the poem,
+now endeavoured to defend it, and how effectually he did so in Pope's
+judgment is seen in his grateful acknowledgment of the critic's labours.
+'I know I meant just what you explain,' he wrote, 'but I did not explain
+my own meaning as well as you. You understand me as well as I do myself,
+but you express me better than I could express myself.'
+
+Dr. Conyers Middleton's estimate of what Warburton had done for Pope is
+more accurate: 'You have evinced the orthodoxy of Mr. Pope's
+principles,' he says, 'but, like the old commentators on his _Homer_,
+will be thought, perhaps, in some places to have provided a meaning for
+him that he himself never dreamt of.'[67]
+
+The poet and Warburton met for the first time in 1740, and the
+bookseller, Dodsley, who was present at the interview, was astonished at
+the compliments which Pope lavished on his apologist. Henceforth,
+until the poet's death, Warburton, who, according to Bishop Hurd, 'found
+an image of himself in his new acquaintance,' became his counsellor and
+supporter, and among other achievements added, as Ricardus Aristarchus,
+to the confusion of the _Dunciad_. Ultimately, as Pope's annotator, he
+produced much laborious and comparatively worthless criticism, and
+contrived by his immense fighting qualities as a critic and polemic to
+make a considerable noise in the world. One incident in the friendship
+of the poet and of the divine is worth recording. In 1741 Pope and
+Warburton were at Oxford together, and while there the Vice-Chancellor
+offered to confer on the poet the degree of D.C.L., and on Warburton
+that of D.D. Some hesitation, however, on the part of the university
+having occurred with regard to the latter, Pope wrote to his friend
+saying, 'As for mine I will die before I receive one, in an art I am
+ignorant of, at a place where there remains any scruple of bestowing one
+on you, in a science of which you are so great a master. In short I will
+be doctored with you, or not at all.'
+
+Warburton's stupendous self-assertion concealed to some extent his heavy
+style and poverty of thought. His aim was to startle by paradoxes, since
+he could not convince by argument. No one could call an opponent names
+in the Billingsgate style more effectively, and every man who ventured
+to differ from him was either a knave or a fool. 'Warburton's stock
+argument,' it has been said, 'is a threat to cudgel anyone who disputes
+his opinion.' He was a laborious student, and the mass of work he
+accomplished exhibits his robust energy, but he has left nothing which
+lives in literature or in theology. He was, however, a man of various
+acquisitions, and won, for that reason, the praise of Dr. Johnson. 'The
+table is always full, sir. He brings things from the north and the
+south and from every quarter. In his _Divine Legation_ you are always
+entertained. He carries you round and round without carrying you forward
+to the point, but then you have no wish to be carried forward.'
+
+Bentley's more concise description of Warburton's attainments deserves
+to be recorded. He was, he says, 'a man of monstrous appetite, but bad
+digestion.'
+
+Warburton's _Shakespeare_ appeared in 1747, his _Pope_ in 1751. It
+cannot be said that either poet has cause to be grateful to his
+commentator. Of his _Shakespeare_ a few words may be appropriately said
+here. In this pretentious and untrustworthy edition, Warburton accuses
+Theobald of plagiarism, treats him with contempt, and then uses his text
+to print from. In his Preface he declares that his own Notes 'take in
+the whole compass of Criticism,' and he professes to restore the poet's
+genuine Text. Yet, as the editors of the _Cambridge Shakespeare_
+observe, there is no trace, so far as they have discovered, 'of his
+having collated for himself either the earlier Folios or any of the
+Quartos.' Warburton professed to observe the severe canons of literal
+criticism, and this suggested the title to Thomas Edwards of a volume in
+which the critic's editorial pretensions are attacked with some humour
+and much justice.[68]
+
+We may add that Bishop Hurd, Warburton's most intimate friend, edited
+his works in seven volumes (1788), and six years later, by way of
+preface to a new edition, published an _Account of the Life, Writings,
+and Character of the Author_.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[57] Readers who remember Mr. Browning's estimate of 'sage Mandeville'
+in his _Parleyings with Certain Persons_ may deem this criticism unjust;
+but the De Mandeville who speaks in that poem is the creation of the
+poet's imagination, or rather he is Mr. Browning himself.
+
+[58] _Bolingbroke: a Historical Study_, p. 133. By J. Churton Collins.
+
+[59] _Walpole_, p. 79. By John Morley. Macmillan.
+
+[60] _Works of George Berkeley._ Edited by George Sampson. With
+introduction by the Rt. Hon. Arthur J. Balfour, M.P. Vol. i., p. xxxi
+(London, 1897).
+
+[61] _An Essay on Truth_, 2nd edit., p. 298. 1771.
+
+[62] _Blackwood's Magazine_, June, 1842.
+
+[63] Sir James Macintosh, _Encyclopædia Britannica_.
+
+[64] _The English Church and its Bishops._ By Charles J. Abbey. Vol. i.,
+p. 236.
+
+[65] See p. 194.
+
+[66] _The Life and Opinions of the Rev. William Law, M.A._ By J. H.
+Overton, M.A. P. 243.
+
+[67] Middleton's _Miscellaneous Works_, vol. i., p. 402.
+
+[68] The first edition of Edwards's work was entitled _Supplement_ to
+Mr. Warburton's edition of _Shakespeare_, 1747. The third edition (1750)
+was called _The Canons of Criticism and Glossary_ by Thomas Edwards. Of
+this volume seven editions were published. Edwards, who was born in
+1699, died in 1757.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX OF MINOR POETS AND PROSE WRITERS.
+
+
+JOHN ARMSTRONG (1709-1779), a Scotchman by birth, practised in London as
+a physician after some surgical experience in the navy. Believing any
+subject suitable for poetry, he wrote in blank verse, reminding one of
+Thomson, _The Art of Preserving Health_ (1744), a poem containing some
+powerful passages, and many which are better fitted for a medical
+treatise than for poetry. An earlier and licentious poem _The Economy of
+Love_, which injured him in his profession, was 'revised and corrected
+by the author' in 1768.
+
+If bulk were a sign of merit SIR RICHARD BLACKMORE (1650-1729) would not
+rank with the minor poets. He wrote several long and wearisome epics,
+his best work in Dr. Johnson's judgment being _The Creation_ (1712),
+which was praised by Addison in the _Spectator_ as 'one of the most
+useful and noble productions in our English verse,' a judgment the
+modern reader is not likely to endorse.
+
+HENRY BROOKE (1706-1783), an Irishman, was the author of a poem entitled
+_Universal Beauty_ (1735). Four years later he published _Gustavus
+Vasa_, a tragedy, which was not allowed to be acted, the sentiments
+being too liberal for the government. His _Fool of Quality_ (1766) a
+novel in five volumes, delighted John Wesley, and in our day, Charles
+Kingsley, who praises its 'broad and genial humanity.' Brooke was a
+follower of William Law, whose mysticism is to be seen in the story.
+
+WILLIAM BROOME (1689-1745) is chiefly known from his association with
+Pope in the translation of the _Odyssey_, of which enough has been said
+elsewhere (p. 38). His name suggested the following epigram to Henley:
+
+    'Pope came off clean with Homer; but they say
+    _Broome_ went before and kindly swept the way.'
+
+He entered holy orders, had two livings in Suffolk and one in Norfolk,
+and married a wealthy widow. His verses are mechanically correct, but
+are empty of poetry.
+
+JOHN BYROM (1691-1763), the friend and disciple of William Law, the
+author of the _Serious Call_, is best remembered for his system of
+shorthand. In a characteristic, copious, and not very attractive
+journal, he describes, for the consolation of his fellow mortals, how he
+makes resolutions and breaks them. Byrom wrote rhyme with ease and on
+subjects with which poetry has nothing to do. His most successful
+achievement was a pastoral, _Colin and Phoebe_, which appeared in the
+_Spectator_ (Vol. viii., No. 603). It was written in honour of the
+daughter of Dr. Bentley, Master of Trinity, 'not,' it has been said,
+'because he wished to win her affections, but because he desired to
+secure her father's interest for the Fellowship for which he was a
+candidate.' The plan was successful. The one verse of Byrom's that every
+one has read is the happy epigram:
+
+    'God bless the King!--I mean the faith's defender--
+    God bless (no harm in blessing!) the Pretender!
+    But who Pretender is, or who is King--
+    God bless us all!--that's quite another thing.'
+
+SAMUEL CLARKE (1675-1729), a man of large attainments in science and
+divinity, was the favourite theologian of Queen Caroline, who admired
+his latitudinarian views, and delighted in his conversation. His works,
+edited by Bishop Hoadly, were published in 1738 in four folio volumes.
+In 1704 he delivered the Boyle lectures on _The Being and Attributes of
+God_, and in 1705 _On Natural and Revealed Religion_. His _Scripture
+Doctrine of the Trinity_ (1712) was condemned by convocation. In defence
+of Sir Isaac Newton, Clarke had a controversy with Leibnitz, and having
+published the correspondence dedicated it to the Queen. His sermons, Mr.
+Leslie Stephen says, are 'for the most part not sermons at all, but
+lectures upon metaphysics.' In Addison's judgment Clarke was one of the
+most accurate, learned, and judicious writers the age had produced.
+
+ELIJAH FENTON (1683-1730) wrote poems and _Mariamne_ a tragedy, in
+which, according to his friend Broome, 'great Sophocles revives and
+reappears.' It was acted with applause, and brought nearly one thousand
+pounds to its author. His name is now chiefly known as having assisted
+Pope in his translation of the _Odyssey_.
+
+RICHARD GLOVER (1712-1785), the son of a London merchant, was himself a
+merchant of high reputation in the city. He also 'cultivated the Muses,'
+and his _Leonidas_ (1737), an elaborate poem in blank verse, preferred
+by some critics of the day to _Paradise Lost_, passed through several
+editions and was praised by Fielding and by Lord Chatham. Power is
+visible in this epic, which displays also a large amount of knowledge,
+but the salt of genius is wanting, and the poem, despite many estimable
+qualities, is now forgotten. _Leonidas_ was followed by _Boadicea_
+(1758), and _The Atheniad_, published after his death in 1788. Glover
+was a politician as well as a verseman. His party feeling probably
+inspired _Admiral Hosier's Ghost_ (1739), a ballad still remembered and
+preserved in anthologies.
+
+MATTHEW GREEN (1696-1737) is the author of _The Spleen_, an original and
+brightly written poem. _The Grotto_, printed but not published in 1732,
+is also marked by freshness of treatment. Green's poems, written in
+octosyllabic metre, were published after his death.
+
+JAMES HAMMOND (1710-1742) produced many forlorn elegies on a lady who
+appears to have scorned him, and who lived in 'maiden meditation' for
+nearly forty years after the poet's death. His love is said to have
+affected his mind for a time. 'Sure Hammond has no right,' says
+Shenstone, 'to the least inventive merit. I do not think that there is a
+single thought in his elegies of any eminence that is not literally
+translated.'
+
+NATHANIEL HOOKE (1690-1763), the author of a _Roman History_, is better
+known as the editor of _An Account of the conduct of the Dowager Duchess
+of Marlborough, from her first coming to Court in the year 1710, in a
+letter from herself to Lord ---- in 1742_. The duchess is said to have
+dictated this letter from her bed, and to have been so eager for its
+completion that she insisted on Hooke's not leaving the house till he
+had finished it. He was munificently rewarded for his labour by a
+present of £5,000. It was Hooke, a zealous Roman Catholic, who, when
+Pope was dying, asked him if he should not send for a priest, and
+received the poet's hearty thanks for putting him in mind of it.
+
+JOHN HUGHES (1677-1719) was the author of poems, an opera, a masque,
+several translations, and a tragedy, _The Siege of Damascus_, which was
+well received, and kept its place on the stage for some years. He died
+on the first night's performance of the play. Several articles in the
+_Tatler_ and _Spectator_ are from his pen. In 1715 he published an
+edition of Spenser in six volumes. Hughes received warm praise from
+Steele, and enjoyed also the friendship of Addison.
+
+CONYERS MIDDLETON (1683-1750) is now chiefly known for an extravagantly
+eulogistic life of _Cicero_ (1741), in which, as Macaulay observes, he
+'resorted to the most disingenuous shifts, to unpardonable distortions
+and suppressions of facts.' The book is written in a forcible and lively
+style. A man of considerable learning, Middleton was a violent
+controversialist, who liked better to attack and to defend than to dwell
+in the serene atmosphere of literature or of practical divinity. He
+assailed the famous Richard Bentley with such rancour that he had to
+apologize and was fined £50 by the Court of King's Bench. Middleton was
+a doctor of divinity, but his controversial works, while never directly
+attacking the chief tenets of the religion he professed, lean far more
+to the side of the Deists than to the orthodox creed, and, indeed, it
+would not be uncharitable to class him among them. He appears, like
+Swift, to have chiefly regarded the Christian religion as an institution
+of service to the stability of the State. Of the _Miscellaneous Works_
+which were published after his death in five volumes, the most elaborate
+and the most provocative of disputation is _A Free Inquiry into the
+Miraculous Powers which are supposed to have subsisted in the Christian
+Church through several successive centuries_ (1749). Middleton was
+educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1734 was elected
+librarian of the University.
+
+RICHARD SAVAGE (1698-1743), whose fate is one of the most melancholy in
+the annals of versemen, lives in the admirable though neither impartial
+nor wholly accurate biography of Dr. Johnson. In 1719 he produced _Love
+in a Veil_, a comedy from the Spanish; and in 1723 his tragedy _Sir
+Thomas Overbury_ was acted, but with little success. In the same year he
+published _The Bastard_, a poem which is said to have driven his mother
+out of society. _The Wanderer_, in five cantos, appeared in 1729, and
+was regarded by the author as his masterpiece. It has some vigorous
+lines and several descriptive passages that are not conventional. Savage
+died in prison at Bristol, a city which recalls the equally painful
+story of Chatterton.
+
+LEWIS THEOBALD (1688-1744), the original hero of the _Dunciad_, was a
+dramatist and translator, but is chiefly known as the author of
+_Shakespeare Restored; or specimens of blunders committed or unamended
+in Pope's edition of the poet_ (1726). This was followed two years later
+by _Proposals for Publishing Emendations and Remarks on Shakespeare_,
+and in 1733 by his edition of the dramatist in seven volumes. 'Theobald
+as an editor,' say the editors of the _Cambridge Shakespeare_, 'is
+incomparably superior to his predecessors and to his immediate successor
+Warburton, although the latter had the advantage of working on his
+materials. He was the first to recall a multitude of readings of the
+first Folio unquestionably right, but unnoticed by previous editors.
+Many most brilliant emendations ... are due to him.'
+
+WILLIAM WALSH (1663-1708) has chronologically little claim to be noticed
+here, for his poems were published before the beginning of the century,
+but he is to be remembered as the early friend and wise counsellor of
+Pope, and also as the author, I believe, of the only English sonnet
+between Milton's in 1658, and Gray's, on Richard West, in 1742.
+
+ANNE FINCH, Countess of Winchelsea (1660-1720), published a volume of
+verse in 1713 under the title of _Miscellany Poems on Several Occasions,
+Written by a Lady_. The book contains a _Nocturnal Reverie_, which has
+some lines showing a close and faithful observation of rural sounds and
+sights, as for example:
+
+    'When the loosed horse, now as his pasture leads,
+    Comes slowly grazing through the adjoining meads,
+    Whose stealing pace and lengthened shade we fear,
+    Till torn-up forage in his teeth we hear;
+    When nibbling sheep at large pursue their food,
+    And unmolested kine rechew the cud;
+    When curlews cry beneath the village walls,
+    And to her straggling brood the partridge calls.'
+
+The _Nocturnal Reverie_, however, is an exception to the general
+character of Lady Winchelsea's poems, which consist chiefly of odes
+(including the inevitable Pindaric), fables, songs, affectionate
+addresses to her husband, poetical epistles, and a tragedy,
+_Aristomenes; or the Royal Shepherd_. The _Petition for an Absolute
+Retreat_ is one of the best pieces in the volume. It displays great
+facility in versification, and a love of country delights.
+
+THOMAS YALDEN (1670-1736), born in Exeter, and educated at Magdalen
+College, Oxford, entered into holy orders (1711), and was appointed
+lecturer of moral philosophy. 'Of his poems,' writes Dr. Johnson, 'many
+are of that irregular kind which, when he formed his poetical character,
+was supposed to be Pindaric.' Pindarics were indeed the bane of the age.
+Every minor poet, no matter however feeble his poetical wings might be,
+endeavoured to fly with Pindar. Like Gay, Yalden tried his skill as a
+writer of fables.
+
+    NOTE.
+
+    _Mrs. Veal's Ghost_ (see pp. 186-187). A curious discovery, made
+    by Mr. G. A. Aitken (see _Nineteenth Century_, January, 1895),
+    makes it certain, he thinks, that 'the whole narrative is
+    literally true.' He even hopes that the receipt for scouring
+    Mrs. Veal's gown may some day be found. Mr. Aitken seems to
+    infer that Defoe's other tales will also turn out to be true
+    histories, but Defoe avers, with all the seriousness he expends
+    on Mrs. Veal, that he witnessed the great Plague of London,
+    which it is needless to say he did not.
+
+
+
+
+CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.
+
+
+=1667.=       =Swift born.=
+=1672.=       =Steele born.=
+=1672.=       =Addison born.=
+ 1674.        Milton died.
+=1688.=       =Gay born.=
+=1688.=       =Pope born.=
+ 1688.        Bunyan died.
+ 1690.        Locke's _Essay Concerning Human Understanding_.
+ 1694.        Voltaire born.
+ 1699.        Racine died.
+=1700.=       =Thomson born.=
+=1700.=       =Dryden died.=
+ 1700.        Fénelon's _Télémaque_.
+ 1703.        John Wesley born.
+ 1704.        Locke died.
+=1704.=       =Addison's= _Campaign_.
+=1704.=       =Swift's= _Tale of a Tub_ and _Battle of the Books_.
+ 1707.        Fielding born.
+ 1709.        Johnson born.
+=1709.=       =Pope's= _Pastorals_.
+=1709-1711.=  _The Tatler._
+=1710.=       =Berkeley's= _Principles of Human Knowledge_.
+=1711.=       =Pope's= _Essay on Criticism_.
+1711-1712,}   _The Spectator._
+and 1714. }
+ 1711.        Hume born.
+=1712.=       =Pope's= _Rape of the Lock_.
+ 1712.        Rousseau born.
+=1713.=       =Addison's= _Cato_.
+ 1713.        Sterne born.
+=1714.=       =Mandeville's= _Fable of the Bees_.
+=1715.=       =Gay's= _Trivia_.
+=1715-1720.=  =Pope's= _Translation of Homer's Iliad_.
+ 1715.        Wycherley died.
+=1718.=       =Prior's= _Poems on Several Occasions_ =(folio)=.
+=1719-1720.=  =Defoe's= _Robinson Crusoe_ =(first part)=.
+=1719.=       =Addison died.=
+=1721.=       =Prior died.=
+ 1721.        Smollett born.
+=1723-1725.=  =Pope's= _Translation of Homer's Odyssey_.
+=1724.=       =Swift's= _Drapier's Letters_.
+ 1724.        Kant born.
+ 1724.        Klopstock born.
+=1725-1730.=  =Thomson's= _Seasons_.
+=1725.=       =Ramsay's= _Gentle Shepherd_.
+=1725.=       =Young's= _Universal Passion_.
+=1726.=       =Swift's= _Gulliver's Travels_.
+=1727.=       =Gay's= _Fables_.
+=1728.=       =Pope's= _Dunciad_.
+=1728.=       =Gay's= _Beggar's Opera_.
+ 1728.        Goldsmith born.
+=1729.=       =Law's= _Serious Call_.
+ 1729.        Burke born.
+ 1729.        Lessing born.
+=1729.=       =Steele died.=
+=1731.=       =Defoe died.=
+ 1731.        Cowper born.
+=1732-1735.=  =Pope's= _Moral Essays_.
+=1732-1734.=  =Pope's= _Essay on Man_.
+=1732.=       =Gay died.=
+=1733-1737.=  =Pope's= _Imitations of Horace_.
+=1735.=       =Pope's= _Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot_.
+=1736.=       =Butler's= _Analogy of Religion_.
+ 1737.        Gibbon born.
+=1738.=       =Hume's= _Treatise of Human Nature_.
+=1740.=       =Cibber's= _Apology for his Life_.
+ 1740.        Richardson's _Pamela_.
+ 1742.        Fielding's _Joseph Andrews_.
+=1742.=       =Pope's= _Dunciad_ =(fourth book added)=.
+=1742.=       =Young's= _Night Thoughts_.
+=1743.=       =Blair's= _Grave_.
+=1744.=       =Akenside's= _Pleasures of Imagination_.
+=1744.=       =Pope died.=
+=1745.=       =Swift died.=
+=1748.=       =Thomson died.=
+ 1748.        Hume's _Inquiry concerning Human Understanding_.
+ 1748.        Richardson's _Clarissa Harlowe_.
+ 1748.        Smollett's _Roderick Random_.
+ 1749.        Goethe born.
+ 1749.        Fielding's _Tom Jones_.
+
+
+ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WRITERS
+
+ADDISON, JOSEPH                         1672-1719
+AKENSIDE, MARK                          1721-1770
+ARBUTHNOT, JOHN                         1667-1735
+ARMSTRONG, JOHN                         1709-1779
+ATTERBURY, FRANCIS                      1662-1732
+BENTLEY, RICHARD                        1662-1742
+BERKELEY, GEORGE                        1685-1753
+BINNING, LORD                           1696-1732
+BLACKMORE, SIR RICHARD                  1650-1729
+BLAIR, ROBERT                           1699-1746
+BOLINGBROKE, LORD                       1678-1751
+BOYLE, CHARLES                          1676-1731
+BROOKE, HENRY                           1706-1783
+BROOME, WILLIAM                         1689-1745
+BUTLER, JOSEPH                          1692-1752
+BYROM, JOHN                             1691-1763
+CHESTERFIELD, LORD                      1694-1773
+CIBBER, COLLEY                          1671-1757
+CLARKE, SAMUEL                          1675-1729
+COLLINS, ANTHONY                        1676-1729
+CRAWFORD, ROBERT                       1695?-1732
+DEFOE, DANIEL                           1661-1731
+DENNIS, JOHN                          1657-1733-4
+DORSET, EARL OF                       1637-1705-6
+DYER, JOHN                             1698?-1758
+EDWARDS, THOMAS                         1699-1757
+FENTON, ELIJAH                          1683-1730
+GARTH, SIR SAMUEL                    1660-1717-18
+GAY, JOHN                               1685-1732
+GLOVER, RICHARD                         1712-1785
+GREEN, MATTHEW                          1696-1737
+HALIFAX, CHARLES MONTAGUE, EARL OF      1661-1715
+HAMILTON, WILLIAM (OF BANGOUR)          1704-1754
+HAMMOND, JAMES                          1710-1742
+HILL, AARON                             1684-1749
+HOOKE, NATHANIEL                        1690-1763
+HUGHES, JOHN                            1677-1719
+KING, ARCHBISHOP                        1650-1729
+LAW, WILLIAM                            1686-1761
+LILLO, GEORGE                           1693-1739
+LYTTELTON, GEORGE, LORD                 1708-1773
+MALLET, DAVID                           1700-1765
+MANDEVILLE, BERNARD DE                 1670?-1733
+MIDDLETON, CONYERS                      1683-1750
+MONTAGU, LADY MARY WORTLEY              1689-1762
+PARNELL, THOMAS                         1679-1718
+PHILIPS, AMBROSE                        1671-1749
+PHILIPS, JOHN                           1676-1708
+POPE, ALEXANDER                         1688-1744
+PRIOR, MATTHEW                          1664-1721
+RAMSAY, ALLAN                           1686-1758
+ROWE, NICHOLAS                          1673-1718
+SAVAGE, RICHARD                         1698-1743
+SHAFTESBURY, LORD                       1671-1713
+SHENSTONE, WILLIAM                      1714-1764
+SOMERVILLE, WILLIAM                     1692-1742
+SPENCE, JOSEPH                          1698-1768
+STEELE, SIR RICHARD                     1672-1729
+SWIFT, JONATHAN                         1667-1745
+THEOBALD, LEWIS                         1688-1744
+THOMSON, JAMES                          1700-1748
+TICKELL, THOMAS                         1686-1740
+WALSH, WILLIAM                          1663-1708
+WARBURTON, WILLIAM                      1698-1779
+WARDLAW, LADY                           1677-1727
+WATTS, ISAAC                            1674-1748
+WESLEY, CHARLES                         1708-1788
+WINCHELSEA, COUNTESS OF                 1660-1720
+YALDEN, THOMAS                          1670-1736
+YOUNG, EDWARD                           1684-1765
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+Addison, Joseph, 4, 5, 15, 16, 19, 20, 35, 59, 62, 125-136, 145, 146.
+
+_Addison, Address to Mr._, 112.
+
+_Admiral Hosier's Ghost_, 244.
+
+_Agamemnon_, 88.
+
+Akenside, Mark, 117.
+
+_Alciphron_, 216, 224.
+
+_Alfred, Masque of_, 88, 119.
+
+_Alma_, 67, 71.
+
+_Ambitious Step-mother, the_, 103.
+
+_Amyntor and Theodora_, 119.
+
+_Analogy of Religion_, 236.
+
+_Appius and Virginia_, 191, 193.
+
+Arbuthnot, John, 45, 49, 175-179.
+
+_Arbuthnot, Epistle to Dr._, 59.
+
+Armstrong, John, 242.
+
+_Art of Political Lying, the_, 177.
+
+_Art of Preserving Health, the_, 242.
+
+_Atheniad, the_, 244.
+
+Atterbury, Bishop, 45, 70, 207-212.
+
+Atticus, character of, 59.
+
+Augustan Age, origin of the term, 10.
+
+
+_Baucis and Philemon_, 157.
+
+_Bangor, three Letters to the Bishop of_, 230.
+
+Bangorian Controversy, the, 9.
+
+_Bathos, treatise on the_, 39.
+
+Bathurst, Lord, 46, 49.
+
+_Battle of Blenheim, the_, 192.
+
+_Battle of the Books, the_, 160.
+
+_Beggar's Opera, the_, 73, 74.
+
+Bentley, Richard, 36, 48, 160, 207, 208, 243.
+
+_Bentley's Dissertations, Examination of_, 208.
+
+Berkeley, Bishop, 46, 215, 221-229.
+
+Bickerstaff, Isaac, 161;
+  _Lucubrations of_ 140, 141.
+
+Binning, Lord, 121.
+
+_Black-eyed Susan_, 74.
+
+Blackmore, Sir Richard, 47, 242.
+
+Blair, Robert, 84.
+
+_Blenheim_, 101.
+
+Blount, Martha and Teresa, 44, 56.
+
+_Boadicea_, 244.
+
+Boehme, Jacob, 235.
+
+Boileau and Pope compared, 4, 47;
+  his _Art Poétique_, 29.
+
+Bolingbroke, Lord, 8, 44, 51, 52, 59, 216-221.
+
+Boyle, Charles, 160, 207, 208.
+
+_Braes of Yarrow, the_, 121.
+
+Bribery, prevalence of, 19.
+
+_Britannia_ (Thomson's), 87;
+  (Mallet's), 119.
+
+Brooke, Henry, 242.
+
+Broome, William, 38, 243.
+
+_Brothers, the_, 79.
+
+Buckingham, Duke of, 57, 70.
+
+_Busiris_, 79.
+
+Butler, Bishop, 236.
+
+Byrom, John, 243.
+
+
+_Cadenus and Vanessa_, 154, 165.
+
+_Campaign, the_, 126.
+
+_Captain Singleton_, 188.
+
+_Careless Husband, the_, 196, 197.
+
+Caroline, Queen, 9.
+
+_Castle of Indolence, the_, 93.
+
+_Cato_, 128, _et seq._
+
+Chandos, Duke of, 57.
+
+_Characteristics of Men, Manners, etc._, 19, 52, 212.
+
+Charke, Mrs., _Narrative of her Life_, 11.
+
+_Chase, the_, 112.
+
+Chesterfield, Lord, 202-204.
+
+_Chit-Chat_, 144.
+
+_Christian Hero, the_, 137.
+
+_Christianity, argument against abolishing_, 161.
+
+_Christian Perfection_, 232.
+
+_Christian Religion, Grounds of the_, 222.
+
+Cibber, Colley, 48, 196-198;
+  _Apology for the Life of_, 198.
+
+_Cider_, 101.
+
+Clarke, Dr. Samuel, 9, 243.
+
+_Colin and Lucy_, 110.
+
+_Colin and Phoebe_, 243.
+
+Collier, Jeremy, 137.
+
+Collins, Anthony, 222.
+
+_Colonel Jack_, 187, 188.
+
+_Conscious Lovers, the_, 137.
+
+_Contentment, Hymn to_, 107.
+
+_Conversion of St. Paul, Dissertation on the_, 205.
+
+_Coriolanus_, 88.
+
+_Country Mouse and City Mouse, the_, 66.
+
+_Country Walk, the_, 114.
+
+Craggs, James, 45, 56.
+
+Crawford, Robert, 121.
+
+_Creation, the_, 242.
+
+_Crisis, the_, 143, 144.
+
+_Criticism, the Essay on_, 29, 191.
+
+_Criticism in Poetry, grounds of_, 192.
+
+Crousaz, M., 54, 238.
+
+Cruelty of the age, 18.
+
+Curll, Edmund, 42.
+
+
+Defoe, Daniel, 180-191.
+
+Delany, Mrs., _Life and Correspondence of_, 12, 164.
+
+Dennis, John, 191-196.
+
+_Dialogues of the Dead_, 205.
+
+_Dispensary, the_, 96.
+
+_Distrest Mother, the_, 98.
+
+_Divine Legation of Moses, the_, 230, 239.
+
+Dorset, Earl of, 65.
+
+_Drapier's Letters_, 170.
+
+Drelincourt's _Christian's Defence, etc._, 187.
+
+Dryden, John, death of, 1;
+  and Pope, 28, 58.
+
+_Dryden, Ode to_, 193.
+
+_Drummer, the_, 134.
+
+Drunkenness, prevalence of, 17.
+
+Duelling, 13.
+
+_Dunciad, the_, 39, 48, _et seq._, 240.
+
+Dyer, John, 113, 224.
+
+
+_Edward and Eleanora_, 88.
+
+Edwards, Thomas, 241.
+
+_Edwin and Emma_, 118.
+
+_Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady_, 33.
+
+_Eloisa to Abelard_, 33.
+
+_Elvira_, 119.
+
+_English Convocation, Rights, Powers and Privileges of_, 208.
+
+_Englishman, the_, 144.
+
+_English Poets, Account of the greatest_, 131.
+
+_Epistle to a Friend in Town_, 114.
+
+_Epistles of Phalaris, Dissertations on the_, 160, 208.
+
+_Essay on Man, the_, 51, 238.
+
+_Eurydice_, 119.
+
+Eusden, Lawrence, 47.
+
+_Evergreen, the_, 120.
+
+_Examiner, the_, 162.
+
+_Excursion, the_, 118.
+
+
+_Fable of the Bees, the_, 214, 230;
+  _Remarks on the_, 231.
+
+_Fables_ (Gay's), 73.
+
+_Fair Penitent, the_, 103.
+
+_Fatal Curiosity, the_, 138.
+
+Fenton, Elijah, 38, 244.
+
+_Fleece, the_, 113, 224.
+
+_Fool of Quality, the_, 243.
+
+_Force of Religion, the_, 78.
+
+_Freedom of Wit and Humour, the_, 213.
+
+_Freeholder, the_, 132.
+
+_Freethinking, Discourse on_, 222.
+
+French Literature, influence of, 3, 4, 5.
+
+French Customs, 14.
+
+_Funeral, the_, 137.
+
+
+Gambling, 21, 22.
+
+Garth, Sir Samuel, 96.
+
+Gay, John, 40, 49, 72-76.
+
+_Gentle Shepherd, the_, 120.
+
+_George Barnwell_, 138.
+
+_Gideon_, 104.
+
+Glover, Richard, 244.
+
+_God, the Being and Attributes of_, 244.
+
+Granville, George, Lord Lansdowne, 40.
+
+_Grave, the_, 84.
+
+Green, Matthew, 245.
+
+_Grongar Hill_, 113.
+
+_Grotto, the_, 244.
+
+_Grub Street Journal, the_, 51.
+
+_Grumbling Hive, the_, 214.
+
+_Guardian, the_, 125, 142.
+
+_Gulliver's Travels_, 167.
+
+_Gustavus Vasa_, 243.
+
+
+Halifax, Montague, Earl of, 65, 66.
+
+Hamilton, William, of Bangour, 121.
+
+Hammond, James, 245.
+
+_Health, an Eclogue_, 108.
+
+_Henry and Emma_, 67.
+
+_Hermit, the_, 107.
+
+Hervey, Lord, 47, 59, 61.
+
+Hill, Aaron, 104-106, 195.
+
+Hoadly, Bishop, 9, 230.
+
+Homer, Pope's Translation of, 34, _et seq._, 206, 243, 244.
+  Tickell's translation, 35, 111.
+
+Hooke, Nathaniel, 245.
+
+Horace, _Ars Poetica_, 29.
+
+_Horace, Imitations from_, 55, 59, 60.
+
+Hughes, John, 40, 245.
+
+_Human Knowledge, Treatise on_, 221, 225.
+
+_Hylas and Philonous, Dialogue between_, 222, 227.
+
+_Hymn to Contentment_, 107.
+
+_Hymn to the Naiads_, 118.
+
+
+_Imperium Pelagi_, 76.
+
+_Instalment, the_, 79.
+
+_Iphigenia_, 193.
+
+_Italy, Letter from_, 131.
+
+_Italy, Remarks on Several Parts of_, 126.
+
+
+_Jane Shore_, 103.
+
+_John Bull, History of_, 177.
+
+Johnson, Esther, 152, 164, 166, 172.
+
+_Judgment Day, the_, 104.
+
+_Judgment of Hercules, the_, 116.
+
+
+_Kensington Gardens_, 111.
+
+King, _on the Origin of Evil_, 52.
+
+
+_Lady Jane Grey_, 103.
+
+_Lansdowne, Epistle to Lord_, 77.
+
+_Last Day, the_, 77.
+
+Law, William, 194, 230-236, 243.
+
+_Law, Elegy in Memory of William_, 85.
+
+Leibnitz, _Essais de Théodicée_, 52.
+
+_Leonidas_, 244.
+
+_Liberty Asserted_, 193.
+
+Lillo, George, 138.
+
+_Love in a Veil_, 246.
+
+_Lover, the_, 144.
+
+_Love's Last Shift_, 196.
+
+_Lying Lover, the_, 137.
+
+Lyttelton, George, Lord, 204.
+
+
+Mallet, David, 88, 118, 219, 220.
+
+_Man, Allegory on_, 107.
+
+Mandeville, Bernard de, 214, 230.
+
+_Mariamne_, 244.
+
+Marlborough, Duchess of, 13, 57.
+
+_Marlborough, Duchess of, Account of the Conduct of_, 245.
+
+Marriages in the Fleet, 11, 12.
+
+_Mathematical Learning, Essay on the Usefulness of_, 175.
+
+_Memoirs of a Cavalier_, 188.
+
+_Merope_, 106.
+
+Middleton, Conyers, 246.
+
+_Modest Proposal, etc._, 172, 184.
+
+Mohocks, the, 11.
+
+_Moll Flanders_, 188, 190.
+
+Montagu, Lady M. W., 14, 42, 44, 57, 198-202.
+
+Montague, Charles, Earl of Halifax, 65, 66.
+
+_Monument, the_, 192.
+
+_Moral Essays, the_, 55, _et seq._
+
+_Moralties or Essays, Letters, etc._, 206.
+
+_Mrs. Veal, Apparition of_, 186.
+
+
+_Namur, Taking of_, 70.
+
+_Night Piece on Death_, 107, 108.
+
+_Night Thoughts_, 76, 81.
+
+_Northern Star, the_, 104.
+
+
+_Ocean_, 76.
+
+_Ode on St. Cecilia's day_, 40.
+
+Opera, Italian, 127.
+
+Oxford, Harley, Earl of, 49.
+
+
+_Parallel in the Manner of Plutarch_, 206.
+
+Parnell, Thomas, 107.
+
+_Parties, Dissertation on_, 221.
+
+Partridge, John, 161.
+
+Party feeling, excess of, 19, 20.
+
+_Pastoral Ballad_, 116.
+
+_Pastorals_ (Pope's), 29, 191;
+  (Philips'), 98.
+
+_Patriotism, Letters on_, 221.
+
+_Patriot King, the_, 219, 221.
+
+Patronage of Literature, 5, 6.
+
+_Peace of Ryswick, the_, 126.
+
+_Persian Tales, the_, 100.
+
+Peterborough, Earl of, 45.
+
+_Phalaris, Dissertation on the Epistle of_, 160, 208.
+
+Philips, Ambrose, 11, 98.
+
+Philips, John, 101.
+
+_Plague, History of the_, 189.
+
+_Pleasures of Imagination, the_, 117.
+
+_Plot and No Plot, a_, 193.
+
+_Poetry, Rhapsody on_, 157.
+
+_Polly_, 74.
+
+_Polymetis_, 206.
+
+Pope, Alexander, a representative poet, 27;
+  his life, 28-64;
+  and Dennis, 191, 195;
+  and Cibber, 96;
+  and Lady M. W. Montagu, 14, 42, 44, 57, 199;
+  and Spence, 205;
+  and Arbuthnot, 209.
+
+_Pope, Epistle to_, 81.
+
+_Pope's Translation of Homer_, Spence's Essay on, 206.
+
+Pope, Mrs., 44, 59.
+
+Prior, Matthew, 5, 65-72.
+
+_Progress of Wit, the_, 105.
+
+_Projects, Essay on_, 182.
+
+_Prospect of Peace, the_, 109.
+
+_Public Spirit of the Whigs, the_, 143.
+
+
+_Querist, the_, 224.
+
+
+Ramsay, Allan, 120.
+
+_Rape of the Lock, the_, 31.
+
+_Reader, the_, 144.
+
+Religion, Condition of, 9.
+
+_Religion, Natural and Revealed_, 244.
+
+_Religious Courtship, the_, 189.
+
+_Remarks on Several Parts of Italy_, 126.
+
+_Revenge, the_, 79.
+
+_Review, the_ (Defoe's), 185.
+
+_Rise of Women, the_, 108.
+
+_Robinson Crusoe_, 180, 187, 189.
+
+_Rosamond_, 128.
+
+Roscommon's _Essay on Translated Verse_, 29.
+
+Rowe, Nicholas, 102.
+
+_Roxana_, 188, 189.
+
+_Royal Convert, the_, 103.
+
+_Ruin of Great Britain, Essay towards Preventing the_, 223.
+
+_Ruins of Rome, the_, 115.
+
+_Rule Britannia_, 95.
+
+
+Savage, Richard, 246.
+
+_Schoolmistress, the_, 115, 116.
+
+_Scriblerus, Martin, Memoirs of_, 178, 222.
+
+_Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, the_, 244.
+
+_Seasons, the_, 86, 87, 88-92.
+
+_Sentiments of a Church of England Man_, 162.
+
+_Serious Call_, 216, 233.
+
+Shaftesbury, Lord, 19, 52, 212-215.
+
+Shakespeare, Pope and Theobald's Editions of, 39;
+  Rowe's Edition, 132;
+  Warburton's Edition, 241.
+
+Sheffield, John, Earl of, 29, 40.
+
+Shenstone, William, 115, 205.
+
+_Shepherd's Week, the_, 73.
+
+_Shortest Way with Dissenters, the_, 184.
+
+_Siege of Damascus, the_, 245.
+
+_Siris_, 224, 228.
+
+_Sir Thomas Overbury_, 246.
+
+Social Condition of the time, 10.
+
+_Social State of Ireland, Essay on the_, 224.
+
+_Solomon_, 67, 71.
+
+Somerville, William, 40, 112.
+
+_Sophonisba_, 87.
+
+South Sea Company, the, 21.
+
+_Spectator, the_, 11, 14, 16, 19, 20, 98, 117, 125, 127, 128, 141, 142.
+
+Spence, Joseph, 59, 205.
+
+_Spleen, the_, 244.
+
+_Splendid Shilling, the_, 101.
+
+_Stage defended from Scripture, etc., the_, 194.
+
+_Stage Entertainments, Absolute Unlawfulness of_, 194, 232.
+
+Steele, Sir Richard, 125, 136-150.
+
+_Stella, Journal to_, 164, 166.
+
+_Study of History, Letters on the_, 221.
+
+Swift, Jonathan, 34, 42, 44, 48, 49, 50, 51, 62, 151-175.
+
+_Swift, on the Death of Dr._, 154.
+
+
+_Tale of a Tub, the_, 153, 158, 209.
+
+_Tales of the Genii_, 206.
+
+_Tamerlane_, 103.
+
+_Tancred and Sigismunda_, 88.
+
+_Tatler, the_, 125, 140, 148, 162.
+
+_Tea Table, the_, 144.
+
+_Tea Table Miscellany, the_, 120.
+
+Temple, Sir William, 152, 160, 208.
+
+_Temple of Fame, the_, 33.
+
+_Tender Husband, the_, 137.
+
+_Theatre, the_, 144.
+
+Theobald, Lewis, 39, 47, 48.
+
+_Theory of Vision, Essay towards a new_, 221, 225.
+
+Thomson, James, 44, 47, 85-95.
+
+Tickell, Thomas, 35, 109-111, 135.
+
+_Tour through Great Britain_, 190.
+
+_Town Talk_, 144.
+
+_Trivia_, 11, 73.
+
+_True Born Englishman, the_, 184.
+
+Trumbull, Sir William, 29, 34.
+
+
+_Ulysses_, 103.
+
+_Ungrateful Nanny_, 121.
+
+_Universal Passion_, 80.
+
+
+Vanhomrigh, Hester, 164, 222.
+
+_Verbal Criticism_, 118.
+
+Vida's _Scacchia Ludus_, 32.
+
+_Vision of Mirza, the_, 146.
+
+_Voltaire_, 5, 41.
+
+
+Walpole, Sir Robert, 6, 8, 21, 41, 79.
+
+Walsh, William, 28, 247.
+
+_Wanderer, the_, 247.
+
+Warburton, Bishop, 55, 56, 62, 230, 239-241.
+
+Wardlaw, Lady, 120.
+
+Warton, Joseph, 63.
+
+Watts, Isaac, 131.
+
+_Welcome from Greece, a_, 75.
+
+Welsted, Leonard, 47.
+
+Wesley, Charles, 131.
+
+Wesley, John, 67.
+
+_Whig Examiner, the_, 162.
+
+_William and Margaret_, 118.
+
+Winchelsea, Countess of, 247.
+
+_Windham, Sir W., Letter to_, 217, 221.
+
+_Windsor Forest_, 30.
+
+Women, position of, 14, 15.
+
+Wood's Halfpence, 169, 170.
+
+_World, the_, 203.
+
+Wycherley, William, 28.
+
+
+Yalden, Thomas, 248.
+
+Young, Edward, 15, 76-83.
+
+
+_Zara_, 106.
+
+
+
+
+HANDBOOKS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
+
+
+EDITED BY PROFESSOR HALES
+
+"The admirable series of handbooks edited by Professor Hales is rapidly
+taking shape as one of the best histories of our literature that are at
+the disposal of the student.... [When complete] there is little doubt
+that we shall have a history of English literature which, holding a
+middle course between the rapid general survey and the minute
+examination of particular periods, will long remain a standard
+work."--_Manchester Guardian._
+
+_Crown 8vo, 5s. net each._
+
+THE AGE OF ALFRED (664-1154). By F. J. SNELL, M.A.
+
+THE AGE OF CHAUCER (1346-1400). By F. J. SNELL, M.A., with an
+    Introduction by PROFESSOR HALES. 3rd edition.
+
+THE AGE OF TRANSITION (1400-1580). By F. J. SNELL, M.A. In 2 vols.
+    Vol. I.: The Poets. Vol. II.: The Dramatists and Prose Writers.
+    With an Introduction by PROFESSOR HALES. 3rd edition.
+
+THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE (1579-1631). By THOMAS SECCOMBE and J. W.
+    ALLEN. In 2 vols. Vol. I.: Poetry and Prose, with an
+    Introduction by PROFESSOR HALES. Vol. II: Drama. 7th edition.
+
+THE AGE OF MILTON (1632-1660). By the REV. J. H. B. MASTERMAN, M.A.,
+    with an Introduction, etc., by J. BASS MULLINGER, M.A. 8th
+    edition.
+
+THE AGE OF DRYDEN (1660-1700). By RICHARD GARNETT, C.B., LL.D. 8th
+    edition.
+
+THE AGE OF POPE (1700-1744). By JOHN DENNIS. 11th edition.
+
+THE AGE OF JOHNSON (1744-1798). By THOMAS SECCOMBE. 7th edition.
+
+THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH (1798-1832). By PROFESSOR C. H. HERFORD,
+    Litt.D. 12th edition.
+
+THE AGE OF TENNYSON (1830-1870). By PROFESSOR HUGH WALKER, M.A. 9th
+    edition.
+
+
+OPINIONS OF THE PRESS
+
+
+THE AGE OF CHAUCER
+
+"This little monograph may lay fair claim to be regarded as complete,
+acute, stimulating, and scholarly."--_School World._
+
+"The book is thoroughly up-to-date, an important consideration in
+dealing with Middle English literature, and does not lose itself in too
+minute a consideration of those works which are only of philological and
+not of literary value. The accounts of the W. Midland alliterative
+poetry, of the development of prose, and the work of the poet Gower, are
+specially good. The treatment of Chaucer is thorough and
+scholarly."--_University Correspondent._
+
+"An admirable handbook, dealing in a lucid style and in a highly
+critical spirit with one of the most important periods in the history of
+English literature."--_Westminster Review._
+
+
+THE AGE OF DRYDEN
+
+"This scholarly little volume from the learned pen of Dr. Garnett....
+Within the limits of his space Dr. Garnett surveys the several
+departments of literature in this period with singular comprehensiveness,
+broad sympathy, and fine critical sagacity."--_Times._
+
+"The series which Professor Hales is editing aims at being that very
+difficult and important something between the text-book for schools and
+the gracefully allusive literary essay. Dr. Garnett has done his part of
+the work admirably. Most readable is his book, written with a fine sense
+of proportion, and containing many independent judgements, yet even, so
+far as minor names and dates and facts are concerned, complete enough
+for all save a searcher after minutiae."--_Bookman._
+
+"Though planned on the scale of the manual, this book is actually the
+first attempt worth naming to grasp in one separate review the
+literature of the last forty years of the seventeenth century, a time
+which, as Dr. Garnett well says, 'with all its defects, had a faculty
+for producing masterpieces.' Dr. Garnett's name is a warrant for his
+acquaintance not only with the masterpieces but with much besides, and
+with more than all that need be named in the kind of survey he
+undertakes."--_Manchester Guardian._
+
+
+THE AGE OF POPE
+
+"A 'handbook' is scarcely a fair description of so readable and
+companionable a volume, which aims not only at giving accurate
+information, but at directing the reader's steps 'through a country
+exhaustless in variety and interest.'"--_Spectator._
+
+"The biographical portion of Mr. Dennis's book is really admirable. The
+accuracy of the details and the knowledge exhibited by the author of the
+social and political life of the period show how thoroughly he has
+mastered his subject."--_Westminster Review._
+
+"Mr. Dennis writes freely and simply, and with a thorough knowledge of
+the period with which he deals, and goes straight to the point without
+revelling in circumambient fancies. The result of this is that in 250
+pages of good print we have as concise a history of Queen Anne
+literature as we could wish."--_Cambridge Review._
+
+"An excellent little volume."--_Athenæum._
+
+
+THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE
+
+"Both volumes are excellently done, with knowledge, judgement, and a
+pleasant touch of vivacity. It is no easy matter to make a text-book
+both informing and readable; but here the feat is accomplished. I have
+read 'The Age of Shakespeare' with unflagging interest and pleasure....
+Everywhere one has the restful sensation of dealing with men of
+competent scholarship and sound critical instinct. Especially valuable,
+to my thinking, is the chronological table of the chief publications of
+each year from 1579 to 1630."--Mr. William Archer in the _Morning
+Leader_.
+
+"These two volumes are, in short, a notable accession to the useful
+series to which they belong, and they constitute a luminous aid to the
+interpretation alike of the scope and quality of the literary activity
+which has rendered the 'Age of Shakespeare' classic in the annals of
+English literature."--_Standard._
+
+"The book is a well-informed and well-connected and intelligent
+exposition of its subject. It is more than a mere handbook. It is a
+_history_, though on a small scale."--_Journal of Education._
+
+
+THE AGE OF MILTON
+
+"A very readable and serviceable manual of English literature during the
+central years of the seventeenth century."--_Glasgow Herald._
+
+"Mr. Masterman has written a book which combines the preciseness of a
+text-book with the fullness of thought of a monograph. Indeed, this
+compact little work will be studied with as much earnestness by the
+student as it will be read with pleasure by the lover of _belles
+lettres_.... We lay down the book delighted with what we have
+read."--_Birmingham Daily Gazette._
+
+"A work which reflects the utmost credit on its author ... luminous and
+at the same time impartial."--_Westminster Review._
+
+"This excellent epitome ... very happily indicates the golden afterglow
+of the Elizabethan sun."--_Daily Chronicle._
+
+
+THE AGE OF JOHNSON
+
+"The uniform excellence of Mr. Seccombe's manual of English literary
+history from 1748 to 1798 affords scarcely any opening for detailed
+criticism. Little can be said, except that everything is just as it
+ought to be: the arrangement perfect, the length of the notices justly
+proportioned, the literary judgements sound and illuminating; while the
+main purpose of conveying information is kept so steadily in view that,
+while the book is worthy of a place in the library, the student could
+desire no better guide for an examination."--_Bookman._
+
+"He has knowledge, he is eminently careful, and, best of all in a
+handbook-maker of this kind, he is judicial. We like Mr. Seccombe's
+arrangement. There is a capital introduction, solid and grave rather
+than brilliant, on which the student may stand in confidence before he
+dives off into the stream of his tutor's survey. Briefly, we have here a
+thorough, almost encyclopaedic, review of a great literary
+period--stimulating to the younger student, and to his elder refreshing
+by its perception."--_Outlook._
+
+"This book is one of the best of its kind, and we heartily recommend it
+to our readers."--_Journal of Education._
+
+"The young student could not read a better book to get a comprehensive
+and yet detailed account of the literary history of the latter half of
+the eighteenth century."--_Morning Post._
+
+
+THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH
+
+"It is an admirable little work all the way through and one which the
+ripest students of the period may read with interest and
+profit."--_Guardian._
+
+"The desiderated text-book of the period 1798 to 1830 A.D. is no longer
+to seek. More than that, it has been written by the one Englishman most
+competent to deal with it. Whatever Professor Herford does he does well;
+but he has given us nothing at once so good and so helpful as this
+book."--_University Correspondent._
+
+"The introductory essay on Romanticism in our literature is an admirable
+piece of work, full of suggestive thought, but Professor Herford is at
+his best--and a very fine best it is--in his brief summaries of the
+lives and works of individual writers. His Cobbett, his Lamb, and
+others that might be instanced, are veritable gems of biographical and
+critical compression presented with true literary finish."--_Literary
+World._
+
+"A book which is remarkable for freshness and distinction of style,
+philosophic grasp of first principles, and critical insight.... When we
+add that the book is also conspicuous for delicacy of literary
+appreciation and ripe judgement, both of men and movements, we have said
+enough to show that we consider its claims are unusual."--_Speaker._
+
+
+THE AGE OF TENNYSON
+
+"A capital little handbook of modern English literature."--_Times._
+
+"An instructive and readable manual ... an admirable first text-book on
+the subject."--_Scotsman._
+
+"Professor Walker has done his allotted task with singular skill,
+wonderful judiciousness, critical insight, adequate knowledge and
+mastery of facts, keen discernment of qualities and effectiveness of
+grouping.... We have read no review of the whole of the Tennysonian age
+so genuinely fresh in matter, method, style, critical canons, and
+selectedness of phrase. As a small book on a great subject, it is a
+special treasure."--_Educational News._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+UNIFORM WITH THE HANDBOOKS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
+
+_Fourth Edition Enlarged. 725 pages. Small Crown 8vo. 6s. net._
+
+INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE
+
+BY
+
+HENRY S. PANCOAST
+
+"Seems to me to fulfil better, on the whole, than any other
+'Introduction' known to me, the real requirements of such a book as
+distinguished from a 'Sketch' or a 'Summary.' It rightly does not
+attempt to be cyclopaedic, but isolates a number of figures of
+first-rate importance, and deals with these in a very attractive way.
+The directions for reading are also excellent."--Professor C. H.
+HERFORD, Litt.D.
+
+LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
+YORK HOUSE, PORTUGAL STREET, W.C.
+
+
+LITERATURE OF THE AGE OF POPE.
+
+PUBLISHED BY
+
+G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
+
+=ADDISON'S= WORKS. With the Notes of Bishop Hurd, a short Memoir,
+    and a Portrait of Addison after G. Kneller, and 8 Plates of
+    Medals and Coins. Edited by H. G. Bohn. 6 vols. Small post 8vo.
+    3_s._ 6_d._ each.                        [_Bohn's Standard Library._
+
+    This is the most complete edition of Addison's Works ever
+    issued. It contains much new matter, and upwards of 100 Letters
+    not before published. A very full Index (108 pages) is appended
+    to the 6th vol.
+
+Vol. I.--Plays--Poems--Poemata--Dialogues on Medals--Remarks on Italy.
+
+    II.--Tatler and Spectator.
+
+   III.--Spectator.                                     [_Out of print._
+
+    IV.--Spectator--Guardian--Lover--State of the War--Trial of Count
+         Tariff--Whig Examiner--Freeholder.
+
+     V.--Freeholder--Christian Religion--Drummer, or Haunted
+         House--Various short Pieces hitherto unpublished--Letters.
+
+    VI.--Letters--Poems--Translations--Official Documents--Addisoniana.
+
+THE MISCELLANEOUS WORKS OF ADDISON. Edited by the late A.
+    Guthkelch, M.A. 2 vols. Vol. I, Poems and Plays. Vol. II,
+    Prose. Large Post 8vo, 10_s._ 6_d._ net each.
+
+=BERKELEY'S= WORKS. Edited by George Sampson. With a Biographical
+    Introduction by the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, M.P. 3 vols. Small
+    post 8vo. 6_s._ each.               [_Bohn's Philosophical Library._
+
+=BUTLER'S= ANALOGY OF RELIGION, Natural and Revealed, to the
+    Constitution and Course of Nature; together with Two
+    Dissertations on Personal Identity and on the Nature of Virtue,
+    and Fifteen Sermons. Edited, with Analytical Introductions,
+    Explanatory Notes, a short Memoir, and a Portrait. Small post
+    8vo. 6_s._                               [_Bohn's Standard Library._
+
+=DEFOE'S= NOVELS and MISCELLANEOUS WORKS. With Prefaces and Notes,
+    including those attributed to Sir W. Scott. 7 vols. Small post
+    8vo. 6_s._ each.                         [_Bohn's Standard Library._
+
+Vol. I.--Life, Adventures and Piracies of Capt. Singleton, and Life of
+         Colonel Jack. With Portrait of Defoe.          [_Out of print._
+
+    II.--Memoirs of a Cavalier, Memoirs of Captain Carleton, Dickory
+         Cronke, &c.
+
+   III.--Life of Moll Flanders, and the History of the Devil.
+                                                        [_Out of print._
+
+    IV.--Roxana, or the Fortunate Mistress; and Life of Mrs. Christian
+         Davies.                                        [_Out of print._
+
+     V.--History of the Great Plague of London, 1665 (to which is added
+         the Fire of London, 1666, by an anonymous writer)--The Storm
+         (1703)--and the True-born Englishman.          [_Out of print._
+
+    VI.--Life and Adventures of Duncan Campbell--New Voyage round the
+         World, and Tracts relating to the Hanoverian Accession.
+
+   VII.--Robinson Crusoe. With a Short Biographical Account of Defoe.
+
+=MONTAGU=, THE LETTERS AND WORKS OF LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU.
+    Edited by her great-grandson, Lord Wharncliffe, with Additions
+    and Corrections derived from Original Manuscripts, Illustrative
+    Notes, and a Memoir by W. Moy Thomas. New edition, revised,
+    with 5 Portraits. 2 vols. Small post 8vo. 6_s._ each.
+                                                 [_Vol. I out of print._
+                                             [_Bohn's Standard Library._
+
+=PARNELL'S= POETICAL WORKS. Edited, with Memoir, by G. A. Aitken.
+    Fcap. 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._ net.                       [_Aldine Edition._
+
+=POPE'S= POETICAL WORKS. Edited by G. R. Dennis, with Memoir by John
+    Dennis. 3 vols. Fcap. 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._ net each.
+                                                      [_Aldine Edition._
+
+---- HOMER'S ILIAD. With Introduction and Notes by the Rev. J. S.
+    Watson, M.A. Illustrated by the entire Series of Flaxman's
+    Designs. Small post 8vo. 6_s._
+
+---- HOMER'S ODYSSEY. With Introduction and Notes by the Rev. J. S.
+    Watson, M.A. With the entire Series of Flaxman's Designs. Small
+    post 8vo. 6_s._
+
+---- LIFE OF POPE, including many of his Letters. By Robert
+    Carruthers. With numerous Illustrations. Small post 8vo. 6_s._
+
+=PRIOR'S= POETICAL WORKS. Edited, with Memoir, by Reginald Brimley
+    Johnson. 2 vols. Fcap. 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._ net each.
+                                                      [_Aldine Edition._
+
+=SWIFT'S= PROSE WORKS. Edited by Temple Scott. With a Biographical
+    Introduction by the Right Hon. W. E. H. Lecky, M.P., and a
+    Bibliography by the Editor. With Portraits and other
+    Illustrations. 12 vols. Small post 8vo. 6_s._ each.
+                                             [_Bohn's Standard Library._
+
+   Vol. I.--Edited by Temple Scott. With a Biographical Introduction by
+            the Right Hon. W. E. H. Lecky, M.P. Containing:--A Tale of a
+            Tub, The Battle of the Books, and other early works. With
+            _Portrait_ and Facsimiles.
+
+       II.--The Journal to Stella. Edited by Frederick Ryland, M.A. With
+            _2 Portraits of Stella_, and a Facsimile of one of the
+            Letters.
+
+III. & IV.--Writings on Religion and the Church. Edited by Temple Scott.
+            With Portraits and Facsimiles of title-pages.
+
+        V.--Historical and Political Tracts (English). Edited by Temple
+            Scott. With Portrait and Facsimiles of title-pages.
+
+       VI.--The Drapier's Letters. Edited by Temple Scott. With
+            Portrait, reproduction of Wood's Coinage, and Facsimiles of
+            title-pages.
+
+      VII.--Historical and Political Tracts (Irish). Edited by Temple
+            Scott. With Portrait and Facsimiles of title-pages.
+
+     VIII.--Gulliver's Travels. Edited by G. Ravenscroft Dennis. With
+            the original Portrait and Maps.
+
+       IX.--Contributions to the 'Examiner,' 'Tatler,' 'Spectator,' etc.
+            Edited by Temple Scott.
+
+        X.--Historical Writings. Edited by Temple Scott. With Portrait.
+
+       XI.--Literary Essays. Edited by Temple Scott. With Portrait.
+
+      XII.--Index and Bibliography.
+
+POEMS. Edited by W. Ernst Browning. 2 vols. 6_s._
+
+=SWIFT'S= POETICAL WORKS. Edited, with Memoir, by the Rev. John
+    Mitford, M.A. Fcap. 8vo. 3 vols. 3_s._ 6_d._ net each.
+                                 [_Aldine Edition. Vol. I out of print._
+
+LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
+YORK HOUSE, PORTUGAL STREET, KINGSWAY, W.C.
+
+
+PRINTED BY
+
+THE LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS, LIMITED
+
+LONDON AND NORWICH
+
+
+TRANSCRIBERS' NOTES
+
+General: Corrections to punctuation have not been individually noted.
+
+General: Bold text in the original is marked with ==. Italic text is
+marked with __
+
+Pages 57, 159: Variable hyphenation of death-bed as in the original.
+
+Pages 222, 232, 257: Variable hyphenation of Free(-)thinking as in the
+original.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Age of Pope, by John Dennis
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AGE OF POPE ***
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Age of Pope, by John Dennis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Age of Pope
+       (1700-1744)
+
+Author: John Dennis
+
+Release Date: November 7, 2009 [EBook #30421]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AGE OF POPE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Brownfox and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="bbox" style="margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%">
+<p class="larger center">HANDBOOKS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Edited by Professor Hales.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Crown 8vo, 5s. net each.</i></p>
+
+
+<div class="hangadvert"><p>THE AGE OF ALFRED (664-1154). By <span class="smcap">F. J. Snell, M.A.</span></p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF CHAUCER (1346-1400). By <span class="smcap">F. J. Snell,
+M.A.</span> With an Introduction by Professor <span class="smcap">Hales</span>. <i>3rd
+Edition, revised.</i></p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF TRANSITION (1400-1580). By <span class="smcap">F. J.
+Snell, M.A.</span> 2 vols. Vol. I. The Poets. Vol. II. The
+Dramatists and Prose Writers. With an Introduction
+by Professor <span class="smcap">Hales</span>. <i>3rd Edition.</i></p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE (1579-1631). By <span class="smcap">Thomas
+Seccombe</span> and <span class="smcap">J. W. Allen</span>. With an Introduction
+by Professor <span class="smcap">Hales</span>. 2 vols. Vol. I. Poetry and
+Prose. Vol. II. The Drama. <i>8th Edition, revised.</i></p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF MILTON (1632-1660). By the Rev.
+<span class="smcap">J. H. B. Masterman, M.A.</span> With Introduction, etc.,
+by <span class="smcap">J. Bass Mullinger, M.A.</span> <i>8th Edition, revised.</i></p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF DRYDEN (1660-1700). By <span class="smcap">R. Garnett,
+C.B., LL.D.</span> <i>8th Edition.</i></p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF POPE (1700-1748). By <span class="smcap">John Dennis</span>.
+<i>11th Edition.</i></p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF JOHNSON (1748-1798). By <span class="smcap">Thomas
+Seccombe</span>. <i>7th Edition, revised.</i></p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH (1698-1832) By Professor
+<span class="smcap">C. H. Herford</span>, Litt.D. <i>12th Edition.</i></p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF TENNYSON (1830-1870). By Professor
+<span class="smcap">Hugh Walker</span>. <i>9th Edition.</i></p></div>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[Pg i]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<h1 class="gap3">HANDBOOKS</h1>
+
+<h3>OF</h3>
+
+<h1>ENGLISH LITERATURE</h1>
+
+<h3>EDITED BY PROFESSOR HALES</h3>
+
+<h2>THE AGE OF POPE</h2>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[Pg ii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<div style="padding-left:50%;" class="gap3">
+<div style="margin-left:-8em;">
+<p>LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS LTD.</p>
+
+<p>PORTUGAL STREET, KINGSWAY, W.C.</p>
+
+<p>CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL &amp; CO.</p>
+
+<p>NEW YORK: HARCOURT BRACE &amp; CO.</p>
+
+<p>BOMBAY: A. H. WHEELER &amp; CO.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[Pg iii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h3 class="gap3">THE</h3>
+
+<h1>AGE OF POPE</h1>
+
+<h2>(1700-1744)</h2>
+
+<h4 class="gap3">BY</h4>
+
+<h2>JOHN DENNIS</h2>
+
+<h4>AUTHOR OF "STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE" ETC.</h4>
+
+<h3 class="gap3"><i>ELEVENTH EDITION</i></h3>
+
+<div class="figcenter gap3" style="width: 137px;">
+<img src="images/front.png" width="137" height="173" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="center gap3">LONDON</p>
+<p class="center">G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.</p>
+<p class="center">1921</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div style="margin-left:20%;margin-right:20%;font-size:small;" class="gap3">
+<p>First Published, 1894.</p>
+
+<p>Reprinted, 1896, 1899, 1901, 1906, 1908, 1909,
+           1913, 1917, 1918, 1921.</p></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The <i>Age of Pope</i> is designed to form one of a series of
+Handbooks, edited by Professor Hales, which it is hoped
+will be of service to students who love literature for its
+own sake, instead of regarding it merely as a branch of
+knowledge required by examiners. The period covered by
+this volume, which has had the great advantage of Professor
+Hales's personal care and revision, may be described
+roughly as lying between 1700, the year in which Dryden
+died, and 1744, the date of Pope's death.</p>
+
+<p>I believe that no work of the class will be of real value
+which gives what may be called literary statistics, and has
+nothing more to offer. Historical facts and figures have
+their uses, and are, indeed, indispensable; but it is possible
+to gain the most accurate knowledge of a literary period
+and to be totally unimpressed by the influences which a
+love of literature inspires. The first object of a guide is
+to give accurate information; his second and larger object
+is to direct the reader's steps through a country exhaustless
+in variety and interest. If once a passion be awakened for
+the study of our noble literature the student will learn to
+reject what is meretricious, and will turn instinctively to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span>
+what is worthiest. In the pursuit he may leave his guide
+far behind him; but none the less will he be grateful to
+the pioneer who started him on his travels.</p>
+
+<p>If the <i>Age of Pope</i> proves of help in this way the wishes
+of the writer will be satisfied. It has been my endeavour
+in all cases to acknowledge the debt I owe to the authors
+who have made this period their study; but it is possible
+that a familiar acquaintance with their writings may have
+led me occasionally to mistake the matter thus assimilated
+for original criticism. If, therefore&mdash;to quote the phrase
+of Pope's enemy and my namesake&mdash;I have sometimes
+borrowed another man's 'thunder,' the fault of having
+'made a sinner of my memory' may prove the reader's
+gain, and will, I hope, be forgiven.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align:right;padding-right:2em;">J. D.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hampstead</span>,</p>
+<p style="padding-left:3em;"><i>August, 1894</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<table summary="Contents" style="margin-left:0em;margin-right:0em;width:100%;">
+<tr>
+<td colspan="3" class="ralign small">PAGE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Introduction</span></td>
+<td class="ralign"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="3" class="center" style="padding-top:2em;">PART I. THE POETS.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="3" class="small">CHAP.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop">I.</td>
+<td class="hangindent"><span class="smcap">Alexander Pope</span></td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom"><a href="#Page_27">27</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop">II.</td>
+<td class="hangindent"><span class="smcap">Matthew Prior&mdash;John Gay&mdash;Edward Young&mdash;Robert Blair&mdash;James
+     Thomson</span></td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop">III.</td>
+<td class="hangindent"><span class="smcap">Sir Samuel Garth&mdash;Ambrose Philips&mdash;John Philips&mdash;Nicholas
+     Rowe&mdash;Aaron Hill&mdash;Thomas Parnell&mdash;Thomas Tickell&mdash;William
+     Somerville&mdash;John Dyer&mdash;William Shenstone&mdash;Mark Akenside&mdash;David
+     Mallet&mdash;Scottish Song-Writers</span></td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom"><a href="#Page_96">96</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="3" class="center" style="padding-top:2em;">PART II. THE PROSE WRITERS.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop">IV.</td>
+<td class="hangindent"><span class="smcap">Joseph Addison&mdash;Sir Richard Steele</span></td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom"><a href="#Page_125">125</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop">V.</td>
+<td class="hangindent"><span class="smcap">Jonathan Swift&mdash;John Arbuthnot</span></td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom"><a href="#Page_151">151</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop">VI.</td>
+<td class="hangindent"><span class="smcap">Daniel Defoe&mdash;John Dennis&mdash;Colley Cibber&mdash;Lady Mary
+     Wortley Montagu&mdash;Earl of Chesterfield&mdash;Lord Lyttelton&mdash;Joseph
+     Spence</span></td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom"><a href="#Page_180">180</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop">VII.</td>
+<td class="hangindent"><span class="smcap">Francis Atterbury&mdash;Lord Shaftesbury&mdash;Bernard de
+     Mandeville&mdash;Lord Bolingbroke&mdash;George Berkeley&mdash;William
+     Law&mdash;Joseph Butler&mdash;William Warburton</span></td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom"><a href="#Page_207">207</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2" style="padding-top:2em;"><span class="smcap">Index of Minor Poets and Prose Writers</span></td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom"><a href="#Page_242">242</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Chronological Table</span></td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom"><a href="#Page_249">249</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Alphabetical List of Writers</span></td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom"><a href="#Page_253">253</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Index</span></td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom"><a href="#Page_255">255</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="THE_AGE_OF_POPE" id="THE_AGE_OF_POPE"></a>THE AGE OF POPE.</h2>
+
+<h3>INTRODUCTION.</h3>
+
+
+<h3>I.</h3>
+
+<p>The death of John Dryden, on the first of May, 1700,
+closed a period of no small significance in the history of
+English literature. His faults were many, both as a man
+and as a poet, but he belongs to the race of the giants,
+and the impress of greatness is stamped upon his works.
+No student of Dryden can fail to mark the force and sweep
+of an intellect impatient of restraint. His 'long-resounding
+march' reminds us of a turbulent river that overflows its
+banks, and if order and perfection of art are sometimes
+wanting in his verse, there is never the lack of power.
+Unfortunately many of the best years of his life were
+devoted to a craft in which he was working against the
+grain. His dramas, with one or two noble exceptions, are
+comparative failures, and in them he too often</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza12">
+<span class="i0">'Profaned the God-given strength, and marred the lofty line.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In two prominent respects his influence on his successors
+is of no slight significance. As a satirist Pope acknowledged
+the master he was unable to excel, and so did
+many of the eighteenth century versemen, who appear to
+have looked upon satire as the beginning and the end of
+poetry. Moreover Dryden may be regarded, without much<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>
+exaggeration, as the father of modern prose. Nothing can
+be more lucid than his style, which is at once bright and
+strong, idiomatic and direct. He knows precisely what he
+has to say, and says it in the simplest words. It is the
+form and not the substance of Dryden's prose to which
+attention is drawn here. There is a splendour of imagery,
+a largeness of thought, and a grasp of language in the
+prose of Hooker, of Jeremy Taylor, and of Milton which is
+beyond the reach of Dryden, but he has the merit of using
+a simple form of English free from prolonged periods and
+classical constructions, and fitted therefore for common
+use. The wealthy baggage of the prose Elizabethans and
+their immediate successors was too cumbersome for ordinary
+travel; Dryden's riches are less massive, but they can
+be easily carried, and are always ready for service.</p>
+
+<p>In these respects he is the literary herald of a century
+which, in the earlier half at least, is remarkable in the use
+it makes of our mother tongue for the exercise of common
+sense. The Revolution of 1688 produced a change in
+English politics scarcely more remarkable than the change
+that took place a little later in English literature and is to
+be seen in the poets and wits who are known familiarly
+as the Queen Anne men. It will be obvious to the most
+superficial student that the gulf which separates the literary
+period, closing with the death of Milton in 1674, from
+the first half of the eighteenth century, is infinitely wider
+than that which divides us from the splendid band of poets
+and prose writers who made the first twenty years of the
+present century so famous. There is, for example, scarcely
+more than fifty years between the publication of Herrick's
+<i>Hesperides</i> and of Addison's <i>Campaign</i>, between the <i>Holy
+Living</i> of Taylor and the <i>Tatler</i> of Steele, and less
+than fifty years between <i>Samson Agonistes</i>, which Bishop
+Atterbury asked Pope to polish, and the poems of Prior.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>
+Yet in that short space not only is the form of verse
+changed but also the spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Speaking broadly, and allowing for exceptions, the
+literary merits of the Queen Anne time are due to invention,
+fancy, and wit, to a genius for satire exhibited in verse
+and prose, to a regard for correctness of form and to the sensitive
+avoidance of extremes. The poets of the period are
+for the most part without enthusiasm, without passion, and
+without the 'fine madness' which, as Drayton says, should
+possess a poet's brain. Wit takes precedence of imagination,
+nature is concealed by artifice, and the delight afforded
+by these writers is not due to imaginative sensibility. Not
+even in the consummate genius of Pope is there aught of
+the magical charm which fascinates us in a Wordsworth
+and a Keats, in a Coleridge and a Shelley. The prose
+of the age, masterly though it be, stands also on a comparatively
+low level. There is much in it to attract, but
+little to inspire.</p>
+
+<p>The difference between the Elizabethan and Jacobean
+authors, and the authors of the Queen Anne period cannot
+be accounted for by any single cause. The student will
+observe that while the inspiration is less, the technical skill
+is greater. There are passages in Addison which no seventeenth
+century author could have written; there are couplets
+in Pope beyond the reach of Cowley, and that even Dryden
+could not rival. In these respects the eighteenth century
+was indebted to the growing influence of French literature,
+to which the taste of Charles II. had in some degree contributed.
+One notable expression of this taste may be seen
+in the tragedies in rhyme that were for a time in vogue, of
+which the plots were borrowed from French romances.
+These colossal fictions, stupendous in length and heroic in
+style, delighted the young English ladies of the seventeenth
+century, and were not out of favour in the eighteenth,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+for Pope gave a copy of the <i>Grand Cyrus</i> to Martha
+Blount.</p>
+
+<p>The return, as in Addison's <i>Cato</i>, to the classical
+unities, so faithfully preserved in the French drama, was
+another indication of an influence from which our literature
+has never been wholly free. That importations so alien to
+the spirit of English poetry should tend to the degeneration
+of the national drama was inevitable. For a time, however,
+the study of French models, both in the drama and in other
+departments of literature, may have been productive of
+benefit. Frenchmen knew before we did, how to say what
+they wanted to say in a lucid style. Dryden, who was
+open to every kind of influence, bad as well as good, caught
+a little of their fine tact and consummate workmanship
+without lessening his own originality; so also did Pope,
+who, if he was considerably indebted to Boileau, infinitely
+excelled him. That, in M. Taine's judgment, would have
+been no great difficulty. 'In Boileau,' he writes, 'there
+are, as a rule, two kinds of verse, as was said by a man of
+wit (M. Guillaume Guizot); most of which seem to be those
+of a sharp school-boy in the third class; the rest those of a
+good school-boy in the upper division.' And Mr. Swinburne,
+who holds a similar opinion of the famous French
+critic's merit, observes, that while Pope is the finest,
+Boileau is 'the dullest craftsman of their age and
+school.'<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<p>With the author of the <i>Lutrin</i> Addison, unlike Pope, was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>
+personally acquainted. Boileau praised his Latin verses,
+and although his range was limited, like that of all critics
+lacking imagination, Addison, then a comparatively youthful
+scholar, was no doubt flattered by his compliments and
+learnt some lessons in his school. Prior, who acquired a
+mastery of the language, was also sensitive to French
+influence, and shows how it affected him by irony and
+satire. It would be difficult to estimate with any measure
+of accuracy the effect of French literature on the Queen Anne
+authors. There is no question that they were considerably
+attracted by it, but its sway was, I think, never strong enough
+to produce mere imitative art. While the most illustrious
+of these men acknowledged some measure of fealty to our
+'sweet enemy France,' they were not enslaved by her, and
+French literature was but one of several influences which
+affected the literary character of the age. If Englishmen
+owed a debt to France the obligation was reciprocal.
+Voltaire affords a prominent illustration of the power
+wielded by our literature. He imitated Addison, he imitated,
+or caught suggestions from Swift, he borrowed
+largely from Vanbrugh, and although, in his judgment of
+English authors, he made many critical blunders, they
+were due to a want of taste rather than to a want of
+knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>A striking contrast will be seen between the position of
+literary men in the reign of Queen Anne and under her
+Hanoverian successors. Literature was not thriving in
+the healthiest of ways in the earlier period, but from the
+commercial point of view it was singularly prosperous.
+Through its means men like Addison and Prior rose to some
+of the highest offices in the service of their country. Tickell
+became Under-Secretary of State. Steele held three or four
+official posts, and if he did not prosper like some men of less
+mark, had no one but himself to blame. Rowe, the author<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
+of the <i>Fair Penitent</i>, was for three years of Anne's reign
+Under-Secretary, and John Hughes, the friend of Addison,
+who is poet enough to have had his story told by Johnson,
+had 'a situation of great profit' as Secretary to the Commissions
+of the Peace. Prizes of greater or less value fell
+to some men whose abilities were not more than respectable,
+but under Walpole and the monarch whom he served literature
+was disregarded, and the Minister was content to
+make use of hireling writers for whatever dirty work he
+required; spending in this way, it is said, £50,000 in ten
+years.</p>
+
+<p>It was far better in the long run for men of letters to be
+free from the servility of patronage, but there was a wearisome
+time, as Johnson and Goldsmith knew to their cost,
+during which authors lost their freedom in another way,
+and became the slaves of the booksellers. It is pleasant to
+observe that the last noteworthy act of patronage in the
+century was one that did honour to the patron without
+lessening the dignity and independence of the recipient.
+Literature owes much to the noblest of political philosophers
+for discovering and fostering the genius of one of
+the most original of English poets, and every reader of
+Crabbe will do honour to the generous friendship of
+Edmund Burke.</p>
+
+
+<h3>II.</h3>
+
+<p>The lowest stage in our national history was reached
+in the Restoration period. The idealists, who had aimed at
+marks it was not given to man to reach, were superseded by
+men with no ideal, whether in politics or religion. The extreme
+rigidity in morals enjoined by State authority in
+Cromwell's days, when theological pedantry discovered sin
+in what had hitherto been regarded as innocent, led, among<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
+the unsaintly mass of the people, to a hypocrisy even more
+corrupting than open vice, and the advent of the most
+publicly dissolute of English kings opened the floodgates
+of iniquity. The unbridled vice of the time is displayed
+in the Restoration dramatists, in the Grammont
+memoirs, in the diary of Pepys, and also in that of the
+admirable John Evelyn, 'faithful among the faithless.'
+Charles II. was considered good-natured because his
+manners, unlike those of his father, were sociable, and unrestrained
+by Court etiquette. Londoners liked a monarch
+who fed ducks in St. James's Park before breakfast; but
+an easy temper did not prevent the king from sanctioning
+the most unjust and cruel laws, and it allowed him to sell
+Dunkirk and basely to accept a pension from France. The
+corruption of the age pervaded politics as well as society,
+and the self-sacrificing spirit which is the salt of a nation's
+life seemed for the time extinct among public men.</p>
+
+<p>When Dutch men-of-war appeared at the Nore the confusion
+was great, but there were few resources and few
+signs of energy in the men to whom the people looked for
+guidance. A man conversant with affairs expressed to
+Pepys his opinion that nothing could be done with 'a lazy
+Prince, no Council, no money, no reputation at home or
+abroad,' and Pepys also gives the damning statement which
+is in harmony with all we know of the king, that he 'took
+ten times more care and pains in making friends between
+my Lady Castlemaine and Mrs. Stewart, when they have
+fallen out, than ever he did to save his kingdom.'</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing in the brief reign of James, a reign
+for ever made infamous by the atrocious cruelty of
+Jeffreys, that calls for comment here, but the Revolution,
+despite the undoubted advantages it brought with it, among
+which must be mentioned the abolition of the censorship of
+the press, brought also an element of discord and of poli<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>tical
+degradation. The change was a good one for the
+country, but it caused a large number of influential men to
+renounce on oath opinions which they secretly held, and it
+led, as every reader of history knows, to an unparalleled
+amount of double-dealing on the part of statesmen, which
+began with the accession of William and Mary and did not
+end until the last hopes of the Jacobites were defeated in
+1746. The loss of principle among statesmen, and the
+bitterness of faction, which seemed to increase in proportion
+as the patriotic spirit declined, had a baleful influence on
+the latter days of the seventeenth century and on the entire
+period covered by the age of Pope. The low tone of the
+age is to be seen in the almost universal corruption which
+prevailed, in the scandalous tergiversation of Bolingbroke,
+and in the contempt for political principle openly avowed
+by Walpole, who, as Mr. Lecky observes, 'was altogether
+incapable of appreciating as an element of political calculation
+the force which moral sentiments exercise upon
+mankind.'<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+<p>The enthusiasm and strong passions of the first half of
+the seventeenth century, which had been crushed by the
+Restoration, were exchanged for a state of apathy that led
+to self-seeking in politics and to scepticism in religion.
+There was a strong profession of morality in words, but in
+conduct the most open immorality prevailed. Virtue was
+commended in the bulk of the churches, while Christianity,
+which gives a new life and aim to virtue, was practically
+ignored, and the principles of the Deists, whose opinions
+occupied much attention at the time, were scarcely more
+alien to the Christian revelation than the views often advocated
+in the national pulpits. The religion of Christ
+seems to have been regarded as little more than a useful
+kind of cement which held society together. The good sense<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
+advocated so constantly by Pope in poetry was also considered
+the principal requisite in the pulpit, and the careful
+avoidance of religious emotion in the earlier years of
+the century led to the fervid and too often ill-regulated
+enthusiasm that prevailed in the days of Whitefield and
+Wesley. At the same time there appears to have been no
+lack of religious controversy. 'The Church in danger' was
+a strong cry then, as it is still. The enormous excitement
+caused in 1709 by Sacheverell's sermon in St. Paul's
+Cathedral advocating passive obedience, denouncing toleration,
+and aspersing the Revolution settlement, forms a
+striking chapter in the reign of Queen Anne. Extraordinary
+interest was also felt in the Bangorian controversy raised
+by Bishop Hoadly, who, in a sermon preached before the
+king (1717), took a latitudinarian view of episcopal authority,
+and objected to the entire system of the High Church
+party.</p>
+
+<p>Queen Caroline, whose keen intellect was allied to a
+coarseness which makes her a representative of the age,
+was considerably attracted by theological discussion. She
+obtained a bishopric for Berkeley, recommended Walpole to
+read Butler's <i>Analogy</i>, which was at one time her daily companion
+at the breakfast-table, and made the preferment of
+its author one of her last requests to the king. She liked
+well to reason with Dr. Samuel Clarke, 'of Providence,
+Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate,' and wished to make him
+Archbishop of Canterbury, but was told that he was not
+sufficiently orthodox. Theology was not disregarded under
+the first and second Georges; it was only religion that had
+fallen into disrepute. The law itself was calculated to excite
+contempt for the most solemn of religious services. 'I was
+early,' Swift writes to Stella, 'with the Secretary (Bolingbroke),
+but he was gone to his devotions and to receive the
+sacrament. Several rakes did the same. It was not for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>
+piety, but for employment, according to Act of Parliament.'</p>
+
+<p>A glance at some additional features in the social condition
+of the age will enable us to understand better the
+character of its literature.</p>
+
+
+<h3>III.</h3>
+
+<p>It is a platitude to say that authors are as much
+affected as other men by the atmosphere which they
+breathe. Now and then a consummate man of genius
+seems to stand so much above his age as for all high
+purposes of art to be untouched by it. Like Milton as a
+poet, though not as a prose writer, his 'soul is like a star
+and dwells apart;' but in general, imaginative writers,
+are intensely affected by the society from which they draw
+many of their intellectual resources. In the so-called
+'Augustan age'<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> this influence would have been felt more
+strongly than in ours, since the range of men of letters was
+generally restricted to what was called the Town. They
+wrote for the critics in the coffee-houses, for the noblemen
+from whom they expected patronage, and for the political
+party they were pledged to support.</p>
+
+<p>England during the first half of the eighteenth century
+was in many respects uncivilized. London was at that
+time separated from the country by roads that were often
+impassable and always dangerous. Travellers had to protect
+themselves as they best could from the attacks of
+highwaymen, who infested every thoroughfare leading from
+the metropolis, while the narrow area of the city was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+guarded by watchmen scarcely better fitted for its protection
+than Dogberry and Verges. Readers of the <i>Spectator</i>
+will remember how when Sir Roger de Coverley went to
+the play, his servants 'provided themselves with good
+oaken plants' to protect their master from the Mohocks, a
+set of dissolute young men, who, for sheer amusement,
+inflicted the most terrible punishments on their victims.
+Swift tells Stella how he came home early from his walk
+in the Park to avoid 'a race of rakes that play the devil
+about this town every night, and slit people's noses,' and
+he adds, as if party were at the root of every mischief in the
+country, that they were all Whigs. 'Who has not trembled
+at the Mohock's name?' is Gay's exclamation in his <i>Trivia</i>;
+and in that curious poem he also warns the citizens not to
+venture across Lincoln's Inn Fields in the evening. Colley
+Cibber's brazen-faced daughter, Mrs. Charke, in the <i>Narrative</i>
+of her life, describes also with sufficient precision the
+dangers of London after dark.</p>
+
+<p>The infliction of personal injury was not confined to the
+desperadoes of the streets. Men of letters were in danger
+of chastisement from the poets or politicians whom they
+criticised or vilified. De Foe often mentions attempts upon
+his person. Pope, too, was threatened with a rod by
+Ambrose Philips, which was hung up for his chastisement
+in Button's Coffee-house; and at a later period, when his
+satires had stirred up a nest of hornets, the poet was in the
+habit of carrying pistols, and taking a large dog for his
+companion when walking out at Twickenham.</p>
+
+<p>Weddings within the liberties of the Fleet by sham
+clergymen, or clergymen confined for debt, were the source
+of numberless evils. Every kind of deception was practised,
+and the victims once in the clutches of their reverend
+captors had to pay heavily for the illegal ceremony. Ladies
+were trepanned into matrimony, and Smollett in his <i>History</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
+observes, that the Fleet parsons encouraged every kind of
+villainy. It is astonishing that so great an evil in the
+heart of London should have been allowed to exist so long,
+and it was not until the Marriage Act of Lord Hardwicke
+in 1753, which required the publication of banns, that the
+Fleet marriages ceased. On the day before the Act came
+into operation three hundred marriages are said to have
+taken place.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+
+<p>Marriages of a more lawful kind were generally conducted
+on business principles. Young women were expected
+to accept the husband selected for them by their parents or
+guardians, and the main object considered was to gain a
+good settlement. It was for this that Mary Granville, who
+is better known as Mrs. Delany, was sacrificed at seventeen
+to a gouty old man of sixty, and when he died she was
+expected to marry again with the same object in view.
+Mrs. Delany detested, with good cause, the commercial
+estimate of matrimony. Writing, in 1739, to Lady Throckmorton,
+she says, 'Miss Campbell is to be married to-morrow
+to my Lord Bruce. Her father can give her no
+fortune; she is very pretty, modest, well-behaved, and just
+eighteen, has two thousand a year jointure, and four
+hundred pin-money; <i>they say</i> he is cross, covetous, and
+threescore years old, and this unsuitable match is the
+<i>admiration of the old and the envy of the young</i>! For my
+part I <i>pity her</i>, for if she has any notion of social pleasures
+that arise from true esteem and sensible conversation, how
+miserable must she be.'<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p>
+
+<p>Girls dowered with beauty or with fortune were not
+always suffered to marry in this humdrum fashion. Ab<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>duction
+was by no means an imaginary peril. Mrs. Delany
+tells the story of a lady in Ireland, from whom she received
+the relation, who was entrapped in her uncle's house,
+carried off by four men in masks, and treated in the most
+brutal manner. And in 1711 the Duke of Newcastle,
+having become acquainted with a design for carrying off
+his daughter by force, was compelled to ask for a guard of
+dragoons.</p>
+
+<p>Duelling, against which Steele, De Foe, and Fielding
+inveighed with courage and good sense, was a danger to
+which every gentleman was liable who wore a sword.
+Bullies were ready to provoke a quarrel, the slightest cause
+of offence was magnified into an affair of honour, and the
+lives of several of the most distinguished men of the
+century were imperilled in this way. 'A gentleman,' Lord
+Chesterfield writes, 'is every man who, with a tolerable
+suit of clothes, a sword by his side, and a watch and snuffbox
+in his pockets, asserts himself to be a gentleman,
+swears with energy that he will be treated as such, and
+that he will cut the throat of any man who presumes to say
+the contrary.'</p>
+
+<p>The foolish and evil custom died out slowly in this
+kingdom. Even a great moralist like Dr. Johnson had
+something to say in its defence, and Sir Walter Scott, who
+might well have laughed to scorn any imputation of
+cowardice, was prepared to accept a challenge in his old
+age for a statement he had made in his <i>Life of Napoleon</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Ladies had a different but equally doubtful mode of
+asserting their gentility. On one occasion the Duchess of
+Marlborough called on a lawyer without leaving her name.
+'I could not make out who she was,' said the clerk afterwards,
+'but she swore so dreadfully that she must be a
+lady of quality.'</p>
+
+<p>There was a fashion which our wits followed at this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>
+time that was not of English growth, namely, the tone of
+gallantry in which they addressed ladies, no matter whether
+single or married. Their compliments seemed like downright
+love-making, and that frequently of a coarse kind,
+but such expressions meant nothing, and were understood
+to be a mere exercise of skill. Pope used them in writing
+to Judith Cowper, whom he professes to worship as much
+as any female saint in heaven; and in much ampler measure
+when addressing Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, but neither
+lady would have taken this amatory politeness seriously.
+Thus he writes after an evening spent in Lady Mary's
+society: 'Books have lost their effect upon me; and I was
+convinced since I saw you, that there is something more
+powerful than philosophy, and since I heard you, that there
+is one alive wiser than all the sages.' He tells her that he
+hates all other women for her sake; that none but her
+guardian angels can have her more constantly in mind; and
+that the sun has more reason to be proud of raising her
+spirits 'than of raising all the plants and ripening all the
+minerals in the earth.' He will fly to her in Italy at the
+least notice and 'from thence,' he adds, 'how far you might
+draw me and I might run after you, I no more know than
+the spouse in the song of Solomon.'</p>
+
+<p>This was the foible of an age in which women were
+addressed as though they were totally devoid of understanding;
+and Pope, as might have been expected, carried
+the folly to excess.</p>
+
+<p>Against another French custom Addison protests in the
+<i>Spectator</i>, namely, that of women of rank receiving gentlemen
+visitors in their bedrooms. He objects also to other
+foreign habits introduced by 'travelled ladies,' and fears
+that the peace, however much to be desired, may cause
+the importation of a number of French fopperies. But
+the proneness to follow the lead of France in matters of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+fashion is a folly not confined to the belles and beaux of
+the last century.</p>
+
+<p>If a chivalric regard for women be an indication of high
+civilization, that sign is but faintly visible in the reigns of
+Anne and of the first Georges. Sir Richard Steele paid a
+noble tribute to Lady Elizabeth Hastings when he said
+that to know her was a liberal education, but his contemporaries
+usually treat women as pretty triflers, better fitted
+to amuse men than to elevate them. Young takes this
+view in his <i>Satires</i>:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Ladies supreme among amusements reign;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By nature born to soothe and entertain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their prudence in a share of folly lies;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why will they be so weak as to be wise?'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and Chesterfield, writing to his son, treats women with
+similar contempt.... 'A man of sense,' he says, 'only trifles
+with them, plays with them, humours and flatters them as he
+does with a sprightly, forward child; but he neither consults
+them about, nor trusts them with, serious matters,
+though he often makes them believe that he does both,
+which is the thing in the world that they are proud of....
+No flattery is either too high or too low for them. They
+will greedily swallow the highest and gratefully accept of
+the lowest.'</p>
+
+<p>Nearly twenty years passed, and then Chesterfield wrote
+in the same contemptuous way of women in a letter to his
+godson, a 'dear little boy' of ten.</p>
+
+<p>'In company every woman is every man's superior, and
+must be addressed with respect, nay, more, with flattery,
+and you need not fear making it too strong ... it will be
+greedily swallowed.'</p>
+
+<p>Even Addison, while trying to instruct the 'Fair Sex' as
+he likes to call them, apparently regarded its members as
+an inferior order of beings. He delights to dwell upon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>
+their foibles, on their dress, and on the thousand little
+artifices practised by the flirt and the coquette. Here is
+the view the Queen Anne moralist takes of the 'female
+world' he was so eager to improve:</p>
+
+<p>'I have often thought there has not been sufficient pains
+in finding out proper employments and diversions for the
+fair ones. Their amusements seem contrived for them,
+rather as they are women, than as they are reasonable
+creatures; and are more adapted to the sex than to the
+species. The toilet is their great scene of business, and
+the right adjustment of their hair the principal employment
+of their lives. The sorting of a suit of ribands is
+considered a very good morning's work; and if they make
+an excursion to a mercer's or a toy-shop, so great a fatigue
+makes them unfit for anything else all the day after.
+Their more serious occupations are sewing and embroidery,
+and their greatest drudgery the preparations of jellies and
+sweetmeats. This I say is the state of ordinary women;
+though I know there are multitudes of those that move in
+an exalted sphere of knowledge and virtue, that join all
+the beauties of the mind to the ornaments of dress, and
+inspire a kind of awe and respect as well as of love into
+their male beholders.'</p>
+
+<p>The qualification made at the end of this description
+does not greatly lessen the significance of the earlier
+portion, which is Addison's picture, as he is careful to tell
+us of 'ordinary women.' Much must be allowed for the
+exaggeration of a humourist, but the frivolity of women is
+a theme upon which Addison harps continually. Indeed,
+were it not for this weakness in the 'feminine world' half
+his vocation as a moralist in the <i>Spectator</i> would be gone,
+and if the general estimate in his Essays of the women
+with whom he was acquainted be to any extent a correct
+one, the derogatory language used by men of letters, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+especially by Swift, Prior, Pope, and Chesterfield may be
+almost forgiven.</p>
+
+<p>It was the aim of Addison and Steele to represent, and
+in some degree to caricature, the follies of fashionable life
+in the Town. That life had also its vices, which, if less
+unblushingly displayed than under the 'merry Monarch,'
+were visible enough. 'In the eighteenth century,' says
+Victor Hugo, in his epigrammatic way, 'the wife bolts out
+her husband. She shuts herself up in Eden with Satan.
+Adam is left outside.'</p>
+
+<p>Drunkenness was a habit familiar to the fine gentlemen
+of the town and to men occupying the highest position in
+the State. Harley went more than once into the queen's
+presence in a half-intoxicated condition; Carteret when
+Secretary of State, if Horace Walpole may be credited, was
+never sober; Bolingbroke, who practised every vice, is said
+to have been a 'four-bottle man;' and Swift found it
+perilous to dine with Ministers on account of the wine
+which circulated at their tables. 'Prince Eugene,' he
+writes, 'dines with the Secretary to-day with about seven
+or eight general officers or foreign Ministers. They will
+be all drunk I am sure.' Pope's frail body could not tolerate
+excess, and he is said to have hastened his end by
+good living. His friend Fenton 'died of a great chair and
+two bottles of port a day.' Parnell, who seems to have
+been in many respects a man of high character, is said to
+have shortened his life by intemperance; and Gay, who was
+cossetted like a favourite lapdog by the Duke and Duchess
+of Queensberry, died from indolence and good living.</p>
+
+<p>It may be questioned whether there is a single Wit
+of the age who did not love port too well, like Addison
+and Fenton, or suffer from 'carnivoracity' like Arbuthnot.
+Every section of English society was infected with the
+'devil drunkenness,' and the passion for gin created by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
+the encouragement of home distilleries produced a state of
+crime, misery, and disease in London and in the country
+which excited public attention. 'Small as is the place,'
+writes Mr. Lecky, 'which this fact occupies in English
+history, it was probably, if we consider all the consequences
+that have flowed from it, the most momentous in that of
+the eighteenth century&mdash;incomparably more so than any
+event in the purely political or military annals of the
+country.'<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+<p>The cruelty of the age is seen in a contempt for the feelings
+of others, in the brutal punishments inflicted, in the amusements
+then popular, and in a general contempt for human
+suffering. Public executions were so frequent that they were
+disregarded; and criminals of any note, like Dr. Dodd, were
+exhibited in their cells for the gaolers' benefit prior to execution;
+mad people in Bedlam, chained in their cells, also
+formed one of the sights of London. As late as 1735 men
+were pressed to death who refused to plead on a capital
+charge; and women were publicly flogged, and were also
+burnt at the stake by a law that was not repealed until
+1794. Of the heads on Temple Bar, daily exposed to
+Johnson's eyes in his beloved Fleet Street, we are reminded
+by an apposite quotation of Goldsmith; and Samuel Rogers,
+the banker-poet, who died as recently as 1855, remembered
+having seen one there in his childhood. The public
+exhibition of offenders in the pillory was not calculated to
+refine the manners of the people. It afforded a cruel entertainment
+to the mob, who may be said to have baited these
+poor victims as they were accustomed to bait bulls and
+bears. Every kind of offensive missile was thrown at them,
+and sometimes the strokes proved deadly.</p>
+
+<p>Men who could thus torture a human being were not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
+likely to abstain from cruelty to the lower animals. The
+poets indeed protested then, as poets had done before, and
+always have done since, against the unmanly treatment of
+the dumb fellow-creatures committed to our care, but their
+voices were little heeded, and even the Prince of Wales
+visited Hockley-in-the-Hole, in disguise, to witness the torturing
+of bulls. 'The gladiatorian and other sanguinary
+sports,' says the author of the <i>Characteristics</i>, 'which we
+allow our people, discover sufficiently our national taste.
+And the baitings and slaughters of so many sorts of
+creatures, tame as well as wild, for diversion merely, may
+witness the extraordinary inclination we have for amphitheatrical
+spectacles.'<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p>
+
+<p>The majesty of the law was maintained by disembowelling
+traitors, by cutting off the ears, or branding the cheeks
+of political offenders, and by the penalties inflicted on
+Roman Catholics, and on Protestant dissenters. Men who
+deemed themselves honourable gained power through
+bribery and intrigue. It was through a king's mistress
+and a heavy bribe that Bolingbroke was enabled to return
+from exile; Chesterfield intrigued against Newcastle with
+the Duchess of Yarmouth; and clergymen eager for promotion
+had no scruple in paying court to women who had
+lost their virtue.</p>
+
+<p>Never, unless perhaps during the Civil War, was the
+spirit of party more rampant in the country. Patriotism
+was a virtue more talked about than felt, and in the cause
+of faction private characters were assailed and libels circulated
+through the press. Addison, who did more than any
+other writer to humanize his age, saw the evil of the time
+and struck a blow at it with his inimitable humour. The
+<i>Spectator</i> discovers, on his journey to Sir Roger de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+Coverley's house, that the knight's Toryism grew with the
+miles that separated him from London:</p>
+
+<p>'In all our journey from London to his house we did not
+so much as bait at a Whig inn; or if by chance the coachman
+stopped at a wrong place, one of Sir Roger's servants
+would ride up to his master full speed, and whisper to
+him that the master of the house was against such an one
+in the last election. This often betrayed us into hard beds
+and bad cheer; for we were not so inquisitive about the
+inn as the innkeeper; and provided our landlord's principles
+were sound did not take any notice of the staleness
+of his provisions. This I found still the more inconvenient,
+because the better the host was, the worse generally were
+his accommodations; the fellow knowing very well that
+those who were his friends would take up with coarse diet
+and hard lodging. For these reasons, all the while I was
+upon the road, I dreaded entering into an house of anyone
+that Sir Roger had applauded for an honest man.'<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p>
+
+<p>Against the party zeal of female politicians Addison indulges
+frequently in humorous sallies. He assures them
+that it gives an ill-natured cast to the eye, and flushes the
+cheeks worse than brandy. Party rage, he says, is a male
+vice, and is altogether repugnant 'to the softness, the
+modesty, and those other endearing qualities which are
+natural to the fair sex.'</p>
+
+<p>'When I have seen a pretty mouth uttering calumnies
+and invectives, what would I not have given to have stopt
+it? how have I been troubled to see some of the finest
+features in the world grow pale and tremble with party
+rage. Camilla is one of the greatest beauties in the
+British nation, and yet values herself more upon being
+the virago of one party than upon being the toast of both.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+The dear creature about a week ago encountered the fierce
+and beautiful Penthesilea across a tea-table; but in the
+height of her anger, as her hand chanced to shake with the
+earnestness of the dispute, she scalded her fingers, and
+spilt a dish of tea upon her petticoat. Had not this accident
+broke off the debate, nobody knows where it would
+have ended.'</p>
+
+<p>The coffee-houses in which men aired their wit and discussed
+the news of the day were wholly dominated by party.
+'A Whig,' says De Foe, 'will no more go to the Cocoa
+Tree or Ozinda's than a Tory will be seen at the coffee-house
+of St. James's.' Swift declared that the Whig and
+Tory animosity infected even the dogs and cats. It was
+inevitable that it should also infect literature. Books were
+seldom judged on their merits, the praise or blame being
+generally awarded according to the political principles of
+their authors. An impartial literary journal did not exist
+in the days when Addison 'gave his little senate laws' at
+Button's, and perhaps it does not exist now, but if critical
+injustice be done in our day it is rarely owing to political
+causes.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most prominent vices of the time was gambling,
+which was largely encouraged by the public lotteries, and
+practised by all classes of the people. This evil was exhibited
+on a national scale by the establishment of the South
+Sea Company, which exploded in 1720, after creating a
+madness for speculation never known before or since.
+Even men who like Sir Robert Walpole kept their heads,
+and saw that the bubble would soon burst, invested in
+stock. Pope had his share in the speculation, and might,
+had he 'realized' in time, have been the 'lord of thousands;'
+in the end, however, he was a gainer, though not to a large
+extent. His friend Gay was less fortunate. He won
+£20,000, kept the stock too long and was reduced to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
+beggary. The South Sea Bubble and the Mississippi
+scheme of Law which burst in the same year and ruined
+tens of thousands of French families, afford illustrations
+on a gigantic scale of the prevailing passion for speculation
+and for gambling.</p>
+
+<p>'The Duke of Devonshire lost an estate at a game of
+basset. The fine intellect of Chesterfield was thoroughly
+enslaved by the vice. At Bath, which was then the centre
+of English fashion, it reigned supreme; and the physicians
+even recommended it to their patients as a form of distraction.
+In the green-rooms of the theatres, as Mrs. Bellamy
+assures us, thousands were often lost and won in a single
+night. Among fashionable ladies the passion was quite as
+strong as among men, and the professor of whist and
+quadrille became a regular attendant at their levees. Miss
+Pelham, the daughter of the prime minister, was one of
+the most notorious gamblers of her time, and Lady Cowper
+speaks in her <i>Diary</i> of sittings at Court, of which the
+lowest stake was 200 guineas. The public lotteries contributed
+very powerfully to diffuse the taste for gambling
+among all classes.'<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>
+
+<p>One of the most powerful exponents of the dark side of
+the century is Hogarth, who makes some of its worst
+features live before our eyes. So also do the novels of
+Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett. Differing as their
+works do in character, they have the common merit of
+presenting in indelible lines a picture of the time in its
+social aspects. It may have been, as Stuart Mill asserts, an
+age of strong men, but it was an age of coarse vices, an
+age wanting in the refinements and graces of life; an age of
+cruel punishments, cruel sports, and of a political corruption
+extending through all the departments of the State.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p>
+<p>But it would be a narrow view of the age to dwell wholly
+on its gloomier features, which are always the easiest to
+detect. If the period under consideration had prominent
+vices, it had also distinguished merits. Under Queen
+Anne and her immediate successors, home-keeping Englishmen
+had more space to breathe in than they have now,
+and trade was not demoralized by excessive competition.
+No attempt was made to separate class from class, and
+population was not large enough to make the battle of life
+almost hopeless in the lowest section of the community. If
+there was less refinement than among ourselves, there was
+far less of nervous susceptibility, and the country was free
+from the half-educated class of men and women who know
+enough to make them dissatisfied, without attaining to the
+larger knowledge which yields wisdom and content. To
+say that the age was better than our own would be to deny
+a thousand signs of material and intellectual progress, but
+it had fewer dangers to contend with, and if there was far
+less of wealth in the country the people were probably more
+satisfied with their lot.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p>
+
+<p>To glance at the century as a whole does not fall within
+my province, but I may be permitted to observe that in the
+course of it science and invention made rapid strides; that
+under the inspiring sway of Handel the power of music
+was felt as it was never felt before; that in the latter half of
+the period the Novel, destined to be one of the noblest
+fruits of our imaginative literature, attained a robust life
+in the hands of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett; and
+that, with Reynolds and Gainsborough, with Romney and
+Wilson, a glorious school of landscape and portrait
+painters arose, which is still the pride of England. It will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+be remembered, too, that many of the great charitable
+institutions which make our own age illustrious, had their
+birth in the last. The military genius of England was
+displayed in Marlborough and in Clive, her mercy in John
+Howard, her spirit of enterprise in Cook, her self-sacrifice
+in Wesley and Whitefield, her statesmanship in Walpole,
+in Chatham, and in William Pitt. In oratory as everyone
+knows, the eighteenth century was surpassingly great, and
+never before or since has the country produced a political
+philosopher of the calibre of Burke. What England reaped
+in literature during the period of which Pope has been
+selected as the most striking figure, it will be my endeavour
+to show in the course of these pages.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> M. Sainte-Beuve, the greatest of French critics, frankly
+acknowledges his indebtedness to Boileau, whom he styles Louis
+the Fourteenth's 'Contrôleur Général du Parnasse.' 'S'il m'est
+permis de parler pour moi-même,' he writes, 'Boileau est un des
+hommes qui m'ont le plus occupé depuis que je fais de la critique,
+et avec qui j'ai le plus vécu en idée.'&mdash;<i>Causeries du Lundi</i>, tome
+sixième, p. 495.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Lecky's <i>England</i>, vol. i. p. 373.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> The epithet is used in the Preface to the First Edition of
+Waller's <i>Posthumous Poems</i>, which Mr. Gosse believes was written
+by Atterbury, and he considers that this is the original occurrence
+of the phrase.&mdash;<i>From Shakespeare to Pope</i>, p. 248.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Messrs. Besant and Rice's novel, <i>The Chaplain of the Fleet</i>,
+gives a vivid picture of the life led in the Fleet, and also of the
+period.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> <i>Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Delany</i>, vol. ii. p. 55.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Lecky's <i>England</i>, vol. i. p. 479.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Shaftesbury's <i>Characteristics</i>, vol. i. p. 270.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> <i>Spectator</i>, No. 126.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> Lecky's <i>England</i>, vol. i. p. 522.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> According to Hallam the thirty years which followed the
+Treaty of Utrecht 'was the most prosperous season that England
+had ever experienced.'&mdash;<i>Const. Hist.</i> ii. 464.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p>
+<h3 class="gap3"><a name="PART_I" id="PART_I"></a>PART I.</h3>
+
+<h2>THE POETS.</h2>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<h3>ALEXANDER POPE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>It is not unreasonable to call the period we are considering
+'the Age of Pope.' He is the representative poet of his
+century. Its literary merits and defects are alike conspicuous
+in his verse, and he stands immeasurably above
+the numerous versifiers who may be said to belong to his
+school. Savage Landor has observed that there is no such
+thing as a school of poetry, and this is true in the sense
+that the essence of this divine art cannot be transmitted,
+but the form of the art may be, and Pope's style of workmanship
+made it readily imitable by accomplished craftsmen.
+Although he affected to call poetry an idle trade he
+devoted his whole life to its pursuit, and there are few
+instances in literature in which genius and unwearied
+labour have been so successfully united. It is to Pope's
+credit, that, with everything against him in the race of
+life, he attained the goal for which he started in his
+youth. The means he employed to reach it were frequently
+perverse and discreditable, but the courage with which
+he overcame the obstacles in his path commands our
+admiration.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Alexander Pope
+(1688-1744).</div>
+
+<p>Alexander Pope was born in London on May 21st, 1688.
+He was the only son of his father, a merchant
+or tradesman, and a Roman Catholic
+at a time when the members of that church
+were proscribed by law. The boy was a cripple from his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
+birth, and suffered from great bodily weakness both in youth
+and manhood. Looking back upon his life in after years
+he called it a 'long disease.' The elder Pope seems to have
+retired from business soon after his son's birth, and at
+Binfield, nine miles from Windsor, twenty-seven years of
+the poet's life were spent. As a 'papist' Pope was excluded
+from the Universities and from every public career, but
+even under happier circumstances his health would have
+condemned him to a secluded life. He gained some instruction
+from the family priest, and also went for a short time
+to school, but for the most part he was self-educated, and
+studied so severely that at seventeen his life was probably
+saved by the sound advice of Dr. Radcliffe to read less
+and to ride on horseback every day. The rhyming faculty
+was very early developed, and to use his own phrase he
+'lisped in numbers.' As a boy he felt the magic of Spenser,
+whose enchanting sweetness and boundless wealth of imagination
+have been now for three hundred years a joy to
+every lover of poetry. Something, too, he learned from
+Waller and from Sandys, both of whom, but especially the
+former, had been of service in giving smoothness to the
+iambic distich, in which all of Pope's best poems are
+written. Dryden, however, whom when a little boy he saw
+at Will's coffee-house&mdash;'<i>Virgilium tantum vidi</i>' records the
+memorable day&mdash;was the poet whose influence he felt most
+powerfully. Like Gray several years later, he declared
+that he learnt versification wholly from his works. From
+'knowing Walsh,' the best critic in the nation in Dryden's
+opinion, the youthful Pope received much friendly counsel;
+and he had another wise friend in Sir William Trumbull,
+formerly Secretary of State, who recognized his genius, and
+gave him as warm a friendship as an old man can offer
+to a young one. The dissolute Restoration dramatist,
+Wycherley, was also his temporary companion. The old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+man, if Pope's story be true, asked him to correct his
+poems, which are indeed beyond correction, as the youthful
+critic appears to have hinted, and the two parted
+company.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Pastorals</i>, written, according to Pope's assertion, at
+the age of sixteen, were published in 1709, and won an
+amount of praise incomprehensible in the present day. Mr.
+Leslie Stephen has happily appraised their value in calling
+them 'mere school-boy exercises.' Not thus, however,
+were they regarded by the poet, or by the critics of his age,
+yet neither he nor they could have divined the rapid progress
+of his fame, and that in about six years' time he
+would be regarded as the greatest of living poets. The
+<i>Essay on Criticism</i>, written, it appears, in 1709, was published
+two years later, and received the highest honour
+a poem could then have. It was praised by Addison in
+the <i>Spectator</i> as 'a very fine poem,' and 'a masterpiece
+in its kind.' The 'kind,' suggested by the <i>Ars Poetica</i> of
+Horace, and the <i>Art Poétique</i> of Boileau&mdash;translated with
+Dryden's help by Sir William Soame&mdash;suited the current
+taste for criticism and argument in rhyme, which had led
+Roscommon to write an <i>Essay on Translated Verse</i>, and
+Sheffield an <i>Essay on Poetry</i>. The <i>Essay on Criticism</i> is a
+marvellous production for a young man who had scarcely
+passed his maturity when it was published. To have
+written lines and couplets that live still in the language
+and are on everyone's lips is an achievement of which any
+poet might be proud, and there are at least twenty such
+lines or couplets in the poem.</p>
+
+<p>In 1713 <i>Windsor Forest</i> appeared. Through the most
+susceptible years of life the poet had lived in the country,
+but Nature and Pope were not destined to become friends;
+he looked at her 'through the spectacles of books' and his
+description of natural objects is invariably of the conven<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>tional
+type. Although never a resident in London he was
+unable in the exercise of his art to breathe any atmosphere
+save that of the town, and might have said, in the
+words of Lessing to his friend Kleist, 'When you go to
+the country I go to the coffee-house.'<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>
+
+<p>The use, or as it would be more correct to say the abuse,
+of classical mythology in the description of rural scenes
+had the sanction of great names, and Pope was not likely
+to reject what Spenser and Milton had sanctioned. Gods
+and goddesses therefore play a conspicuous part in his description
+of the Forest. The following lines afford a fair
+illustration of the style throughout, and the sole merit of
+the poem is the smoothness of versification in which Pope
+excelled.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Not proud Olympus yields a nobler sight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though gods assembled grace his towering height,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than what more humble mountains offer here,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When in their blessings all those gods appear.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See Pan with flocks, with fruits Pomona crowned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Here blushing Flora paints th' enamelled ground,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Here Ceres' gifts in waving prospect stand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And nodding tempt the joyful reaper's hand;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rich Industry sits smiling on the plains,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And peace and plenty tell a Stuart reigns.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Pope, who was never known to laugh, was a great wit,
+but his sense of humour was small, and the descent
+from these deities to Queen Anne savours not a little of
+bathos.</p>
+
+<p>In 1712 Pope had published <i>The Rape of the Lock</i>, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
+Addison justly praised as 'a delicious little thing.' At the
+same time he advised the poet not to attempt improving it,
+which he proposed to do, and Pope most unreasonably
+attributed this advice to jealousy. In 1714 the delightful
+poem appeared in its present form with the machinery of
+sylphs and gnomes adopted from the mysteries of the Rosicrucians.
+Pope styles it an heroi-comical poem, and judged
+in the light of a burlesque it is conceived and executed with
+an art that is beyond praise. Lord Petre, a Roman Catholic
+peer, had cut off a lock of Miss Arabella Fermor's hair,
+much to the indignation of her family and possibly of the
+young lady also. Pope wrote the poem to remove the discord
+caused by the fatal shears, but its publication, and
+two or three offensive allusions it contained, only served to
+add to Miss Fermor's annoyance. 'The celebrated lady
+herself,' the poet wrote, 'is offended, and which is stranger,
+not at herself but me. Is not this enough to make a writer
+never be tender of another's character or fame?' But
+Pope, whose praise of women is too often a libel upon
+them, was not as tender as he ought to have been of the
+lady's reputation.</p>
+
+<p>The offence felt by the heroine of the poem is now unheeded;
+the dainty art exhibited is a permanent delight,
+and our language can boast no more perfect specimen of
+the poetical burlesque than the <i>Rape of the Lock</i>. The
+machinery of the sylphs is managed with perfect skill, and
+nothing can be more admirable than the charge delivered
+by Ariel to the sylphs to guard Belinda from an apprehended
+but unknown danger. The concluding lines shall
+be quoted:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Whatever spirit, careless of his charge,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His post neglects, or leaves the fair at large,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall feel sharp vengeance soon o'ertake his sins,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be stopped in vials, or transfixed with pins;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or plunged in lakes of bitter washes lie,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or wedged, whole ages, in a bodkin's eye;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While clogged he beats his silken wings in vain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or alum styptics, with contracting power,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shrink his thin essence like a rivelled flower;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or, as Ixion fixed, the wretch shall feel<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The giddy motion of the whirling mill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In fumes of burning chocolate shall glow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And tremble at the sea that froths below!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Another striking portion of the poem is the description
+of the Spanish game of Ombre, imitated from Vida's
+<i>Scacchia Ludus</i>. 'Vida's poem,' says Mr. Elwin, 'is a
+triumph of ingenuity, when the intricacy of chess is considered,
+and the difficulty of expressing the moves in a dead
+language. Yet the original is eclipsed by Pope's more
+consummate copy.'<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p>
+
+<p>Many famous passages illustrative of Pope's art might
+be extracted from this poem, but it will suffice to give the
+portrait of Belinda:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which Jews might kiss and infidels adore;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Quick as her eyes and as unfixed as those;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Favours to none, to all she smiles extends,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oft she rejects, but never once offends.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bright as the sun her eyes the gazers strike,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, like the sun, they shine on all alike.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If to her share some female errors fall,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Look on her face and you'll forget them all.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The <i>Temple of Fame</i>, a liberal paraphrase of Chaucer's
+<i>House of Fame</i>, followed in 1715, and despite the praise of
+Steele, who declared that it had a thousand beauties, and of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
+Dr. Johnson, who observes that every part is splendid, must
+be pronounced one of Pope's least attractive pieces. Two
+poems of the emotional and sentimental class, <i>Eloisa to
+Abelard</i> and the <i>Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate
+Lady</i> (1717), are more worthy of attention. Nowhere, probably,
+in the language are finer specimens to be met with of
+rhetorical pathos, but poets like Burns, Cowper, Wordsworth,
+and Tennyson can touch the heart more deeply by
+a phrase or couplet than Pope is able to do by his elaborate
+representations of passion. The reader is not likely to be
+affected by the following response of Eloisa to an invitation
+from the spirit world:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I come, I come! prepare your roseate bowers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Celestial palms and ever-blooming flowers.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thither, where sinners may have rest, I go,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where flames refined in breasts seraphic glow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou, Abelard! the last sad office pay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And smooth my passage to the realms of day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See my lips tremble and my eye-balls roll,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Suck my last breath and catch my flying soul!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah no&mdash;in sacred vestments may'st thou stand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The hallowed taper trembling in thy hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Present the Cross before my lifted eye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Teach me at once and learn of me to die.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The music or the fervour of the poem delighted Porson,
+famous for his Greek and his potations, and whether drunk
+or sober he would recite, or rather sing it, from the beginning
+to the end. The felicity of the versification is incontestable,
+but at the same time artifice is more visible than nature
+throughout the Epistle, and this is true also of <i>The Elegy</i>,
+a composition in which Pope's method of treating mournful
+topics is excellently displayed. The opening lines are suggested
+by Ben Jonson's <i>Elegy on the Marchioness of Winchester</i>,
+a lady whose death was also lamented by Milton.
+These we shall not quote, but take in preference a passage<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
+which is perhaps as graceful an expression of poetical
+rhetoric as can be found in Pope's verse.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By strangers honoured, and by strangers mourned!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What though no friends in sable weeds appear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And bear about the mockery of woe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To midnight dances and the public show?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What though no weeping Loves thy ashes grace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor polished marble emulate thy face?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What though no sacred earth allow thee room,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor hallowed dirge be muttered o'er thy tomb?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet shall thy grave with rising flowers be drest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There the first roses of the year shall blow;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While angels with their silver wings o'ershade<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The ground, now sacred by thy reliques made.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>For some years Pope had been brooding over and slowly
+labouring at a task which was destined to add greatly to
+his fame and also to his fortune.</p>
+
+<p>In 1708 his early friend, Sir William Trumbull, had
+advised him to translate the <i>Iliad</i>, and five years later the
+poet, following the custom of the age, invited subscriptions
+to the work, which was to appear in six volumes at the
+price of six guineas. About this time Swift, who by the aid
+of his powerful pen was assisting Harley and St. John to
+rule the country, made Pope's acquaintance, and ultimately
+became perhaps the most faithful of his friends. Swift,
+who was able to help everybody but himself, zealously
+promoted the poet's scheme, and was heard to say at the
+coffee-houses that 'the best poet in England Mr. Pope a
+Papist' had begun a translation of Homer which he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>
+should not print till he had a thousand guineas for
+him.</p>
+
+<p>He was not satisfied with this service, but introduced the
+poet to St. John, Atterbury, and Harley. The first volume
+of Pope's <i>Homer</i> appeared in 1715, and in the same year
+Addison's friend Tickell published his version of the first
+book of the <i>Iliad</i>. Pope affected to believe that this was
+done at Addison's instigation.</p>
+
+<p>Already, as we have said, there had been a misunderstanding
+between the two famous wits, and Pope, whose
+irritable temperament led him into many quarrels and
+created a host of enemies, ceased from this time to regard
+Addison as a friend. Probably neither of them can be
+exempted from blame, and we can well believe that Addison,
+whose supremacy had formerly been uncontested,
+could not without some jealousy 'bear a brother near the
+throne,' but the chief interest of the estrangement to the
+literary student is the famous satire written at a later date,
+in which Addison appears under the character of Atticus.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a>
+It is necessary to add here that the whole story of the
+quarrel comes to us from Pope, who is never to be trusted,
+either in prose or verse, when he wishes to excuse himself
+at the expense of a rival.</p>
+
+<p>Pope had no cause for discontent at his position; not
+even the strife of parties stood in the way of his <i>Homer</i>,
+which was praised alike by Whig and Tory, and brought
+the translator a fortune. It has been calculated that the
+entire version of the <i>Iliad</i> and <i>Odyssey</i>, the payments for
+which covered eleven years, yielded Pope a clear profit of
+about £9,000, and it is said to have made at the same time
+the fortune of his publisher. Pope, I believe, was the first
+poet who, without the aid of patronage or of the stage, was
+able to live in comfort from the sale of his works.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p>
+<p>He knew how to value money, but fame was dearer to
+him than wealth, and of both he had now enough to satisfy
+his ambition. Posterity has not endorsed the general
+verdict of his contemporaries on his famous translation.
+He had to encounter indeed some severe comments, and
+Richard Bentley, the greatest classical scholar then living,
+must have vexed the sensitive poet when he told him
+that his version was a pretty poem but he must not call
+it Homer. By this criticism, however, as Matthew
+Arnold has observed, the work is judged in spite of all its
+power and attractiveness. Pope wants Homer's simplicity
+and directness, and his artifices of style are utterly alien
+to the Homeric spirit. Dr. Johnson quotes the judgment
+of critics who say that Pope's <i>Homer</i> 'exhibits no resemblance
+of the original and characteristic manner of the
+Father of Poetry, as it wants his awful simplicity, his artless
+grandeur, his unaffected majesty,' and observes that
+this cannot be totally denied. He argues, however, that
+even in Virgil's time the demand for elegance had been so
+much increased that mere nature could be endured no
+longer, that every age improves in elegance, that if some
+Ovidian graces are, alas! not to be found in the English
+<i>Iliad</i> 'to have added can be no great crime if nothing be
+taken away.' Johnson was not aware that to add 'poetical
+elegances' to the words and thoughts of a great poet is to
+destroy much of the beauty of his verse and many of its
+most striking characteristics. As well might he say that
+the beauty of a lovely woman can be enhanced by a profusion
+of trinkets, or that a Greek statue would be more
+worthy of admiration if it were elegantly dressed. Dr.
+Johnson says, with perfect truth, that Pope wrote for his
+own age, and it may be added that he exhibits extraordinary
+art in ministering to the taste of the age; yet it is hardly
+too much to affirm that in the exercise of his craft as a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
+translator he is continually false to nature and therefore
+false to Homer.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand his <i>Iliad</i> if read as a story runs so
+smoothly, that the reader, and especially the young reader,
+is carried through the narrative without any sense of
+fatigue. It is not a little praise to say that it is a poem
+which every school-boy will read with pleasure, and in which
+every critical reader who is content to surrender his judgment
+for awhile, will find pleasure also. Mr. Courthope in
+his elaborate and masterly <i>Life of Pope</i>, which gives the
+coping stone to an exhaustive edition of the poet's works,
+praises a fine passage from the <i>Iliad</i>, which in his judgment
+attains perhaps the highest level of which the heroic
+couplet is capable, and 'I do not believe,' he adds, 'that
+any Englishman of taste and imagination can read the
+lines without feeling that if Pope had produced nothing
+but his translation of Homer, he would be entitled to the
+praise of a great original poet.'</p>
+
+<p>Pope's editor could not perhaps have selected a better
+illustration of his best manner than this speech of Sarpedon
+to Glaucus, which is parodied in the <i>Rape of the Lock</i>.
+The concluding lines shall be quoted.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Could all our care elude the gloomy grave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which claims no less the fearful than the brave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For lust of fame I should not vainly dare<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In fighting fields, nor urge the soul to war,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But since, alas! ignoble age must come,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Disease, and death's inexorable doom;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The life which others pay let us bestow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And give to fame what we to nature owe;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Brave though we fall, and honoured if we live,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or let us glory gain, or glory give.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We may add that neither its false glitter nor Pope's
+inability&mdash;shared in great measure with every translator&mdash;to
+catch the spirit of the original, can conceal the sustained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
+power of this brilliant work. Its merit is the more wonderful
+since the poet's knowledge of Greek was extremely
+meagre, and he is said to have been constantly indebted to
+earlier translations. Gibbon said that his <i>Homer</i> had
+every merit except that of faithfulness to the original; and
+Pope, could he have heard it, might well have been satisfied
+with the verdict of Gray, a great scholar as well as a
+great poet, that no other version would ever equal his.</p>
+
+<p>All that has been hitherto said with regard to Pope and
+Homer relates to his version of the <i>Iliad</i>. On that he
+expended his best powers, and on that it is evident he
+bestowed infinite pains. The <i>Odyssey</i>, one of the most
+beautiful stories in the world, appears to have been taken
+up with a weary pen, and in putting it into English he
+sought the assistance of Broome and Fenton, two minor
+poets and Cambridge scholars. They translated twelve
+books out of the twenty-four, and so skilfully did they
+catch Pope's style that it is almost impossible to discern
+any difference between his work and theirs. The literary
+partnership led to one of Pope's discreditable man&oelig;uvres,
+in which, strange to say, he was assisted by Broome, whom
+he induced to set his name to a falsehood. Pope as we
+have said, translated twelve books, while eight were allotted
+to Broome and four to Fenton. Yet he led Broome,
+unknown to his colleague, to ascribe only three books to
+himself and two to Fenton, and at the same time the poet,
+who confessed that he could 'equivocate pretty genteely,'
+stated the amount he had paid for Broome's eight books
+as if it had been paid for three. The story is disgraceful
+both to Pope and Broome, and why the latter should have
+practised such a deception is unaccountable. He was a
+beneficed clergyman and a man of wealth, so that he could
+not have lied for money even if Pope had been willing to
+bribe him. Fenton was indignant, as he well might be,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>
+but he was too lazy or too good-natured to expose the
+fraud. Broome had his deserts later on, but Pope, who
+ridiculed him in the <i>Dunciad</i>, and in his <i>Treatise on the
+Bathos</i>, was the last man in the world entitled to render
+them.</p>
+
+<p>The partnership in poetry which produced the <i>Odyssey</i>
+was not a great literary success, and most readers will
+prefer the version of Cowper, whose blank verse, though
+out of harmony with the rapid movement of the <i>Iliad</i> is
+not unfitted for the quieter beauties of the <i>Odyssey</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In 1721, prior to the publication of his version, the
+poet had agreed to edit an edition of Shakespeare, a task
+as difficult as any which a man of letters can undertake.
+Pope was not qualified to achieve it. He was comparatively
+ignorant of Elizabethan literature, the dry labours
+of an editor were not to his taste, and he lacked true
+sympathy with the genius of the poet. Failure was
+therefore inevitable, and Theobald, who has some solid
+merits as a commentator, found it easy to discern and
+to expose the errors of Pope. For doing so he was afterwards
+'hitched' into the <i>Dunciad</i>, and made in the first
+instance its hero. The "Shakespeare" was published
+in 1725 in six volumes quarto. 'Its chief claim,' Mr.
+Courthope writes, 'to interest at the present day, is that
+it forms the immediate starting-point for the long succession
+of Pope's satires.... The vexation caused to the
+poet by the undoubted justice of many of Theobald's strictures
+procured for the latter the unwelcome honour of
+being recognized as the King of the Dunces, and coupled
+with Bentley's disparaging mention of the Translation of
+the <i>Iliad</i> provoked the many contemptuous allusions to
+verbal criticism in Pope's later satires.'<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p>
+<p>A striking peculiarity of Pope's art may be mentioned
+here. He was able only to play on one instrument, the
+heroic couplet. When he attempted any other form of
+verse the result, if not total failure, was mediocrity. It
+was a daring act of Pope to suggest by his <i>Ode on St.
+Cecilia's Day</i>, a comparison with the <i>Alexander's Feast</i> of
+Dryden. The performance is perfunctory rather than
+spontaneous, and the few lyrical efforts he attempted in
+addition, show no ear for music. The voice of song with
+which even the minor poets of the Elizabethan age were
+gifted was silent in England, though not in Scotland, during
+the first half of the eighteenth century, or if a faint note is
+occasionally heard, as in the lyrics of Gay, it is without the
+grace and joyous freedom of the earlier singers. Not that
+the lyrical form was wanting; many minor versifiers, like
+Hughes, Sheffield, Granville, and Somerville, wrote what they
+called songs, but unfortunately without an ear for singing.</p>
+
+<p>In this short summary and criticism of a poet's literary
+life it would be out of place to insert many biographical
+details, were it not that, in the case of Pope, the student
+who knows little or nothing of the man will fail to understand
+his poetry. A distinguished critic has said that the
+more we know of Pope's age the better shall we understand
+Pope. With equal truth it may be said that a familiarity
+with the poet's personal character is essential to an adequate
+appreciation of his genius. His friendships, his
+enmities, his mode of life at Twickenham, the entangled
+tale of his correspondence, his intrigues in the pursuit of
+fame, his constitutional infirmities, the personal character
+of his satires, these are a few of the prominent topics with
+which a student of the poet must make himself conversant.
+It may be well, therefore, to give the history in brief outline,
+and we have now reached the crisis in his fortunes which
+will conveniently enable us to do so.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In 1716 Pope's family had removed from Binfield to
+Chiswick. A year later he lost his father, to whose memory
+he has left a filial tribute, and shortly afterwards he bought
+the small estate of five acres at Twickenham with which
+his name is so intimately associated. Before reaching the
+age of thirty Pope was regarded as the first of living poets.
+His income more than sufficed for all his wants. At
+Twickenham the great in intellect, and the great by birth,
+met around his table; he was welcomed by the highest
+society in the land, and although proud of his intimacy
+with the nobility, 'unplaced, unpensioned,' he was 'no
+man's heir or slave,' and jealously preserved his independence.
+'Pope,' says Johnson, 'never set genius to sale,
+he never flattered those whom he did not love, or praised
+those whom he did not esteem,' and he was, we may add,
+in this respect a striking contrast to Dryden, who lavished
+his flatteries wholesale.</p>
+
+<p>With a mother to whom he was tenderly attached, with
+troops of friends, with an undisputed supremacy in the
+world of letters, and with a vocation that was the joy of
+his heart,&mdash;if possessions like these can confer happiness,
+Pope should have been a happy man.</p>
+
+<p>But his 'crazy carcass,' as the painter Jervas called
+it, was united to the most suspicious and irritable of
+temperaments, and the fine wine of his poetry was
+rarely free from bitterness in the cup. Pope could be a
+warm friend, but was not always a faithful one, and even
+women whose friendship he had enjoyed suffered from
+the venom of his satire. He was not a man to rise above
+his age, and it would be charitable to ascribe a portion of
+his grossness to it. Voltaire is said by his loose talk to
+have driven Pope's good old mother from the table at
+Twickenham; Walpole's language not only in his home at
+Houghton, but at Court, was insufferably coarse; and Pope<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>
+wrote to ladies in language that must have disgusted
+modest women even in his free-speaking day. His foul
+lines on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, to whom he had
+formerly written in a most ridiculous strain of gallantry,
+and to whom he is said to have made love,<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> cannot easily
+be characterized in moderate language. Lady Mary had
+little delicacy herself, but the poet, who thought himself
+a gentleman, had no excuse for abusing her. Excuses
+indeed are not easily to be offered for Pope's moral defalcations.
+His life was a series of petty intrigues, trickeries,
+and deceptions. He could not, it has been said,&mdash;the
+conceit is borrowed from Young's <i>Satires</i>&mdash;'take his
+tea without a stratagem,' and knew how to utter the
+loftiest sentiments while acting the most contemptible of
+parts.</p>
+
+<p>The long and intricate deceptions which he practised to
+secure the publication of his letters, while so manipulating
+them as to enhance his credit, were suspected to some
+extent in his own age, and have been painfully laid bare in
+ours. It is an amazing story, which may be read at large
+in Mr. Dilke's <i>Papers of a Critic</i>, or in the elaborate narrative
+of Mr. Elwin in the first volume of his edition of <i>Pope</i>.
+It will be there seen how the poet compiled fictitious letters,
+suppressed passages, altered dates, manufactured letters
+out of other letters, and secretly enabled the infamous
+bookseller Curll to publish his correspondence surreptitiously
+in order that he might have the excuse for printing
+it himself in a more carefully prepared form. The worst
+feature of the miserable story is the poet's conduct with
+regard to Swift, his oldest and most faithful friend. On<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>
+this subject the writer may be allowed to quote what he
+has said elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>'Years before, Swift, who cared little for literary reputation,
+and never resorted to any artifice to promote it, had
+suspected Pope of a desire to make literary capital out of
+their correspondence, and the poet had excused himself
+according to his wonted fashion. After the publication by
+Curll, he begged Swift to return him his letters lest they
+should fall into the bookseller's hands. The Dean replied, no
+doubt to Pope's infinite chagrin, that they were safe in his
+keeping, as he had given strict orders in his will that his
+executors should burn every letter he might leave behind
+him. Afterwards he promised that Pope should eventually
+have them but declined giving them up during his lifetime.
+Hereupon Pope changed his tactics and begged that he
+might have the letters to print. The publication by Curll
+of two letters (probably another <i>ruse</i> of Pope's) formed an
+additional ground for urging his request. All his efforts
+were unavailing until he obtained the assistance of Lord
+Orrery, to whom Swift was at length induced to deliver up
+the letters. There was a hiatus in the correspondence and
+Pope took advantage of this and of a blunder made by
+Swift, whose memory at the time was not to be trusted, to
+hint, what he dared not directly assert, that the bulk of the
+collection remained with the Dean, and that Swift's own
+letters had been returned to him. We have now irresistible
+proof that the Dublin edition of the letters was taken from
+an impression sent from England and sent by Pope. Nor
+was this all. The poet acted with still greater meanness,
+for he had the audacity to deplore the sad vanity of Swift
+in permitting the publication of his correspondence, and to
+declare that "no decay of body is half so miserable."'<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p>
+<p>That he had many fine qualities in spite of the littlenesses
+which mar his character one would be loath to doubt. Among
+his nobler traits was an ardent passion for literature, a
+courage which enabled him to face innumerable obstacles&mdash;'Pope,'
+says Mr. Swinburne, 'was as bold as a lion'&mdash;and
+a constant devotion to his parents, especially to his
+mother, who lived to a great age. There are no sincerer
+words in his letters than those which relate to Mrs. Pope.
+'It is my mother only,' he once wrote, regretting his inability
+to leave home, 'that robs me of half the pleasure of
+my life, and that gives me the greatest at the same time,'
+and the lines expressing his affection for her are familiar to
+most readers. Truly does Johnson say that 'life has among
+its soothing and quiet comforts few things better to give
+than such a son.'</p>
+
+<p>Among his lady friends the dearest was Martha Blount,
+the younger of two beautiful sisters, of whom Gay sang as
+'the fair-haired Martha and Teresa brown.' They came
+of an old Roman Catholic family residing at Mapledurham,
+and were little more than girls when Pope first knew them.
+With the elder sister he quarrelled, but Martha was faithful
+to him for life, and when he was dying it is said that her
+coming in 'gave a new turn of spirits or a temporary strength
+to him.' Swift, as we have said, was one of the warmest
+of Pope's friends, and his letters to the poet are by far the
+most attractive portion of the published correspondence.
+He visited him at Twickenham more than once, and on
+one occasion spent some months under his roof. Bolingbroke,
+his 'guide, philosopher, and friend,' who for a time
+lived near to him at Dawley, was a frequent guest, so also,
+in the days of their intimacy, was Lady Mary, who had a
+house at Twickenham. Thomson the poet, too, lived not
+far off, and was visited by his brother bard, whom Thomson's
+barber describes as 'a strange, ill-formed, little figure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
+of a man,' but he adds, 'I have heard him and Quin and
+Patterson<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> talk so together that I could have listened to
+them for ever.' Arbuthnot, one of the finest wits and best
+men of his time, who, as Swift said, could do everything
+but walk, was also a faithful friend of Pope; so was
+Gay, and so was Bishop Atterbury, who, as the poet
+said, first taught him to think "as becomes a reasonable
+creature."</p>
+
+<p>James Craggs, who had been formerly Secretary of State,
+and was on the warmest terms of intimacy with the poet,
+resided for some time near his friend in order to enjoy the
+pleasure of his society. When in office he proposed to pay
+him a pension of £300 a year out of the secret service
+money, but Pope declined the offer. Statesmen and men
+of active pursuits cultivated the society of the poetical
+recluse, and Pope, whose compliments are monuments
+more enduring than marble, has recorded their visits to
+Twickenham:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'There, my retreat the best companions grace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Chiefs out of war, and statesmen out of place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There St. John mingles with my friendly bowl,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The feast of reason and the flow of soul,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he whose lightning pierced the Iberian lines<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now forms my quincunx and now ranks my vines.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Among Pope's associates was the 'blameless Bethel,'</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">'&mdash;&mdash; who always speaks his thought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And always thinks the very thing he ought,'<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>and Berkeley who had 'every virtue under heaven,' and
+Lord Bathurst who was unspoiled by wealth and joined</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'With splendour, charity; with plenty, health;'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and 'humble Allen' who</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Did good by stealth and blushed to find it fame;'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and many another friend who lives in his verse and is
+secure of the immortality a poet can confer.</p>
+
+<p>The five volumes which contain the letters between Pope
+and his friends exhibit an interesting picture of the times
+and of the writers. The poet's own letters, as may be supposed
+from the thought he bestowed on them, are full of artifice,
+and composed with the most elaborate care. Every sentence
+is elaborately turned, and the ease and naturalness which
+give a charm to the letters of Cowper and of Southey are
+not to be found in Pope. His epistles are weighted with
+compliments and with professions of the most exalted
+morality. 'He laboured them,' says Horace Walpole, 'as
+much as the <i>Essay on Man</i>, and as they were written to
+everybody they do not look as if they had been written to
+anybody.' Pope said once, what he did not mean, that he
+could not write agreeable letters. This was true; his letters
+are, as Charles Fox said, 'very bad,' but some of Pope's
+friends write admirably, and if there is much that can be
+skipped without loss in the correspondence, there is much
+which no student of the period can afford to neglect.
+'There has accumulated,' says Mark Pattison, 'round Pope's
+poems a mass of biographical anecdote such as surrounds
+the writings of no other English author,' and not a little
+knowledge of this kind is to be gleaned from his correspondence.</p>
+
+<p>In the years spent at Twickenham Pope produced his
+most characteristic work. It is as a satirist that he,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+with one exception, excels all English poets, and Pope's
+careful workmanship often makes his satirical touches
+more attractive than Dryden's.</p>
+
+<p>'To attack vices in the abstract,' he said to Arbuthnot,
+'without touching persons, may be safe fighting indeed,
+but it is fighting with shadows;' and Pope, under the
+plea of a detestation of vice, generally betrayed his contempt
+or hatred of the men whom he assailed. No doubt
+the critics and Grub Street hacks of the day gave him
+provocation. Pope, however, was frequently the first to
+take the field, and so eager was he to meet his foes that
+it would seem as if he enjoyed the conflict. Yet there
+were times when he felt acutely the assaults made upon
+him. 'These things are my diversion,' he once said, with
+a ghastly smile, and it was observed that he writhed in
+agony like a man undergoing an operation. The attacks
+made with these paper bullets, not only on the side of
+Grub Street but on his own, show very vividly the coarseness
+of London society. Courtesy was disregarded by
+men who claimed to be wits and scholars. Pope held,
+perhaps, a higher place in literature in his own day than
+Lord Tennyson has held in ours, for the best beloved
+of Laureates had noble rivals and friends who came
+near to him in fame, while Pope, until the publication
+of Thomson's <i>Seasons</i>, in 1730, stood alone in poetical
+reputation. Yet he was reviled in the language of Billingsgate,
+and had no scruple in using that language himself.
+Late in life Pope collected the libels made upon him and
+bound them in four volumes, but he omitted to mention
+the provocation which gave rise to many of them. Eusden,
+Colley Cibber, Dennis, Theobald, Blackmore, Smyth, and
+Lord Hervey are among the prominent criminals placed in
+Pope's pillory, and the student of the age may find an idle
+entertainment in tracking the poet's thorny course, while<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>
+he gives an unenviable notoriety to names of which the
+larger number were 'born to be forgot.'</p>
+
+<p>In 1725 Swift had written to Pope advising him not to
+immortalize the names of bad poets by putting them in his
+verse, and Pope replied to this advice by saying, 'I am
+much the happier for finding (a better thing than our
+wits) our judgments jump in the notion that all scribblers
+should be passed by in silence.' How entirely his inclination
+got the better of his judgment was seen three years
+later in the <i>Dunciad</i>. The first three books of this famous
+satire were published in 1728. It is generally regarded as
+Pope's masterpiece, but the accuracy of such an estimate is
+doubtful. So heavily weighted is the poem with notes,
+prefaces, and introductions that the text appears to be
+smothered by them. It was Pope's aim to mystify his
+readers, and in this he has succeeded, for the mystifications
+of the poem even confound the commentators. The personalities
+of the satire excited a keen interest, and much
+amusement to readers who were not included in Pope's
+black list of dunces. At the same time it roused a number
+of authors to fury, as it well might. His satire is often unjust,
+and he includes among the dunces men wholly undeserving
+of the name, who had had the misfortune to offend
+him. To place a great scholar like Bentley, an eloquent and
+earnest preacher like Whitefield, and a man of genius like
+Defoe among the dunces was to stultify himself, and if
+Pope in his spite against Theobald found some justification
+for giving the commentator pre-eminence for dulness in
+three books of the <i>Dunciad</i>, his anger got the better of his
+wit when in Book IV. he dethroned Theobald to exalt
+Colley Cibber. For Cibber, with a thousand faults, so far
+from being dull had a buoyancy of heart and a sprightliness
+of intellect wholly out of harmony with the character
+he is made to assume.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>That he might have some excuse for his dashing assaults
+in the <i>Dunciad</i>, Pope had published in the third volume of
+the <i>Miscellanies</i>, of which he and Swift, Arbuthnot and Gay
+were the joint authors, an <i>Essay on Bathos</i> in which several
+writers of the day were sneered at. The assault provoked the
+counter-attack for which Pope was looking, and he then produced
+the satire which was already prepared for the press.
+In its publication the poet, as usual, made use of trickery
+and deception. At first he issued an imperfect edition with
+initial letters instead of names, but on seeing his way to
+act more openly, the poem appeared in a large edition with
+names and notes.</p>
+
+<p>'In order to lessen the danger of prosecution for libel,'
+Mr. Courthope writes, 'he prevailed on three peers, with
+whom he was on the most intimate terms, the good-natured
+Lord Bathurst, the easy-going Earl of Oxford, and the
+magnificent Earl of Burlington, to act as his nominal publishers;
+and it was through them that copies of the
+enlarged edition were at first distributed, the booksellers
+not being allowed to sell any in their shops. The King and
+Queen were each presented with a copy by the hands of
+Sir R. Walpole. In this manner, as the report quickly
+spread that the poem was the property of rich and powerful
+noblemen, there was a natural disinclination on the part
+of the dunces to take legal proceedings, and the prestige
+of the <i>Dunciad</i> being thus fairly established, the booksellers
+were allowed to proceed with the sale in regular
+course.'<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></p>
+
+<p>The <i>Dunciad</i> owes its merit to the literary felicities
+with which its pages abound. The theme is a mean one.
+Pope, from his social eminence at Twickenham, looks with
+scorn on the authors who write for bread, and with malig<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>nity
+on the authors whom he regarded as his enemies.
+There is, for the most part, little elevation in his method
+of treatment, and we can almost fancy that we see a cruel
+joy in the poet's face as he impales the victims of his
+wrath. Some portions of the <i>Dunciad</i> are tainted with the
+imagery which, to quote the strong phrase of Mr. Churton
+Collins, often makes Swift as offensive as a polecat,<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> and
+there is no part of it which can be read with unmixed
+pleasure, if we except the noble lines which conclude the
+satire. Those lines may be almost said to redeem the
+faults of the poem, and they prove incontestably, if such
+proof be needed, Pope's claim to a place among the poets.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'In vain, in vain,&mdash;the all-composing Hour<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Resistless falls; the Muse obeys the Power.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She comes! she comes! the sable Throne behold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Night primæval and of Chaos old!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before her Fancy's gilded clouds decay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all its varying rainbows die away.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The meteor drops, and in a flash expires,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As one by one at dread Medea's strain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sickening stars fade off the etherial plain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand opprest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Closed one by one to everlasting rest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus at her felt approach and secret might,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Art after Art goes out, and all is Night.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mountains of Casuistry heaped o'er her head!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Philosophy that leaned on Heaven before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Physic of Metaphysic begs defence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See Mystery to Mathematics fly!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And unawares Morality expires.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor public Flame, nor private, dares to shine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos! is restored;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Light dies before thy uncreating word;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And universal Darkness buries All.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The publication of the <i>Dunciad</i> showed Pope where his
+main strength as a poet lay. That the writers he had
+attacked, in many instances without provocation, should
+resent the ungrateful notoriety conferred upon them was
+inevitable. In self-defence, and to add to the provocation
+already given, he started a paper called the <i>Grub Street
+Journal</i>, which existed for eight years&mdash;Pope, who had no
+scruple in 'hazarding a lie,' denying all the time that he
+had any connection with it.</p>
+
+<p>His next work of significance, <i>The Essay on Man</i>, a professedly
+philosophical poem by an author who knew little
+of philosophy, was published in four epistles, in 1733-4.
+Bolingbroke's brilliant, versatile, and shallow intellect had
+strongly impressed Swift, and had also fascinated Pope.
+It has been commonly supposed that the <i>Essay</i> owes its
+existence to his suggestion and guidance. The poet believed
+in his philosophy, and had the loftiest estimate of
+his genius. In the last and perhaps finest passage of the
+poem he calls Bolingbroke the 'master of the poet and the
+song,' and draws a picture of the ambitious statesman as
+beautiful as it is false. In Mark Pattison's Introduction
+to <i>The Essay on Man</i>,<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> which every student of Pope
+will read, he objects to the notion that the poet took the
+scheme of his work from Bolingbroke, observing that both
+derived their views from a common source.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p>
+<p>'Everywhere, in the pulpit, in the coffee-houses, in every
+pamphlet, argument on the origin of evil, on the goodness
+of God, and the constitution of the world was rife. Into
+the prevailing topic of polite conversation Bolingbroke,
+who returned from exile in 1723, was drawn by the bent
+of his native genius. Pope followed the example and
+impulse of his friend's more powerful mind. Thus much
+there was of special suggestion. But the arguments or
+topics of the poem are to be traced to books in much
+vogue at the time; to Shaftesbury's <i>Characteristics</i> (1711),
+King on the <i>Origin of Evil</i> (1702), and particularly to
+Leibnitz, <i>Essais de Théodicée</i> (1710).'</p>
+
+<p>In admitting that Pope followed the impulse of a more
+powerful mind, Mr. Pattison asserts as much perhaps as
+can be known with certainty as to Bolingbroke's influence,
+but it is reasonable to believe that the close intercourse of
+the two men did immensely sway the more impressionable,
+and, so far as philosophy is concerned, the more ignorant of
+the two. Mr. Pattison also overlooks the fact that Pope
+confessed to Warburton that he had never read a line of
+Leibnitz in his life. That the poet acknowledges his large
+debt to Bolingbroke, and that Bolingbroke confesses it was
+due, is all that can be declared with certainty. That which
+makes the <i>Essay</i> worthy the reading is the fruit, not of the
+argument but of the poetry, and for that Pope trusted to
+his own genius.</p>
+
+<p>His attempt to 'vindicate the ways of God to man'
+is confused and contradictory, and no modern reader,
+perplexed with the mystery of existence, is likely to gain
+aid from Pope. Nominally a Roman Catholic, and in
+reality a deist, apart from poetry he does not seem to have
+had strong convictions on any subject, and was content to
+be swayed by the opinions current in society. In undertaking
+to write an ethical work like the <i>Essay</i> his ambition<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>
+was greater than his strength, yet if Pope's philosophy
+does not 'find' us, to use Coleridge's phrase, it did
+appeal to a large number of minds in his own day, and
+had not lost its popularity at a later period. The poem
+has been frequently translated into French, into Italian,
+and into German; it was pronounced by Voltaire to be the
+most useful and sublime didactic poem ever written in any
+language; it was admired by Kant and quoted in his
+lectures; and it received high praise from the Scotch
+philosopher, Dugald Stewart. The charm of poetical expression
+is lost or nearly lost in translations, and while the
+sense may be retained the aroma of the verse is gone. The
+popularity of the <i>Essay</i> abroad is therefore not easily to
+be accounted for, unless we accept the theory that the
+shallow creed on which it is based suited an age less
+earnest than our own.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></p>
+
+<p>Pope has no strong convictions in this poem, but he has
+many moods. On one page he is a pantheist, on another
+he says what he probably did not mean, that God inspires
+men to do evil, and on a third that 'all our knowledge
+is ourselves to know.' Nowhere in the argument does
+Pope seem to have a firm standing, and De Quincey is
+not far wrong in saying that it is 'the realization of
+anarchy.'</p>
+
+<p>Read the poem for its poetical merits and you will forget
+its defects. Pope was a superficial teacher, but direct teaching
+is not the end of poetry. <i>The Essay on Man</i> is not a poem
+which can be read and re-read with ever-growing delight,
+but there are passages in it of as fine an order as any that
+he has composed on more familiar subjects. Pope was, as
+Sir William Hamilton said, a curious reader, and the ideas
+versified in the poem may be traced to a variety of sources.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+Students who wish to follow this track will find all the help
+they need in Mr. Pattison's instructive notes, and in the
+comments attached to the poem in Elwin and Courthope's
+edition. In his Introduction Mr. Pattison observes that
+'the subject of the <i>Essay on Man</i> is not, considered in itself,
+one unfit for poetry. Had Pope had a genius for philosophy
+there was no reason why he should not have selected
+a philosophical subject. Didactic poetry is a mistake if not
+a contradiction in terms. But poetry is not necessarily
+didactic because its subject is philosophical.'</p>
+
+<p>It is always difficult to define the themes suitable for
+poetry. Many theories have been formed as to the scope
+of the art, and poets have been amply instructed by critics as
+to what they ought to do, and what they should avoid doing.
+The theories may appear sound, the arguments convincing,
+until a great poet arises and knocks them on the head. In a
+sense every poet of the highest order is also a philosopher
+and a prophet who sees into 'the life of things.' Whether
+a philosophical subject can be fitly represented in the imaginative
+light of poetry is a matter for discussion rather than
+for decision. In the case of Pope, however, it will be
+evident to all studious readers that he was incapable of the
+continuous thought needed for the argument of the <i>Essay</i>.</p>
+
+<p>'Anything like sustained reasoning,' says Mr. Leslie
+Stephen,' was beyond his reach. Pope felt and thought
+by shocks and electric flashes.... The defect was aggravated
+or caused by the physical infirmities which put
+sustained intellectual labour out of the question.'<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p>
+
+<p>Crousaz, a Swiss pastor and professor, who appears to
+have competed with Berkeley for a prize and won it,
+attacked Pope's <i>Essay</i> for its want of orthodoxy, and his
+work was translated into English. The poet became<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+alarmed, but had the good fortune to find a champion in
+Warburton, who for the rest of his life did Pope much
+service, not always of a reputable kind. We shall have
+more to say of him later on, and it will suffice to observe
+here that Warburton, who through Pope's friendship
+obtained a good wife, a fortune, and a bishopric, was not a
+man of high character. His sole object was to advance in
+life, and he succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Moral Essays</i> as they are called, and the <i>Imitations
+from Horace</i> are the final and crowning efforts of the
+poet's genius. They contain his finest workmanship as a
+satirist, and will be read, I think, with more pleasure than
+the <i>Dunciad</i>, despite Mr. Ruskin's judgment of that poem
+as 'the most absolutely chiselled and monumental work
+"exacted" in our country.'<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> It is impossible to concur in
+this estimate. The imagery of the poem serves only to
+disgust, and the spiteful attacks made in it on forgotten
+men want the largeness of purpose that lifts satire above
+what is of temporary interest, making it a lesson for all
+time.</p>
+
+<p>Pope's venom, and the personal animosities which give
+the sharpest sting, and in some instances a zest, to his
+verse, are also amply displayed in the <i>Moral Essays</i> and in
+the <i>Imitations</i>, but the scope is wider in these poems, and
+the subjects allow of more versatile treatment. They should
+be read with the help of notes, a help generally needed for
+satirical poetry, but it should be remembered always that
+editorial judgments are to be received with discretion and
+not servilely followed. There is perhaps no danger more
+carefully to be shunned by the student of literature than
+the habit of resting satisfied with opinions at second-hand.
+Better a wrong estimate formed after due reading and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
+thought, than a right estimate gleaned from critics, without
+any thought at all.</p>
+
+<p>According to Warburton, who is as tricky as Pope himself
+when it suits his purpose to be so, the <i>Essay on Man</i>
+was intended to form four books, in which, as part of the
+general design, the <i>Moral Essays</i> would have been included,
+as well as Book IV. of the <i>Dunciad</i>, but to have welded
+these <i>Essays</i>, which were published separately, into one
+continuous poem would neither have suited Pope's genius
+nor the character of the poems; and how the last book of
+the <i>Dunciad</i> could have been included in such an <i>olla
+podrida</i> it is difficult to conceive. The poet was fond of projects,
+and this, happily for his readers, remained one. The
+dates of the four <i>Essays</i>, which are really Epistles, and
+appeared in folio pamphlets, run over several years, but
+were afterwards re-arranged by Pope. That to Lord Burlington,
+<i>Of the Use of Riches</i> (Epistle IV.), was published
+in 1731, under the title, <i>Of False Taste</i>; that to Lord
+Bathurst, <i>Of the Use of Riches</i> (Epistle III), in 1732; the
+epistle to Lord Cobham (Epistle I.), <i>Of the Knowledge and
+Characters of Men</i>, bears the date of 1733; and that To a
+Lady (Epistle II.), <i>Of the Characters of Women</i>, in 1735.
+Pope wrote other Epistles, some at a much earlier period
+of his career, which follow the <i>Moral Essays</i> but are not
+connected with them. Of these one is addressed to Addison,
+two are to Martha Blount, for whom the second of the <i>Moral
+Essays</i> was written; one to the painter Jervas, originally
+printed in 1717; while another, a few lines only in
+length, was addressed to Craggs when Secretary of State.
+Space will not allow of examining each of the <i>Essays</i>
+minutely, but there are portions of them which call for
+comment.</p>
+
+<p>The first <i>Moral Essay</i>, <i>Of the Knowledge and Characters
+of Men</i>, in which Pope enlarges on his theory of a ruling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
+passion, affords a significant example of his incapacity for
+sustaining an argument, since Warburton, to use his own
+words, entirely changed and reversed the order and disposition
+of the several parts to make the composition more
+coherent. That he has succeeded is doubtful, that he
+should have ventured upon such a task shows where Pope's
+weakness lay as a philosophical poet. It is the least interesting
+of the <i>Essays</i>, but is not without lines that none
+but Pope could have written. <i>The Characters of Women</i>,
+the subject of the second <i>Essay</i>, was not one which the
+satirist could treat with justice. He saw little in the sex
+save their foibles, and the lines with which it opens show
+the spirit that animates the poem:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Nothing so true as what you once let fall;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Most women have no character at all,"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And best distinguished by black, brown, or fair.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The satire contains one of Pope's offensive allusions to
+Lady Mary, and the celebrated portrait drawn from two
+notable women, the Duchess of Buckingham and Sarah,
+Duchess of Marlborough, from the latter of whom the
+poet, at one time, despite his unquestionable love of
+independence, received £1,000. The story, like many
+another in the career of Pope, is wrapt in mystery.</p>
+
+<p>Pope took great pains with the Epistle <i>Of the Use of
+Riches</i>. It was altered from the original conception by the
+advice of Warburton, who cared more for the argument of
+a poem than for its poetry. The thought and purpose of
+the <i>Essay</i> are defective, notwithstanding Warburton's effort
+to clear them, but these defects are of slight moment when
+compared with the brilliant passages with which the poem
+is studded. Among them is the famous description of the
+Duke of Buckingham's death-bed which should be com<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>pared
+with Dryden's equally famous lines on the same
+nobleman's character.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The floors of plaster, and the walls of dung,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On once a flock-heel, but repaired with straw,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With tape-tied curtains never meant to draw,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The George and Garter dangling from that bed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Great Villiers lies&mdash;alas! how changed from him,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gallant and gay, in Cliveden's proud alcove,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or just as gay at council, in a ring<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of mimic statesmen and their merry King.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No wit to flatter left of all his store!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No fool to laugh at, which he valued more.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There is also a covert attack in this Epistle upon the
+moneyed interest represented by Walpole, and on the
+political corruption which he sanctioned and promoted.
+Yet Pope knew how to praise the great Whig statesman
+for his social qualities:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Seen him I have, but in his happier hour<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seen him uncumbered with the venal tribe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Smile without art and win without a bribe.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Epistle IV. pursues the same subject as the third, and
+deals mainly with false taste in the expenditure of wealth,
+and with the necessity of following 'sense, of every art the
+soul.' In this poem there is the far-famed description of
+Timon's Villa, and by Timon Pope was accused of representing
+the Duke of Chandos, whose estate at Canons he is
+supposed to have held in scorn after having been, as he
+acknowledges, 'distinguished' by its master. That would
+not have deterred Pope from producing a brilliant picture,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
+and his equivocations did but serve to increase suspicion.
+Probably he found it convenient to use some features of
+what he may have seen at Canons while composing a
+general sketch with no special application. The <i>Moral
+Essays</i>, it may be added, are not especially moral, but they
+are full of fine things, and form a portion of Pope's verse
+second only to the <i>Imitations from Horace</i>.</p>
+
+<p>These <i>Imitations</i> are introduced by the Prologue addressed
+to Dr. Arbuthnot, a poem of more than common
+brilliancy, and also more than commonly venomous. Nowhere,
+perhaps, is there in Pope's works so powerful and
+bitter an attack as the twenty-five lines in the Prologue
+devoted to the vivisection of Lord Hervey, which we are
+forced to admire while feeling their malevolence; nowhere
+is there a more consummate piece of satire than the twenty-two
+lines that contain the poet's masterpiece, the character
+of Atticus; and nowhere, I may add, are there lines more
+personally interesting. Portions of the poem were written
+long before the date of publication, and this is Pope's
+excuse, a rather lame one perhaps, for printing the character
+of Atticus and the lines on his mother after the death of
+Addison and of Mrs. Pope.</p>
+
+<p>'When I had a fever one winter in town,' Pope said to
+his friend Spence, 'that confined me to my room for
+some days, Lord Bolingbroke came to see me, happened
+to take up a Horace that lay on the table, and in turning
+it over dipt on the first satire of the second book. He
+observed how well that would hit my case if I were
+to imitate it in English. After he was gone I read it
+over, translated it in a morning or two, and sent it to
+press in a week or fortnight after. And this was the
+occasion of my imitating some other of the satires and
+epistles afterwards.'</p>
+
+<p>Bolingbroke did his friend a better service in giving<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>
+this advice than he had done with regard to the <i>Essay on
+Man</i>; and the six <i>Imitations</i>, with the Prologue and
+Epilogue, which are among the latest fruits of Pope's genius
+as a satirist, are also the ripest.</p>
+
+<p>Warburton, writing of the <i>Imitations of Horace</i>, says:
+'Whoever expects a paraphrase of Horace or a faithful copy
+of his genius or his manner of writing in these <i>Imitations</i>
+will be much disappointed. Our author uses the Roman poet
+for little more than his canvas; and if the old design or
+colouring chance to suit his purpose, it is well; if not, he
+employs his own without scruple or ceremony.'</p>
+
+<p>This is true. Pope makes use of Horace when it suits
+his convenience, but never follows him servilely, and quits
+him altogether when his design carries him another way.</p>
+
+<p>It was inevitable that he should exercise this freedom,
+since, as Johnson has pointed out, there will always be an
+irreconcilable dissimilitude between Roman images and
+English manners. Moreover, the aim of the two poets was
+different, Pope's main object being to express personal
+enmities and to give an exalted notion of his own virtue.</p>
+
+<p>In the opening lines of his First Satire Pope follows
+Horace pretty closely. Both poets complain that some
+persons think them too severe, and others too complaisant;
+both take the advice of a lawyer, Horace of C. Trebatius
+Testa, who gives him the pithiest replies; and Pope of
+Fortescue. Both complain that they cannot sleep, the
+prescription of a wife and cowslip wine being given by the
+English adviser, while Testa advises Horace to swim thrice
+across the Tiber and moisten his lips with wine. Throughout
+the rest of the satire Pope takes only casual glances at
+the Roman original, and if in the Second Satire the English
+poet follows Horace in the first few verses in recommending
+frugality, and in the advice to keep the middle state, and
+neither to lean on this side or on that, the resemblance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
+between the poets is seldom striking, and the spirit which
+animates them is different,&mdash;Horace being classical, and
+therefore open to the apprehension of all educated readers,
+while Pope is in a sense provincial, and, as I have already
+said with reference to the <i>Dunciad</i>, cannot be fully enjoyed
+or even understood without some knowledge of the time
+and of the men whom he lashes in his satire. The Sixth
+Epistle of the First Book of Horace, which Pope attempts
+to imitate, is, as Mr. Courthope observes, 'incapable of
+imitation. Its humour, no less than its philosophy, belongs
+entirely to the Pagan World.' In a general sense it is
+also true that Horace's style, whether of language or of
+thought, will not bear transplanting. Indeed, whatever is
+most characteristic and most exquisite in a poet's work is
+precisely the portion which cannot be clothed in a foreign
+dress.</p>
+
+<p>'Life,' said Pope, 'when the first heats are over is all
+down hill,' and with him the downward progress began at
+a time when most men are still standing on the summit.
+Never was there a more fiery spirit in so weak a body. He
+suffered frequently from headaches, which he relieved by
+inhaling the steam of coffee. Unfortunately he pampered
+his appetite and paid a heavy penalty for doing so.
+Every change of weather affected him; and at the time
+when most people indulge in company, he tells Swift that
+he hid himself in bed. Although he sneers at Lord Hervey
+for taking asses' milk he tried that remedy himself, and he
+frequently needed medical aid. In his early days he was
+strong enough to ride on horseback, but in later life his
+weakness was so great that he was in constant need of help.
+M. Taine, whose criticism of Pope needs to be read with
+caution, indulges in an exaggerated description of his
+bodily condition, observing that when arrived at maturity
+he appeared no longer capable of existing, and styling him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>
+'a nervous abortion.' The poet's condition was sad enough
+as told by Dr. Johnson, without amplifying it as M. Taine
+has done. 'One side was contracted. His legs were so slender
+that he enlarged their bulk with three pairs of stockings,
+which were drawn on and off by the maid; for he was not
+able to dress or undress himself, and neither went to bed nor
+rose without help. His weakness made it very difficult for
+him to be clean.' After this forlorn description of the poet's
+state it is a little grotesque to read that his dress of ceremony
+was black, with a tie-wig and a little sword. A distorted
+body often holds a generous and untainted soul.
+This was not the case with Pope, and the sympathy he stood
+in so large a need of himself, was seldom given to others.</p>
+
+<p>In the spring of 1744 it became evident that the end was
+approaching. Three weeks before his death he distributed
+the <i>Moral Epistles</i> among his friends, saying: 'Here I am,
+like Socrates, dispensing my morality amongst my friends
+just as I am dying.' He died peacefully on May 30th,
+1744, and was buried in Twickenham Church near the
+monument erected to his parents.</p>
+
+<p>Pope's standing among his country's poets has been the
+source of much controversy. There have been critics who
+deny to him the name of a poet, while others place him in the
+first rank. In his own century there was comparatively little
+difference of opinion with regard to his merits. Chesterfield
+gave him the warmest praise; Swift, Addison, and Warburton
+ranked him with the peers of song; Johnson, whose
+discriminative criticism reaches perhaps its highest level in
+his <i>Life of Pope</i>, in reply to the question which had been
+asked, even in his day, whether Pope was a poet? asks in
+return, 'If Pope be not a poet, where is poetry to be
+found?' and adds that 'to circumscribe poetry by a definition
+will only show the narrowness of the definer, though
+a definition which shall exclude Pope will not readily be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
+made.' Joseph Warton, too, Johnson's contemporary and
+friend, while preferring the Romantic School to the Classical,
+allows that in that species of poetry wherein Pope
+excelled he is superior to all mankind.</p>
+
+<p>In our century Bowles, whose edition of his works provoked
+prolonged discussion, in which Campbell, Byron, and
+the <i>Quarterly Review</i> took part, places Pope above Dryden.
+Byron, with more enthusiasm than judgment, regarded
+him as the greatest name in our poetry; Scott, with generous
+appreciation of a genius so alien to his own, called
+him a 'true Deacon of the craft,' and at one time proposed
+editing his works, a task projected also by Mr. Ruskin,
+who, putting Shakespeare aside as rather the world's than
+ours, holds Pope 'to be the most perfect representative we
+have since Chaucer of the true English mind.' 'Matched
+on his own ground,' says Mr. Swinburne, 'he never has
+been nor can be.' And Mr. Lowell in the same strain
+observes that 'in his own province he still stands unapproachably
+alone.'</p>
+
+<p>What then is Pope's ground? What is this province of
+which he is the sole ruler? To a considerable extent the
+question has been answered in these pages, but it may be
+well to sum up with more definiteness what has been
+already stated.</p>
+
+<p>In poetry Pope takes a first place in the second order of
+poets. The deficiencies which forbid his entrance into the
+first rank are obvious. He cannot sing, he has no ear for
+the subtlest melodies of verse, he is not a creative poet,
+and has few of the spirit-stirring thoughts which the noblest
+poets scatter through their pages with apparent unconsciousness.
+There are no depths in Pope and there are no
+heights; he has neither eye for the beauties of Nature, nor
+ear for her harmonies, and a primrose was no more to him
+than it was to Peter Bell.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>These are defects indeed, but nothing is more unfair says
+a great French critic than to judge notable minds solely by
+their defects, and in spite of them Pope's position is so
+unassailable that the critic must take a contracted view of
+the poet's art who questions his right to the title.</p>
+
+<p>His merits are of a kind not likely to be affected by
+time; a lively fancy, a power of satire almost unrivalled, and
+a skill in using words so consummate that there is no poet,
+excepting Shakespeare, who has left his mark upon the
+language so strongly. The loss to us if Pope's verse were
+to become extinct cannot readily be measured. He has
+said in the best words what we all know and feel, but
+cannot express, and has made that classical which in
+weaker hands would be commonplace. His sensibility to
+the claims of his art is exquisite, the adaptation of his
+style to his subject shows the hand of a master, and if
+these are not the highest gifts of a poet, they are gifts to
+which none but a poet can lay claim.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Some qualification may be made to these statements. Pope
+took pleasure in landscape gardening on the English plan, as
+opposed to the formality of the French and Dutch systems, and
+the design of the Prince of Wales's garden is said to have been
+copied from the poet's at Twickenham.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Elwin and Courthope's <i>Pope</i>, vol. ii. p. 160.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> See the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> Elwin and Courthope's <i>Pope</i>, vol. v., p. 195.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> 'Lady Mary,' says Byron, 'was greatly to blame in that
+quarrel for having encouraged Pope.... She should have remembered
+her own line,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'"He comes too near who comes to be denied."'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> <i>Studies in English Literature</i>, p. 47.&mdash;<i>Stanford.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> Quin (1693-1766) was the famous actor, and Patterson was
+Thomson's deputy in the surveyor-generalship of the Leeward
+Isles, and ultimately his successor.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> The Earl of Peterborough, the meteor-like brilliancy of whose
+actions forms one of the most striking chapters in the history of his
+time.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> <i>Life of Pope</i>, p. 216.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> 'Pope and Swift,' says Dr. Johnson, 'had an unnatural delight
+in ideas physically impure, such as every other tongue utters
+with unwillingness, and of which every ear shrinks from the
+mention.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> Clarendon Press, Oxford.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> No doubt many distinguished foreigners who appreciated the
+beauty of the poem had read it in the original.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> Stephen's <i>Pope</i>, p. 163.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> <i>Lectures on Art</i>, p. 70, Oxford.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<h3>PRIOR, GAY, YOUNG, BLAIR, THOMSON.</h3>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">Matthew Prior
+(1664-1721).</div>
+
+<p>The ease with which the Queen Anne wits obtained office
+and rose to posts of high trust through the
+pleasant art of verse-making, is conspicuous
+in the career of Prior. His parents are unknown,
+the place of his birth is somewhat doubtful, although
+he is claimed by Wimborne-Minster, in Dorsetshire, and
+the first trustworthy facts recorded of his early career are
+that he was a Westminster scholar when the famous Dr.
+Busby, whose discipline was physical as well as mental,
+presided over the school. His father died, and his mother
+being no longer able to pay the school fees, Prior was
+placed with an uncle who kept the Rhenish Wine Tavern
+in Westminster. His seat was in the bar, and there the
+Earl of Dorset (1637-1705-6), a small poet, but a generous
+patron of poets, found the youth reading Horace, and,
+pleased with his 'parts,' sent him back to Westminster,
+whence he went up to Cambridge as a scholar at St. John's,
+the college destined a century later to receive one of the
+greatest of English poets.</p>
+
+<p>Charles Montague, afterwards Earl of Halifax (1661-1715),
+the son of a younger son of a nobleman, was also
+a Westminster scholar. He entered Trinity College in
+1679, and like Prior appears to have owed his good
+fortune to the rhymer's craft. 'At thirty,' writes Lord<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+Macaulay, 'he would gladly have given all his chances in
+life for a comfortable vicarage and a chaplain's scarf. At
+thirty-seven he was First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor
+of the Exchequer, and a Regent of the Kingdom.' The
+literary history of the Queen Anne age has many associations
+with his name. He proved a liberal patron of the wits, and
+of Pope among them, by subscribing largely to his <i>Homer</i>;
+but the poet's memory was stronger for imaginary injuries
+than for real benefits, and because Halifax had patronized
+Tickell, he figures in the Prologue to the Satires as 'full-blown
+Bufo, puffed by every quill.'</p>
+
+<p>Prior and Montague began their rhyming career early,
+and a partnership production, entitled the <i>Hind and Panther,
+transversed to the story of the Country Mouse and the City
+Mouse</i> (1687), a parody of Dryden's famous poem published
+in the same year, brought both authors into notice. At the
+age of twenty-six Prior, who had previously obtained a fellowship,
+was appointed Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague.
+After that he rose steadily to eminence, became Secretary of
+State in Ireland, and was finally appointed Ambassador at
+the French Court. High office brings its troubles, and in
+those days was not without its perils. In 1711 Prior was
+sent secretly to Paris to negotiate a peace, for which, when
+the Whigs came again into power, he was imprisoned and
+expected to lose his head. While in prison, where he remained
+for two years (1715-1717), the poet wrote <i>Alma</i>, a
+humorous and speculative poem on the relations of the soul
+and body, and when released published his <i>Poems</i> by subscription
+in a noble folio, said to be the largest-sized volume
+in the whole range of English poetry. He gained 4,000
+guineas by the publication, and with that sum and an
+estate purchased for him by Lord Harley, Prior was able
+to live in comfort. He died in September, 1721, in his
+fifty-eighth year, and was buried in Westminster Abbey,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
+under a monument for which he had had the vanity to pay
+five hundred pounds.</p>
+
+<p>The peculiar merit of Prior is better understood in our
+day than it was in his own. We read his poems solely for
+the sake of the 'lighter pieces,' which Johnson despised.
+The poet thought <i>Solomon</i> his best work, but no one who
+toils through the three books which form that poem is likely
+to agree with this estimate. Dulness pervades the work
+like an atmosphere, but it had its admirers in the last century,
+and among them was John Wesley, who, in reply to
+Johnson's complaint of its tediousness, said he should as
+soon think of calling the Second or Sixth Æneid tedious.
+In the preface to the poem Prior declares that he "had
+rather be thought a good Englishman than the best poet
+or greatest scholar that ever wrote," a passage which does
+more honour to the poet than any in the text. A far
+more popular piece was <i>Henry and Emma</i>, which even
+so fine a judge of poetry as Cowper called 'inimitable.'
+Tastes change, let us hope for the better, and possibly none
+but the greatest poets remain unaffected by time. Assuredly
+Prior does not, and <i>Henry and Emma</i> affords a
+striking illustration of the contrast between the poetical
+spirit of Prior's age and that which influences ours. The
+poem is founded on the fine ballad of the <i>Nut-Browne
+Maide</i>. The story, as originally told, is homely and
+quaint, written without apparent effort and told in 360
+lines. Prior requires considerably more than twice that
+number, and his maid and her lover, instead of using the
+simple language befitting the theme, employ the conventional
+machinery of the age, and bring Jove and Mars,
+Cupid and Venus upon the scene, with allusions to Marlborough's
+victories and to 'Anna's wondrous reign.'</p>
+
+<p><i>Alma</i>, a poem written in Hudibrastic verse, which shows
+that Prior had in a measure caught the vein of Butler, has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+some couplets familiar in quotations. He won, too, not a
+little contemporary reputation for his tales in verse, which
+are singularly coarse; but an age that tolerated Mrs. Manley
+and read the plays and novels of Aphra Behn was not likely
+to object to the grossness of Prior. Dr. Johnson would not
+admit that his poems were unfit for a lady's table, and
+Wesley, who appears to have been strangely oblivious to
+Prior's moral delinquencies, observes that his tales are the
+best told of any in the English tongue. Cowper praised
+him for his 'charming ease,' and this gift enabled him to
+write some of the most delightful occasional verses produced
+in the century. There is nothing more exquisite of
+its kind than his address, <i>To a Child of Quality</i>, written
+when the child was five years old and the poet forty, and
+one is not surprised to learn that Prior was admired by
+Thomas Moore, who more than once caught his note. A
+reader familiar with Moore and ignorant of Prior would
+without hesitation attribute the following stanzas, from
+the <i>Answer to Chloe Jealous</i>, to the Irish poet:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The god of us versemen (you know, Child), the sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">How after his journeys he sets up his rest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If at morning o'er earth 'tis his fancy to run,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">At night he declines on his Thetis's breast.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'So when I am wearied with wandering all day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To thee, my delight, in the evening I come;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No matter what beauties I saw in my way;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">They were but my visits, but thou art my home.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Then finish, dear Cloe, this pastoral war,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And let us, like Horace and Lydia, agree;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For thou art a girl as much brighter than her<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As he was a poet sublimer than me.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"The grammatical lapse in these last two lines," says Mr.
+Austin Dobson, "perhaps calls for correction, but many
+readers will probably agree with Moore (<i>Diary</i>, November,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>
+1818), 'that it is far prettier as it is.' 'Nothing,' he says
+truly, 'can be more gracefully light and gallant than this
+little poem.'"</p>
+
+<p>It was fancy and not imagination which conceived the
+following lines, but how charming is the fancy! The
+poem, which is given in a slightly abridged form, is
+addressed</p>
+
+<p class="center">'<span class="smcap">To a Lady: she refusing to continue a dispute with me,
+and leaving me in the argument.</span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'In the dispute whate'er I said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My heart was by my tongue belied;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in my looks you might have read<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">How much I argued on your side.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'You, far from danger as from fear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Might have sustained an open fight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For seldom your opinions err;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your eyes are always in the right.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Alas! not hoping to subdue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I only to the fight aspired;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To keep the beauteous foe in view<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Was all the glory I desired.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'But she, howe'er of victory sure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Contemns the wreath too long delayed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, armed with more immediate power,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Calls cruel silence to her aid.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Deeper to wound, she shuns the fight:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">She drops her arms, to gain the field;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Secures her conquest by her flight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And triumphs, when she seems to yield.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'So when the Parthian turned his steed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And from the hostile camp withdrew;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With cruel skill the backward reed<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He sent; and as he fled, he slew.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Wit and a ready command of verse are the characteristics
+of Prior's poetry. Both of these gifts are to be seen in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>
+lively <i>English ballad on the Taking of Namur by the King
+of Great Britain</i>, in which he travesties Boileau's <i>Ode sur
+la prise de Namur</i>. As an epigrammatist he reaped his
+advantage from a study of Martial, and in this department
+of verse Prior is often successful. If brevity be a prominent
+merit in an epigram, he sometimes excels his
+master, as, for example, in this stanza:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'To John I owed great obligation;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But John unhappily thought fit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To publish it to all the nation;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sure John and I are more than quit.'<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This is half the length of the original Latin, and what it
+loses in elegance it gains in point.</p>
+
+<p>It may be hoped that the next quotation is a libel on
+Bishop Atterbury; if so, the lines have every merit but
+truth. The epigram is on the funeral of the Duke of
+Buckingham, who died in 1721.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I have no hopes,' the duke he says, and dies;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'In sure and certain hopes,' the prelate cries:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of these two learned peers, I prithee say, man,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who is the lying knave, the priest or layman?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The duke he stands an infidel confest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'He's our dear brother,' quoth the lordly priest.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The duke, though knave, still 'brother dear,' he cries;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And who can say the reverend prelate lies?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Prior, it may be observed here, could say pointed things
+in prose as well as in verse, and nothing can be happier
+than his reply to the Frenchman's inquiry whether the
+King of England had anything to show in his palace equal
+to the paintings at Versailles illustrating the victories of
+Louis XIV: 'The monuments of my master's actions,' said
+the poet, 'are to be seen everywhere except in his own house.'</p>
+
+<p>It is always interesting to link poet with poet, and in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+relation to Prior many readers will recall the pathetic
+incident related of Sir Walter Scott when the wonderful
+intellect which had entranced the world was giving indications
+of decay. Lockhart relates how, as they were travelling
+together, a quotation from Prior led Scott to make
+another, slightly altered for the occasion, and he adds:</p>
+
+<p>'This seemed to put him into the train of Prior, and he
+repeated several striking passages both of the <i>Alma</i> and
+the <i>Solomon</i>. He was still at this when we reached a
+longish hill, and he got out to walk a little. As we climbed
+the ascent, he leaning heavily on my shoulder, we were met
+by a couple of beggars, who were, or professed to be, old
+soldiers both of Egypt and the Peninsula. One of them
+wanted a leg, which circumstance alone would have opened
+Scott's purse-strings, though, <i>ex facie</i>, a sad old blackguard;
+but the fellow had recognized his person as it happened,
+and in asking an alms bade God bless him fervently by his
+name. The mendicants went on their way, and we stood
+breathing on the knoll. Sir Walter followed them with his
+eye, and planting his stick firmly on the sod, repeated, without
+break or hesitation Prior's verses to the historian
+Mezeray. That he applied them to himself was touchingly
+obvious, and therefore I must quote them.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'"Whate'er thy countrymen have done,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By law and wit, by sword and gun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In thee is faithfully recited;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all the living world that view<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy work, give thee the praises due,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">At once instructed and delighted.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'"Yet for the fame of all these deeds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What beggar in the <i>Invalides</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With lameness broke, with blindness smitten,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wished ever decently to die,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To have been either Mezeray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or any monarch he has written?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'"It strange, dear author, yet it true is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That down from Pharamond to Louis<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All covet life, yet call it pain:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All feel the ill, yet shun the cure;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Can sense this paradox endure?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Resolve me Cambray<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> or Fontaine.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'"The man in graver tragic known<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Though his best part long since was done),<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Still on the stage desires to tarry;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he who played the Harlequin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">After the jest still loads the scene,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Unwilling to retire, though weary."'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">John Gay
+(1685-1732).</div>
+
+<p>Gay, who enjoyed an unbroken friendship with the
+brotherhood of wits, and was treated by
+them like a spoilt child, was born at Barnstaple
+in 1685, and left an orphan at the age
+of ten. He was educated at the free grammar school in
+the town, and was afterwards, to his discontent, apprenticed
+to a mercer in London. He escaped from this uncongenial
+employment to be dependent on an uncle, and thus
+early exhibited his life-long disposition to rely upon others
+for support. 'Providence,' Swift writes, 'never designed
+Gay to be above two-and-twenty by his thoughtlessness and
+gullibility. He has as little foresight of age, sickness,
+poverty, or loss of admirers as a girl of fifteen.' His weakness,
+it has been said, appealed to Swift's strength, and
+Swift, Pope, and Arbuthnot were Gay's most faithful
+friends. They found something in him to laugh at and to
+love. Ladies, too, treated him with the kind of friendliness
+which has a touch of commiseration. In 1714 Gay
+was appointed secretary to Lord Clarendon, a post which
+he owed to Swift, but the death of Queen Anne in that
+year brought the Whigs into office, and destroyed the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
+poet's prospects. Prior to this he had been secretary to
+the imperious Duchess of Monmouth. He was now left
+without money or employment, and owed much to the
+generosity of Pope. It was Gay's lot 'in suing long to
+bide,' to be always hoping, and nearly always disappointed.
+'He seems,' says his latest biographer, 'to have begun his
+career under the impression that it was somebody's duty to
+provide for him in the world, and this impression clung to
+him through nearly the whole of a lifetime.'<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> Ten years
+before his death he was eagerly looking to others for support.
+Writing to Swift, he says: 'I lodge at present in
+Burlington House, and have received many civilities from
+many great men, but very few real benefits. They wonder
+at each other for not providing for me, and I wonder at
+them all.'</p>
+
+<p>Gay's first poem of any mark was <i>The Shepherd's Week</i>
+(1714), six burlesque pastorals, a subject proposed to him
+by Pope, who was then smarting from the praise Philips
+had received in <i>The Guardian</i>. But if Pope meant Gay to
+poke his fun at Philips in <i>The Shepherd's Week</i>, he must
+have been disappointed, for the poems were accepted as
+genuine bucolics, and although humorously absurd, are,
+to say the least, more true to rustic life than the pastorals
+either of Philips or of Pope. <i>The Shepherd's Week</i> was
+followed by <i>Trivia</i> (1715), a piece suggested by Swift's
+<i>City Shower</i>. It is one of Gay's most notable productions,
+not as a poem, but as a vivid description of the streets
+of London nearly two hundred years ago. The great reputation
+he obtained as the author of <i>The Fables</i> (1727),
+and still more of <i>The Beggar's Opera</i> (1728), the idea of
+which was suggested to Gay by Swift, survived him for
+some years. <i>The Fables</i> were written for and dedicated to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+the youthful Duke of Cumberland, who is asked to "accept
+the moral lay, and in these tales mankind survey." There
+is skill and ingenuity in the poems, but higher merit they
+cannot boast, and young readers are likely to prefer the
+illustrations which generally accompany <i>The Fables</i> to the
+letterpress. Many of Gay's allusions are beyond the apprehension
+of the young, and have a political flavour. <i>The
+Beggar's Opera</i> was intended as a burlesque of the Italian
+opera, which had been long the laughing-stock of men of
+letters, and as the play was thought to have political significance,
+and the character of Macheath to be a portrait of
+Walpole, it was received with enthusiasm, and acted in
+London for about sixty nights. So popular did the opera
+become, that ladies carried about the songs on their fans.</p>
+
+<p>Eight years before, Gay had published his poems by
+subscription, and in those happy days for versemen had
+gained £1,000 by the venture. He put the money into
+South Sea stock, and lost it all. For <i>The Beggar's
+Opera</i> he received about £800. It was followed by <i>Polly</i>,
+a play of the same coarse character, which, for political
+reasons, was not allowed to be acted. The result was
+that it had a large sale, and put money in Gay's purse.
+Ten thousand five hundred copies are said to have been
+printed in one year, and the £1,200 realized by the sale
+were very wisely retained for the poet's use by the Duke
+of Queensberry, under whose roof he had at length found
+a warm nest. To the student Gay is chiefly interesting as
+the only noteworthy poet of the period, south of the Tweed,
+gifted with a lyrical capacity. Two or three of his songs
+and ballads, and especially <i>Black-Eyed Susan</i>, have a charm
+beyond the reach of the mechanical versifier. But the art
+of song is at a low level even in the hands of Gay. The
+lyric which the Elizabethan and Jacobean poets loved so
+well, and of which the present century has produced speci<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>mens
+to be matched only by Shakespeare, may be said to
+have been lost to English poetry for the first half of the
+last century, since neither Prior's verse, delightful though
+it be, nor the songs of Gay, have enough of the poetical
+element to form exceptions to this statement.</p>
+
+<p>In his <i>Tales</i> he follows Prior in grossness, while inferior
+to him in art. Like the greater number of the Queen
+Anne poets, Gay flatters with a free hand. In an epistle
+addressed to Lintot, the bookseller, he declares that
+Anacreon lives once more in Sheffield, and Waller in Granville,
+that Buckingham's verse will last to distant time;
+while Ovid sings again in Addison, and 'Homer's <i>Iliad</i>
+shines in his <i>Campaign</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>One of the liveliest and most graceful of Gay's poems is
+addressed to Pope 'On his having finished his translation
+of Homer's <i>Iliad</i>.' It is called <i>A Welcome from Greece</i>, and
+describes the friends who assembled to greet the poet on
+his return to England.</p>
+
+<p>Three stanzas from the Epistle shall be quoted:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Oh, what a concourse swarms on yonder quay!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The sky re-echoes with new shouts of joy;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By all this show, I ween 'tis Lord Mayor's day;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I hear the voice of trumpet and hautboy&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No, now I see them near.&mdash;Oh, these are they<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who come in crowds to welcome thee from Troy.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hail to the bard, whom long as lost we mourned<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From siege, from battle, and from storm returned!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'What lady's that to whom he gently bends?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who knows not her? Ah! those are Wortley's eyes:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How art thou honoured, numbered with her friends!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For she distinguishes the good and wise.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sweet-tongued Murray near her side attends;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Now to my heart the glance of Howard flies;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now Hervey, fair of face, I mark full well,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With thee Youth's youngest daughter, sweet Lepell.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I see two lovely sisters hand in hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The fair-haired Martha and Teresa brown;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Madge Bellenden, the tallest of the land;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And smiling Mary, soft and fair as down.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yonder I see the cheerful Duchess stand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For friendship, zeal, and blithesome humours known;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whence that loud shout in such a hearty strain?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why, all the Hamiltons are in her train!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Gay's love of good living was known to all his friends.
+'As the French philosopher,' Congreve wrote, 'used to
+prove his existence by <i>cogito ergo sum</i>, the greatest proof
+of Gay's existence is <i>edit ergo est</i>.' For a long time his
+health compelled him to give up wine, and he tells Swift
+that he had also left off verse-making, 'for I really
+think that man must be a bold writer who trusts to
+wit without it.' He was dispirited, he told Swift not
+long before his death, for want of a pursuit, and found
+'indolence and idleness the most tiresome things in the
+world.'</p>
+
+<p>Gay died in 1732 at the Duke of Queensberry's house,
+and Pope grieved that one of his nearest and longest ties
+was broken. He was interred, to quote Arbuthnot's words,
+'as a peer of the realm,' in Westminster Abbey. The
+superficial character of the poet may be seen in his couplet
+transcribed upon the monument:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Life is a jest, and all things show it;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I thought so once, and now I know it.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Edward Young
+(1684-1765).</div>
+
+<p>Gay's moderate gift of song was withheld from the
+famous author of the <i>Night Thoughts</i>. Yet
+Young was vain enough to think that he
+possessed it, and wrote a patriotic ode
+called <i>Ocean</i>, preceded by an elaborate essay on lyric
+poetry. He also produced <i>Imperium Pelagi</i> (1729), <i>A Naval
+Lyric written in Imitation of Pindar's spirit</i>. The lyric,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+which was travestied by Fielding in his <i>Tom Thumb</i>,<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> reads
+like a burlesque, and badly treated though Pindar was by
+the versemen of the last century, there is perhaps not
+one of them who mocks him more outrageously than
+Young. He says that this ode is an original, and no critic
+is likely to dispute the assertion.</p>
+
+<p>Young was born in 1684 at Upham, near Winchester, his
+father, who was afterwards Dean of Sarum, being at that
+time the rector of the village. Edward was placed upon
+the foundation at Winchester College, and remained there
+until he was eighteen. He was then sent up to New College,
+and afterwards removed to Corpus. At the age of
+twenty-seven he was nominated to a law fellowship at All
+Souls, and took his degree of B.C.L. and his doctor's degree
+some years later. Characteristically enough he began
+his poetical career by <i>An Epistle to Lord Lansdowne</i> (1712),
+who is praised for his heavenly numbers, and is said to
+have been born "to make the muse immortal." His next
+poem of any consequence, <i>The Last Day</i>, written in heroic
+couplets, and filling three books, is correct, or fairly so, in
+versification, and execrable in taste. Young, it may be
+supposed, wished to produce a sense of solemnity in
+the treatment of his theme, and he does so by lamenting
+that the very land 'where the Stuarts filled an awful
+throne' will in that day be forgotten. The want of
+taste which so often deforms Young's verse is also seen
+in the imagery he employs to illustrate the fear which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
+even good men may have on appearing before that 'dread
+tribunal.'</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Thus the chaste bridegroom, when the priest draws nigh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beholds his blessing with a trembling eye;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Feels doubtful passions throb in every vein,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in his cheeks are mingled joy and pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lest still some intervening chance should rise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Leap forth at once, and snatch the golden prize,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Inflame his woe, by bringing it so late,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And stab him in the crisis of his fate.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>His next poem, <i>The Force of Religion, or Vanquished
+Love</i>, was suggested by the execution of Lady Jane Grey
+and Lord Guildford, a subject chosen for a tragedy by John
+Banks (1694), by Rowe in 1715, and treated with considerable
+dramatic power in our own day by Ross Neil. In
+Young's hands this fine theme becomes a rhetorical exercise
+without poetry and without pathos. A few lines will
+suffice to show the style of the poem. Jane and Dudley, it
+must be premised, are imprisoned in a gloomy hall:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'What can they do? They fix their mournful eyes&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then Guildford, thus abruptly: "I despise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An empire lost; I fling away the crown;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Numbers have laid that bright delusion down;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But where's the Charles, or Dioclesian, where,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could quit the blooming, wedded, weeping fair?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh! to dwell ever on thy lip! to stand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In full possession of thy snowy hand!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thro' the unclouded crystal of thine eye<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The heavenly treasures of thy mind to spy!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till rapture reason happily destroys,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And my soul wanders through immortal joys!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Give me the world, and ask me, where's my bliss?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I clasp thee to my breast and answer, this."'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Verse of this quality, which might be amply quoted, is
+of interest to the student of literature, since in Young's
+day it passed current for poetry. But in accepting his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+claims as a poet the faith of the age must have been often
+strained.</p>
+
+<p>Walpole, who despised the whole tribe of poets, and
+cared nothing for literature, had by some strange chance
+awarded to Young a pension of £200 a-year, whereupon in
+a piece called <i>The Instalment</i>, addressed to Sir Robert,
+Britain is called upon to behold</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'His azure ribbon and his radiant star,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and the poet's breast 'glows with grateful fire' as he exclaims:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The streams of royal bounty turned by thee<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Refresh the dry domains of poesy.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My fortune shows, when arts are Walpole's care,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What slender worth forbids us to despair:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be this thy partial smile from censure free,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Twas meant for merit, though it fell on me.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Following in the steps of George Sandys, but with inferior
+power, and in a less racy diction, Young performed
+the vain task of paraphrasing part of the Book of Job, one
+of the noblest poems the world possesses, and translated in
+our authorized version in language not to be surpassed for
+dignity and simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>In 1719 his <i>Busiris</i> was performed. <i>The Revenge</i>, a
+better known tragedy, written on the French model,
+followed in 1721, and kept the stage for some time.
+Seven years later <i>The Brothers</i>, his third and last tragedy,
+was in rehearsal, but the poet, who had lately taken holy
+orders, withdrew it at the last moment. These tragedies,
+which are full of sound and fury, are destitute of tragic
+power. <i>The Revenge</i>, in which Zanga acts the part of an
+Iago, has some forcible scenes, and so, despite much rant
+and fustian, has <i>Busiris</i>. Plenty of blood is shed, of
+course, and the heroines of the plays die by their own
+hands. Tragedy is supposed to exercise an elevating in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>fluence,
+but to counteract this happy result, <i>Busiris</i> and
+<i>The Revenge</i> are followed by indecent epilogues, in which
+the speakers jest at the feelings which the plays may have
+excited. For <i>The Brothers</i> Young wrote his own epilogue.
+It is decent and dull. His genius was better fitted for
+satire than for the drama, and <i>The Universal Passion</i>, which
+consists of seven satires published in a collected form in 1728,
+brought him reputation and money. The poet Crabbe was
+never more surprised in his life than when John Murray
+(the famous 'My Murray' of Byron) gave him £3,000
+for the copyright of his poems; Young received the same
+sum for work immeasurably inferior in value, and in a
+less legitimate way. Two thousand pounds, it is stated,
+was a gift from the Duke of Grafton, who said it was the
+best bargain he ever made, as the satires were worth
+£4,000. Young, it will be seen, preceded Pope as a
+satirist. He is more generous and humane, and has
+none of the venomous attacks on living persons by which
+Pope added piquancy to his verse. But he is a careless
+writer, and for the most part lacks the exquisite precision,
+the subtle wit, the rhythmical felicity, which make the
+couplets of Pope so memorable. <i>The Dunciad</i>, the <i>Moral
+Essays</i>, and the <i>Imitations</i> are read by all lovers of literature,
+but <i>The Universal Passion</i> is forgotten. Of the six
+satires, the two on women are the most spirited, and may
+be compared with Pope's on the same subject. The different
+foibles, and faults worse than foibles of the women of
+that day are exhibited with a satirist's licence, and occasionally
+with a Pope-like terseness. Take the following,
+for example:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'There is no woman where there's no reserve,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And 'tis on plenty your poor lovers starve.'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Few to good breeding make a just pretence;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Good breeding is the blossom of good sense.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'A shameless woman is the worst of men.'<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Naked in nothing should a woman be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But veil her very wit with modesty.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It was not until he was nearly fifty that Young, disappointed
+of the preferment he sought, took holy orders,
+and in 1730 accepted the college living of Welwyn, in
+Herts, which he held till his death.</p>
+
+<p>In the following year the poet married Lady Elizabeth
+Lee, a daughter of the Earl of Lichfield, a union that
+lasted ten years. One son was the offspring of this marriage.
+Lady Elizabeth had a daughter by a former marriage,
+who was married to Mr. Temple, a son of Lord Palmerston,
+and shortly before her own death she lost both daughter
+and son-in-law, who, there can be little doubt, are the
+Philander and Narcissa of the <i>Night Thoughts</i>, the earlier
+books of which were published in 1742. This once celebrated
+poem, written in his old age, is the one effort of
+Young's genius that has enjoyed a great popularity. It
+suited well an age which, while far from moral, delighted
+in moral treatises and in didactic verse. In the <i>Night
+Thoughts</i> Young remembers that he is a clergyman, and
+puts on his gown and bands. He puts on also his singing
+robes, and shows the reader what none of his earlier poems
+prove, that he is in the presence of a poet.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Night Thoughts</i> is remarkable in its finest passages
+for a strong, but sombre imagination, and for a command
+of his instrument that puts Young at times nearly on a
+level with the greatest masters of blank verse. On this
+height, however, he does not stay long. He is rich in great
+thoughts, but they do not fall unconsciously, as it were,
+while the poet pursues his argument. They are aphorisms
+uttered generally in single lines which are apt to break the
+continuity of the poem and to injure the harmony of its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
+versification. The theme of Life, Death, and Immortality
+is not a narrow one, and affords ample space for imaginative
+treatment. Young's treatment of it is too often declamatory;
+he drops the poet in the rhetorician and the
+wit. There is much of the false sublime in the poem,
+and much that reveals the hollow character of the writer.
+The first book is the finest, sparkling with felicitous expressions
+and rising frequently to true poetry. The
+poetical quality of that book, however, is lessened by the
+author's passion for antithesis. The merit of the following
+passage, for example, is not due to poetical inspiration:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How complicate, how wonderful is man!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How passing wonder He, who made him such!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who centered in our make such strange extremes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From different natures, marvellously mixed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Connexion exquisite of distant worlds!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Distinguished link in being's endless chain!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Midway from nothing to the Deity;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A beam etherial, sullied, and absorbt!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though sullied and dishonoured still divine!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dim miniature of greatness absolute!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An heir of glory! a frail child of dust!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Helpless immortal! insect infinite!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A worm! a god!&mdash;I tremble at myself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in myself am lost. At home a stranger,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wondering at her own: How reason reels!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O what a miracle to man is man!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Triumphantly distressed! what joy! what dread!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alternately transported and alarmed!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What can preserve my life? or what destroy?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Legions of angels can't confine me there.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The opening of the ninth and last book will give a more
+favourable illustration of Young's style:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'As when a traveller, a long day past<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In painful search of what he cannot find,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At night's approach, content with the next cot,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There ruminates awhile, his labour lost;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then cheers his heart with what his fate affords,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And chants his sonnet to deceive the time,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till the due season calls him to repose;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thus I, long-travelled in the ways of men,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And dancing with the rest the giddy maze<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where Disappointment smiles at Hope's career;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Warned by the languor of life's evening ray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At length have housed me in an humble shed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where, future wandering banished from my thought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And waiting, patient, the sweet hour of rest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I chase the moments with a serious song.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Song soothes our pains, and age has pains to soothe.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>While moralizing on man's mortality Young is seldom a
+cheerful monitor, he dwells with too great persistence on
+the incidents of death and of bodily corruption, too little
+on life with which we have more to do than with death.
+Thus with a strange perversion he exclaims:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'This is the desart, this the solitude,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How populous, how vital, is the grave!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This is creation's melancholy vault,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The land of apparitions, empty shades!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All, all on earth is shadow, all beyond<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is substance; the reverse is folly's creed.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and harping on the same theme in the ninth book,
+says:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'What is the world itself? Thy world&mdash;a grave.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where is the dust that has not been alive?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The spade, the plough, disturb our ancestors;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From human mould we reap our daily bread;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The globe around earth's hollow surface shakes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And is the ceiling of her sleeping sons.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O'er devastation we blind revels keep;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whole buried towns support the dancer's heel.'<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Robert Blair
+(1699-1746).</div>
+
+<p>On laying down the <i>Night Thoughts</i> the student may be
+advised to read Blair's <i>Grave</i>, a poem in
+less than 800 lines of blank verse, composed
+in a fresher and more rigorous style than the
+far larger work of Young, and rather moulded, as Mr.
+Saintsbury has observed, 'upon dramatic than upon purely
+poetical models.' <i>The Grave</i>, which was written before the
+publication of the <i>Night Thoughts</i>,<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> abounds with poetical
+felicities, and is pregnant with suggestions that seize the
+imagination, and appeal alike to the intellect and the
+heart. The brevity of the piece is in its favour; there is
+not a line that flags.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Tell us, ye dead! will none of you, in pity<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To those you left behind, disclose the secret?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh! that some courteous ghost would blab it out,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What 'tis you are and we must shortly be.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I've heard that souls departed have sometimes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forewarned men of their death. 'Twas kindly done<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To knock and give the alarm. But what means<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This stinted charity? 'Tis but lame kindness<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That does its work by halves. Why might you not<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tell us what 'tis to die? Do the strict laws<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of your society forbid your speaking<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon a point so nice?&mdash;I'll ask no more:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sullen, like lamps in sepulchres, your shine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Enlightens but yourselves. Well, 'tis no matter;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A very little time will clear up all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And make us learn'd as you are, and as close.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p>
+<p>Blair, who was a Scotch clergyman, wrote also an <i>Elegy
+in Memory of William Law</i>, a Professor of Moral Philosophy
+in Edinburgh, whose daughter he married. He writes
+in a masculine and homely style. His imagery is often
+more powerful than pleasing, but some of his similes win
+attention by their beauty. For example:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Look how the fair one weeps! the conscious tears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stand thick as dewdrops on the bells of flowers."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Among the victims claimed by the grave is</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">'The long demurring maid,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose lonely unappropriated sweets<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Smiled, like yon knot of cowslips on the cliff,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not to be come at by the willing hand.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And the death of a good man is pictured in this musical
+couplet:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Night dews fall not more gently to the ground<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor weary worn out winds expire so soft.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Cowper, referring to the poets of his century, said that
+every warbler had Pope's tune by heart. But if they
+had the tune by heart, many of them did not make it a
+vehicle for their verse, and among these are poets of the
+weight and worth of Thomson and Young, of Gray and
+Collins. Poets of a minor order, too, such as Somerville,
+Armstrong, Glover, Shenstone, Akenside, and John Dyer,
+either did not use the heroic distich which Pope crowned
+with such honour, or used it in their least significant poems.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">James Thomson
+(1700-1748).</div>
+
+<p>Thomson's influence, though less visible than Pope's,
+was probably as great. It was felt by
+the poets who loved Nature, and had no
+turn for satire. To pass to him from
+Prior, Gay, and Young is to leave the town for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
+country. English poetry owes much to the author
+of <i>The Seasons</i>, who was the first among the poets of
+his century to bring men back to 'Nature, the Vicar of
+the Almighty Lord.' He could not, indeed, shake off
+altogether the fetters of the conventional diction current in
+his day, and his style is often turgid and verbose. But
+Thomson had, to use a phrase of his own, 'a fine flame of
+imagination,' and when brought face to face with Nature
+he has the inspiration of a poet who discerns the lessons
+which Nature is ready to teach.</p>
+
+<p>James Thomson was born at Ednam, on the banks of
+the Tweed, on September 11th, 1700, but his father removed
+to Jedburgh shortly afterwards, and there the future poet
+gained his first impression of rural scenes. He began to
+rhyme in boyhood, but, unlike most young poets, had the
+good sense to make an annual bonfire of his youthful
+effusions. At the early age of fifteen he was sent to the
+university at Edinburgh, his father, who was a Presbyterian
+minister, wishing that his son should follow the same vocation.
+But Thomson was not destined to 'wag his head in
+a pulpit.' He had a friend at this time in David Mallet,
+a minor poet of more prudence than principle, and when
+Mallet had the good fortune to gain a tutorship in London,
+his companion also started for the metropolis in search of
+money and fame. It was a desperate venture, and the
+young poet's difficulties were increased by the loss of his
+letters of introduction. Scotchmen however have always
+countrymen willing to help them, and Thomson whose
+pedigree on the mother's side connected him with the
+famous house of Home, found temporary employment as
+tutor to a child of Lord Binning who belonged by marriage
+to the same family. Afterwards he resided with Millan, a
+bookseller at Charing Cross, and then having finished
+<i>Winter</i> (1726), on which he had been at work for some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>
+time, he sold it to the publisher for three guineas. Before
+long it was read and warmly praised by Aaron Hill, then
+a man of mark in the world of letters. Sir Spencer
+Compton, the Speaker, to whom the poem was dedicated,
+gave the poet twenty guineas for the compliment; Rundle,
+the Bishop of Derry, and several ladies of rank cheered
+him with their praise, and Thomson's success was assured.
+It was the age of patrons, and he practised without shame
+and without discrimination the art of flattery. Each book
+of <i>The Seasons</i> had a dedication, and the honour was one
+for which some kind of payment was expected. <i>Summer</i>
+appeared in 1727 and <i>Spring</i> in the year following. In
+1729 the appearance of <i>Britannia</i> showed the popularity of
+the poet and of his theme, for three editions were sold. It
+is a distinctly party poem, and contains an attack upon
+Walpole&mdash;whom he had previously praised as the 'most
+illustrious of patriots'&mdash;for submitting to indignities from
+Spain. The British Lion roars loudly in it, but there is
+more of fustian in the piece than of true patriotism. 'How
+dares,' the poet exclaims, 'the proud Iberian rouse to wrath
+the masters of the main:'</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Who told him that the big incumbent war<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Would not ere this have rolled his trembling ports<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In smoky ruin? and his guilty stores,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Won by the ravage of a butchered world,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet unatoned, sunk in the swallowing deep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or led the glittering prize into the Thames?'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In February, 1729-30, Thomson's tragedy of <i>Sophonisba</i>,
+a subject previously chosen by Marston (1606), and by Lee
+(1676), was acted at Drury Lane. The play was dedicated
+to the queen, and on the opening night the house was
+crowded, but the success of the piece was slight. Thomson's
+genius was not dramatic, and while his characters declaim,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>
+they do not act. His next play, <i>Agamemnon</i> (1738),
+was not lost for want of labour or of friends. Pope
+appeared in the theatre on the first night, and was greeted
+with applause. The Prince and Princess of Wales were
+present on another occasion, but the play did not live
+long. His third attempt, <i>Edward and Eleanora</i>, was prohibited
+by the Lord Chamberlain, since it was supposed to
+praise the Prince of Wales at the expense of the Court. In
+1740 the <i>Masque of Alfred</i>, by Thomson and Mallet, was
+performed. <i>Tancred and Sigismunda</i> followed in 1745, and
+this tragedy, in which Garrick played the leading part, had
+at the time a considerable measure of success. The plot is
+more interesting than that of <i>Sophonisba</i>, and the characters
+are more life-like. Despite its effusive sentiment,
+Garrick's splendid acting would, no doubt, make the
+tragedy effective on the stage, but it does not add to the
+literary reputation of the poet. <i>Coriolanus</i>, Thomson's
+last drama, was not performed upon the stage until the
+year after his death.</p>
+
+<p>Voltaire, who had met Thomson and liked him&mdash;the
+liking, indeed, seemed to be universal&mdash;praised his tragedies
+for being 'elegantly writ.' 'It may be,' he says,
+'that his heroes are neither moving nor busy enough, but
+taking him all in all, methinks he has the highest claim to
+the greatest esteem.' The value of Voltaire's criticism of
+an English dramatist is best appreciated by remembering
+his ignorant judgment of Shakespeare.</p>
+
+<p>Thomson's laurels were gained in another field of poetry.
+On the production of <i>Autumn</i> in 1730, <i>The Seasons</i> in
+its complete form was published by subscription in quarto.
+The four books, as we have already said, appeared at
+different times, <i>Winter</i> being the first in order and <i>Autumn</i>
+the latest. The Hymn with which the poem concludes
+may be compared, and will not greatly suffer in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>
+comparison, with Adam's morning hymn in the fifth book
+of <i>Paradise Lost</i>, and with Coleridge's <i>Hymn in the Valley
+of Chamouni</i>. Like them it is raised, to use the poet's own
+words, to an 'Almighty Father.' A brief extract shall
+be given:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'His praise, ye brooks, attune, ye trembling rills;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And let me catch it as I muse along.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye headlong torrents, rapid, and profound;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye softer floods, that lead the humid maze<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Along the vale; and thou, majestic main,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A secret world of wonders in thyself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sound His stupendous praise, whose greater voice<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or bids you roar, or bids your roarings fall.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soft roll your incense, herbs, and fruits, and flowers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In mingled clouds to Him, whose sun exalts,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil paints.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye forests bend, ye harvests wave, to Him;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Breathe your still song into the reaper's heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As home he goes beneath the joyous moon.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Great source of day! best image here below<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of thy Creator, ever pouring wide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From world to world, the vital ocean round,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On Nature write with every beam His praise.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The thunder rolls: be hushed the prostrate world;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While cloud to cloud returns the solemn hymn.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bleat out afresh, ye hills; ye mossy rocks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Retain the sound: the broad responsive low,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye valleys, raise; for the Great Shepherd reigns,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And His unsuffering kingdom yet will come.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Swift complains that the <i>Seasons</i>, being all descriptive,
+nothing is doing, a defect inseparable from the subject.
+But the work has a poet's best gift&mdash;imagination&mdash;and a
+poet's instinct for apprehending the charm of what is
+minute in Nature, as well as of what is grand.</p>
+
+<p>Thomson has been called the naturalist's poet, and
+Hartley Coleridge observes that he is 'a perfect reservoir<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
+of natural images.' In his account of what he had learnt
+only by report he depends sometimes on the ignorant
+traditions of the country people; but in describing what
+he observes with the bodily eye, and with the eye of the
+mind, he is faithful to what he sees, and to what he perceives.
+No Dutch painter can be more exact and accurate
+than Thomson in the delineation of familiar scenes,
+and of animal life. In illustration of this gift, which
+Cowper shares with him, a scene, not to be surpassed
+for truthfulness of description, shall be quoted from
+<i>Winter</i>:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Through the hushed air the whitening shower descends,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At first thin-wavering; till at last the flakes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fall broad and wide and fast, dimming the day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a continual flow. The cherished fields<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Put on their winter robe of purest white.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Along the mazy current. Low the woods<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bow their hoar head; and ere the languid sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Faint from the west, emits his evening ray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Earth's universal face, deep-hid and chill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is one wild dazzling waste, that buries wide<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The works of man. Drooping, the labourer-ox<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stands covered o'er with snow, and then demands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tamed by the cruel season, crowd around<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The winnowing store, and claim the little boon<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which Providence assigns them. One alone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The redbreast, sacred to the household gods,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wisely regardful of th' embroiling sky,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In joyless fields and thorny thickets, leaves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His annual visit. Half afraid, he first<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Against the window beats; then brisk, alights<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eyes all the smiling family askance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till more familiar grown, the table-crumbs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though timorous of heart and hard beset<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By death in various forms, dark snares, and dogs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And more unpitying men, the garden seeks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Urged on by fearless want. The bleating kind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With looks of dumb despair; then, sad-dispersed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dig for the withered herb through heaps of snow.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Thomson loves also to paint the landscape on a broad
+scale, and though his diction is sometimes too florid, he
+generally satisfies the imagination, as, for instance, in the
+splendid description in <i>Summer</i> of a sand-storm in the
+desert.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">'Breathed hot<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From all the boundless furnace of the sky,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the wide, glittering waste of burning sand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A suffocating wind the pilgrim smites<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With instant death. Patient of thirst and toil,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Son of the desert! even the camel feels,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shot through his withered heart, the fiery blast.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or from the black-red ether, bursting broad,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sallies the sudden whirlwind. Straight the sands,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Commoved around, in gathering eddies play;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nearer and nearer still they darkening come;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till with the general all-involving storm<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swept up, the whole continuous wilds arise;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And by their noonday fount dejected thrown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or sunk at night in sad disastrous sleep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beneath descending hills, the caravan<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is buried deep. In Cairo's crowded streets<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The impatient merchant, wondering, waits in vain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Mecca saddens at the long delay.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The <i>Seasons</i> was at one time, and for many years the
+most popular volume of poetry in the country. It was
+to be found in every cottage, and passages from the poem
+were familiar to every school-boy. The appreciation of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>
+the work was more affectionate than critical, and Thomson's
+faults were sometimes mistaken for beauties; but
+the popularity of the <i>Seasons</i> was a healthy sign, and the
+poem, a forerunner of Cowper's <i>Task</i>, brought into
+vigorous life, feelings and sympathies that had been long
+dormant.</p>
+
+<p>Pope, who is twice mentioned in the poem, took a great
+interest in its progress through the press. Thomson consulted
+him frequently, and accepted many of his suggestions,
+while apparently retaining at all times an independent
+judgment. To the familiar episode of 'the lovely
+young Lavinia' the following graceful passage is said, but
+on very doubtful authority to have been added by Pope.<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a>
+The first line, given for the sake of the context, is from
+Thomson's pen:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Thoughtless of beauty, she was Beauty's self,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Recluse amid the close-embowering woods;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As in the hollow breast of Apennine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beneath the shelter of encircling hills,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A myrtle rises, far from human eye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And breathes its balmy fragrance o'er the wild;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So flourished, blooming and unseen by all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sweet Lavinia; till, at length, compelled<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By strong necessity's supreme command<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With smiling patience in her looks she went<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To glean Palemon's fields.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Thomson had now gained the highest mark of his fame,
+and, like Pope, had won it in a few years. Nearly two
+years of foreign travel followed, the poet having obtained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
+the post of governor to a son of the Solicitor-General. The
+fruit of this tour was a long poem in blank verse on <i>Liberty</i>,
+which probably gave him infinite labour, but his ascent
+upon this occasion of what he calls 'the barren, but delightful
+mountain of Parnassus,' was labour lost. It is
+enough to say of <i>Liberty</i>, that it contains more than three
+thousand lines of unreadable blank verse. Sinecures were
+the rewards of genius in Thomson's day, and he was made
+Secretary of Briefs in the Court of Chancery. He took a
+cottage at Richmond, within an easy walk of Pope, and the
+two poets met often and lived amicably.</p>
+
+<p>Thomson did not enjoy his official fortune long, for his
+patron died, and though he might have kept his post had
+he applied to the Lord Chancellor, in whose gift it was,
+he appears to have been too lazy to do so. His friend
+Lyttelton in this emergency introduced him to the Prince
+of Wales, who, on learning that his affairs 'were in a more
+poetical posture than formerly,' gave him a pension of
+£100 a year. There was no certainty in a gift of this
+nature, and in about ten years it was withdrawn.</p>
+
+<p><i>The Castle of Indolence</i> (1748) was the latest labour of
+Thomson's life, and in the judgment of many critics takes
+precedence of <i>The Seasons</i> in poetical merit. This verdict
+may be questioned, but the poem, written in the Spenserian
+stanza, has a soothing beauty and an enchanting
+felicity of expression which show the poet's genius in a
+new light. It is unlike any poetry of that age, and when
+compared with <i>The Seasons</i>, the verse, as Wordsworth
+justly says, 'is more harmonious and the diction more
+pure.' All the imagery of the poem is adopted to the
+vague and sleepy action of the characters represented in
+it. It is a veritable poet's dream, which carries the
+reader in its earliest stanzas into 'a pleasing land of
+drowsy-head:'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">'In lowly dale, fast by a river's side,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With woody hill o'er hill encompassed round,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A most enchanting wizard did abide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Than whom a fiend more fell is nowhere found.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">It was, I ween, a lovely spot of ground;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And there a season atween June and May<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Half prankt with Spring, with Summer half embrowned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A listless climate made, where, sooth to say,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No living wight could work, ne carèd even for play.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There are verbal inspirations in a great poet which satisfy
+the ear, capture the imagination, and live in the memory
+for ever. Milton's pages are studded with them like stars;
+Gray has a few, Wordsworth many, and Keats some not to
+be surpassed for witchery. Of such poetically suggestive
+lines Thomson has his share, and although it seems unfair
+to remove them from their context, the excision may be
+made in a few cases, since they show not only that a new
+poet had appeared in an age of prose, but a poet of a new
+order, whose inspiration was felt by his successors. How
+poetically imaginative is Thomson's imagery of the 'meek-eyed
+morn, mother of dews;' of</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Ships dim discovered dropping from the clouds;'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>of</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Autumn nodding o'er the yellow plain;'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>of the summer wind</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Sweeping with shadowy gust the fields of corn;'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and of the Hebrid-Isles</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Placed far amid the melancholy main,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>a line which may have suggested the lovelier verse of
+Wordsworth descriptive of the cuckoo:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Breaking the silence of the seas<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Among the farthest Hebrides.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Thomson did not live long after the publication of <i>The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>
+Castle of Indolence</i>. A cold caught upon the river led to a
+fever, which ended fatally on August 27th, 1748. He had for
+some years been in love with a Miss Young, the 'Amanda'
+of his very feeble love lyrics, and her marriage is said to
+have hastened his death. Men, however, do not die for love
+at the mature age of forty-nine, and as Thomson was 'more
+fat than bard beseems,' and was not always temperate in
+his habits, constitutional causes are more likely to have led
+to the poet's death than Amanda's cruelty.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Johnson says somewhere that the further authors
+keep apart from each other the better, and the literary
+squabbles of the last century afforded him good ground
+for the remark. It is to Thomson's credit that, like Goldsmith
+twenty-six years later, he died, leaving behind him
+many friends and not a single enemy. His fame rests
+upon two poems, <i>The Seasons</i> and <i>The Castle of Indolence</i>,
+and on a song which has gained a national reputation.
+Apart from <i>Rule Britannia</i>, which appeared originally
+in the <i>Masque of Alfred</i> and is spirited rather than poetical,
+his attempts to write lyrical poetry resulted in failure; but
+from his own niche in the Temple of Fame time is not
+likely to dislodge Thomson.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> See <i>Martialis Epigrammata</i>, book v. lii.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> Fénelon was Archbishop of Cambray.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> <i>The Poetical Works of Gay</i>, edited, with Life and Notes, by
+John Underhill, 2 vols.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I'll swim through seas; I'll ride upon the clouds;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll dig the earth; I'll blow out every fire;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll rave; I'll rant; I'll rise; I'll rush; I'll war;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fierce as the man whom smiling dolphins bore<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the prosaic to poetic shore.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll tear the scoundrel into twenty pieces.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>'The reader,' Fielding adds in a note, 'may see all the beauties
+of this speech in a late ode called a <i>Naval Lyric</i>.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> Written but not published. The earlier books of the <i>Night
+Thoughts</i> appeared in 1742, the <i>Grave</i> in 1743, but in a letter dated
+Feb. 25th, 1741-2, Blair in transmitting the MS. of the poem to a
+friend states that the greater portion of it was composed several
+years before his ordination ten years previously. Southey states
+that Blair's <i>Grave</i> is the only poem he could call to mind composed
+in imitation of the <i>Night Thoughts</i>, but the style as well as
+the date contradicts this judgment.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> The tradition is founded on a volume in the British Museum
+containing MS. corrections supposed to be in Pope's handwriting.
+It is now, however, the opinion of experts that the writing is not
+Pope's. If he be the author, it is the only example of blank verse
+which we have from his pen.</p></div>
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<h3>MINOR POETS.</h3>
+
+<p class="hangindent">Sir Samuel Garth&mdash;Ambrose Philips&mdash;John Philips&mdash;Nicholas
+Rowe&mdash;Aaron Hill&mdash;Thomas Parnell&mdash;Thomas Tickell&mdash;William
+Somerville&mdash;John Dyer&mdash;William Shenstone&mdash;Mark Akenside&mdash;David
+Mallet&mdash;Scottish Song-Writers.</p>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">Sir Samuel Garth
+(1660-1717-18).</div>
+
+<p>In Pope's day even the medical profession was influenced
+by party feeling, and Samuel Garth became
+known as the most famous Whig
+physician, but his friendships were not
+confined to one side, and he appears to have been universally
+beloved.</p>
+
+<p>Garth came of a Yorkshire family, and was born in 1660.
+He was admitted a Fellow of the College of Physicians in
+1693, gained a large practice, and is said to have been very
+benevolent to the poor. The <i>Dispensary</i> (1699) is a satire
+called forth by the opposition of the Society of Apothecaries,
+to an edict of the College, and is a mock-heroic poem, which
+the quarrel made so effective at the time that it passed
+through several editions. The merit of achieving what the
+satirist intended may therefore be granted to the <i>Dispensary</i>.
+Few modern readers, however, will appreciate the
+welcome it received, and it is ludicrous to read in Anderson's
+edition of the poet that the poem 'is only inferior in
+humour, discrimination of character, and poetical ardour
+to the <i>Rape of the Lock</i>.' It would be far more accurate to
+say that the <i>Dispensary</i> has not a single merit in common
+with that poem, and but slight merit of any kind.</p>
+
+<p>The following passage upon death is the most vigorous,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
+and is interesting as having supplied Cowper with a line
+in the poem on his Mother's Picture:<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">''Tis to the vulgar Death too harsh appears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The ill we feel is only in our fears;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To die is landing on some silent shore<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where billows never break, nor tempests roar;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere well we feel th' friendly stroke 'tis o'er.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wise through thought th' insults of death defy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The fools through blest insensibility.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis what the guilty fear, the pious crave;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sought by the wretch and vanquished by the brave.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It eases lovers, sets the captive free,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And though a tyrant, offers liberty.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Addison in defending Garth in the <i>Whig-Examiner</i> from
+the criticisms of Prior in the <i>Examiner</i>, the organ of the
+Tory party, says he does not question but the author 'who
+has endeavoured to prove that he who wrote the <i>Dispensary</i>
+was no poet, will very suddenly undertake to show that he
+who gained the battle of <i>Blenheim</i> is no general.' The
+comparison was an unfortunate one. Marlborough's military
+reputation has grown brighter with time, Garth's fame
+as a poet has long ago ceased to exist.</p>
+
+<p>A literary although not a poetical interest is associated
+with the name of "well-natured Garth," who, as Pope
+acknowledges, was one of his earliest friends; like Arbuthnot,
+he lived among the wits, and as a member of the
+famous Kit-cat Club he wrote verses upon the Whig
+beauties toasted by its members. His name is linked
+with Dryden's as well as with that of his illustrious
+successor. It will be remembered how, on the death of
+Dryden, the poet's body lay in state in the College of Phy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>sicians,
+and how, before the great procession started for
+Westminster Abbey, Sir Samuel, who was then President,
+delivered a Latin oration.</p>
+
+<p>Garth died in January, 1717-18, and, according to Pope,
+was a good Christian without knowing it. Addison, however,
+who visited Garth in his last illness, told Dr. Berkeley
+that he rejected Christianity on the assurance of his friend
+Halley that its doctrines were incomprehensible, and the
+religion itself an imposture. According to another report
+which comes through Pope, he actually 'died a papist.'</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Ambrose Philips
+(1671-1749).</div>
+
+<p>Ambrose Philips, who belonged, like Tickell, to Addison's
+'little senate,' was born in 1671, and
+educated at St. John's, Cambridge. His
+<i>Pastorals</i> were published in Tonson's <i>Miscellany</i>
+(1709), and the same volume contained the <i>Pastorals</i>
+of Pope. Log-rolling was understood in those days, and
+Philips's verses received warm praise in more than one
+number of the <i>Guardian</i>, the writer in one place declaring
+that there have been only four masters of the art in above
+two thousand years: 'Theocritus, who left his dominions
+to Virgil; Virgil, who left his to his son Spenser; and
+Spenser, who was succeeded by his eldest born, Philips.'</p>
+
+<p>Pope's <i>Pastorals</i> were not mentioned, and in revenge he
+devised the consummate artifice of sending an anonymous
+paper to the <i>Guardian</i>, in which, while appearing to praise
+Philips, he exalted himself. Steele took the bait, and considering
+that the essay depreciated Pope would not publish
+it without his permission, which was of course readily
+granted. 'From that time,' says Johnson, 'Pope and
+Philips lived in a perpetual reciprocation of malevolence.'</p>
+
+<p>Philips's tragedy, <i>The Distrest Mother</i> (1712), a translation,
+or nearly so, of Racine's <i>Andromaque</i>, was puffed in
+the <i>Spectator</i>. It is the play to which Sir Roger de
+Coverley was taken by his friends, and the representa<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>tion
+supplied the good knight with an opportunity for
+much humorous comment.</p>
+
+<p>'When Sir Roger saw Andromache's obstinate refusal
+to her lover's importunities, he whispered me in the ear
+that he was sure she would never have him; to which he
+added with a more than ordinary vehemence, "You cannot
+imagine, sir, what it is to have to do with a widow."
+Upon Pyrrhus his threatening afterwards to leave her, the
+knight shook his head, and muttered to himself, "Ay, do
+if you can." This part dwelt so much upon my friend's
+imagination that at the close of the third Act, as I was
+thinking of something else, he whispered in my ear, "These
+widows, sir, are the most perverse creatures in the world.
+But pray," says he, "you that are a critic, is this play
+according to your dramatic rules, as you call them? Should
+your people in tragedy always talk to be understood?
+Why, there is not a single sentence in this play that I do
+not know the meaning of."'<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> Addison also inserted and
+praised in the <i>Spectator</i> Philips's translations from Sappho
+(Nos. 223, 229).</p>
+
+<p>His odes to babes and children earned for him the
+<i>sobriquet</i> of 'Namby Pamby,' 'a term which has been incorporated
+into the English language to designate mawkish
+sentiment. Namby was the infantine pronunciation of
+Ambrose, and Pamby was formed by the first letter of
+Philips's surname and that reduplication of sound which
+is natural to lisping children.'<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a></p>
+
+<p>Between simplicity and absurdity the line is a narrow
+one, and Philips stepped over it when he wrote to a child
+in the nursery&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Dimply damsel, sweetly smiling,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All caressing, none beguiling;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bud of beauty, fairly blowing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Every charm to nature owing.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The longest of his baby songs is addressed to the Hon.
+Miss Carteret, in which he pictures the child's progress to
+womanhood, and anticipates her future loveliness and
+maiden reign:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Then the taper-moulded waist<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With a span of ribbon braced;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the swell of either breast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the wide high-vaulted chest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the neck so white and round,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Little neck with brilliants bound;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the store of charms which shine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Above, in lineaments divine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Crowded in a narrow space<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To complete the desperate face;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These alluring powers, and more,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall enamoured youths adore;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These and more in courtly lays<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Many an aching heart shall praise.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The inventory of the maiden's physical charms which follows
+includes veiny temples, sloping shoulders, a hazely
+lucid eye, and cheek of health; but in the category the
+only allusion to the attractions of intellect and heart is in
+a couplet foretelling her</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">'Gentleness of mind,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gentle from a gentle kind.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>That Philips translated <i>The Persian Tales</i> is indelibly
+recorded by Pope:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The bard whom pilfered Pastorals renown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who turns a Persian tale for half-a-crown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Just writes to make his barrenness appear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And strains from hard-bound brains eight lines a year.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But even Pope could award praise to Philips. In a letter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>
+to Henry Cromwell, in 1710, he observes that he was capable
+of writing very nobly, 'as I guess by a small copy of his,
+published in the <i>Tatler</i>, on the Danish winter;' and two
+years later he says to his friend Caryll: 'Mr. Philips has
+two lines which seem to me what the French call very
+<i>picturesque</i>, that I cannot omit to you:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'All hid in snow in bright confusion lie,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And with one dazzling waste fatigue the eye!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The lines, not quite accurately quoted by Pope, are from
+an epistle, addressed to Lord Dorset from Copenhagen,
+which contains a few striking couplets, two of which may
+be transcribed before bidding adieu to Ambrose Philips:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The vast leviathan wants room to play,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And spout his waters in the face of day.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The starving wolves along the main sea prowl,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And to the moon in icy valleys howl.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">John Philips
+(1676-1708).</div>
+
+<p>Ambrose Philips must not be confounded with his namesake
+John, the author of a clever burlesque
+of Milton, called <i>The Splendid Shilling</i> (1705);
+of <i>Blenheim</i> (1705), a poem which he was
+urged to write by the Tories in opposition to Addison's
+<i>Campaign</i>; and of a poem upon <i>Cider</i> (1706), in 'Miltonian
+verse,' which seems to have afforded several suggestions to
+Pope in his <i>Windsor Forest</i>. It is said to display a considerable
+knowledge of the subject, and in that its principal
+merit consists. From <i>The Splendid Shilling</i> a brief extract
+may be given:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'So pass my days. But when nocturnal shades<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This world envelop, and th' inclement air<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Persuades men to repel benumbing frosts<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With pleasant wines, and crackling blaze of wood;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Me, lonely sitting, nor the glimmering light<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of make-weight candle, nor the joyous talk<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of loving friend delights; distressed, forlorn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Amidst the horrors of the tedious night,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Darkling I sigh, and feed with dismal thoughts<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My anxious mind; or sometimes mournful verse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Indite, and sing of groves and myrtle shades,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or desperate lady near a purling stream,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or lover pendent on a willow tree.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Meanwhile I labour with eternal drought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And restless wish, and rave; my parched throat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Finds no relief, nor heavy eyes repose.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But if a slumber haply does invade<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My weary limbs, my fancy still awake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thoughtful of drink, and eager, in a dream<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tipples imaginary pots of ale<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In vain; awake I find the settled thirst<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still gnawing, and the pleasant phantom curse.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>'Philips,' says the poet Campbell, 'had the merit of
+studying and admiring Milton, but he never could imitate
+him without ludicrous effect, either in jest or earnest. His
+<i>Splendid Shilling</i> is the earliest and one of the best of our
+parodies; but <i>Blenheim</i> is as completely a burlesque upon
+Milton as <i>The Splendid Shilling</i>, though it was written and
+read with gravity, ... yet such are the fluctuations of
+taste that contemporary criticism bowed with solemn
+admiration over his Miltonic cadences.'</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Nicholas Rowe
+(1673-1718).</div>
+
+<p>Nicholas Rowe had the honour, if it was one in those
+days, of being made Laureate on the accession
+of George I. His odes, epistles, and
+songs are without merit, but he gained
+reputation as the translator of Lucan's <i>Pharsalia</i>, of which
+Sir Arthur Gorges had produced a version in 1614, and
+his plays entitle him to a place, though not a high one, in
+our dramatic literature.</p>
+
+<p>Rowe edited an edition of Shakespeare, and should
+have known his author, yet in a prologue he declares that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
+he could not draw women&mdash;an amazing assertion echoed
+by Collins, who praises Fletcher for his knowledge of the
+'female mind,' and adds that 'stronger Shakespeare felt
+for man alone.'</p>
+
+<p>The chronological list of Rowe's dramas runs as
+follows: <i>The Ambitious Step-mother</i> (1700); <i>Tamerlane</i>
+(1702); <i>The Fair Penitent</i> (1703); <i>Ulysses</i> (1705); <i>The
+Royal Convert</i> (1707); the <i>Tragedy of Jane Shore</i>
+(1714); and the <i>Tragedy of Lady Jane Grey</i> (1715).
+Measured by his contemporary dramatists he is a distinguished
+playwright. His characters do not live, but he
+could invent effective scenes, though in some cases the poet's
+taste may be questioned.</p>
+
+<p>For many years <i>Tamerlane</i> was acted at Drury Lane on
+the anniversary of King William's landing in England, and
+under the names of Tamerlane and Bajazet the king is belauded
+at the expense of Louis XIV. <i>The Fair Penitent</i>,
+a piece even more successful upon the stage, will still
+please the reader, though he may question the high eulogium
+of Johnson, that "scarcely any work of any poet is at
+once so interesting by the fable, and so delightful by the
+language." Rowe has not the tragic power which can express
+passion without rant, and pathos without extravagance.
+In <i>The Fair Penitent</i> Calista gives utterance to
+her feelings by piling up expletives. Thus, when her
+husband attacks the lover who has ruined her, she exclaims,
+'Destruction! fury! sorrow! shame! and death!'
+and, on another occasion, she cries out, 'Madness! confusion!'
+words which give a sense of the ludicrous rather
+than of the tragic; and so also does Calista's last utterance
+when, addressing Altamont, she says:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">'Had I but early known<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy wondrous worth, thou excellent young man<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We had been happier both&mdash;now 'tis too late!'<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Rowe may be regarded as the principal representative of
+tragedy in the 'age of Pope,' but his respectable work
+shows a fatal degeneration from the 'gorgeous tragedy'
+of the Elizabethans.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Aaron Hill
+(1684-1749).</div>
+
+<p>Aaron Hill, unlike Rowe, was not distinguished as a
+dramatist, and succeeded only in two or three
+adaptations from the French. His claims as a
+poet are also insignificant. He was born in
+London in 1684, with expectations that were not destined to
+be realized, but Fortune was not unkind to him. His uncle,
+Lord Paget, Ambassador at Constantinople, gave the youth
+a warm welcome, supplied him with a tutor, and sent him to
+travel in the East. On Lord Paget's return to England, Hill
+accompanied him, and together they are said to have visited
+a great part of Europe. Some time later Hill went abroad
+again, and was absent two or three years. For awhile&mdash;it
+could not have been long&mdash;he was secretary to the Earl of
+Peterborough, and at the age of twenty-six, his good star
+being still in the ascendant, he married a young lady 'of
+great merit and beauty, with whom he had a very handsome
+fortune.' Hill was then appointed manager of Drury Lane,
+and he wrote a number of plays, the very names of which
+are now forgotten. Few men indeed so well known in his
+own day have sunk into such insignificance in ours. He
+wrote eight books of a long and unfinished epic called
+<i>Gideon</i>, which I suppose no one in the present century has
+had the hardihood to read; like Young he wrote a poem
+on <i>The Judgment Day</i>, a theme attempted also, shortly
+before his death, by John Philips, and that, after his kind,
+he produced a Pindaric ode goes without saying. A long
+poem called <i>The Northern Star</i>, a panegyric on Peter the
+Great, is said to have passed through several editions.
+The poem does not prove Hill to be a poet, but it shows
+his command of the heroic couplet. The style of the poem,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+which is an indiscriminate panegyric, may be judged from
+the following lines:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Transcendent prince! how happy must thou be!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What can'st thou look upon unblessed by thee?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What inward peace must that calm bosom know,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whence conscious virtue does so strongly flow!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Such are the kings who make God's image shine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor blush to dare assert their right divine!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No earth-born bias warps their climbing will,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No pride their power, no avarice whets their skill.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They poise each hope which bids the wise obey,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And shed broad blessings from their widening sway;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To raise the afflicted, stretch the healing hand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drive crushed oppression from each rescued land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bold in alternate right, or sheath or draw<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sword of conquest, or the sword of law;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spare what resists not, what opposes bend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And govern cool, what they with warmth defend.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Hill has the merit of having turned the tables upon
+Pope, who had put him into the treatise on the <i>Bathos</i>,
+and then into the <i>Dunciad</i>, where, however, the lines have
+more of compliment than censure, since he is made to
+mount 'far off among the swans of Thames.' Irritated
+by a note in the <i>Dunciad</i>, Hill replied in a long poem
+entitled <i>The Progress of Wit, a Caveat</i>, which opens with
+the following pointed lines:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Tuneful Alexis, on the Thames' fair side,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The ladies' plaything, and the Muses' pride;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With merit popular, with wit polite,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Easy though vain, and elegant though light;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Desiring, and deserving others' praise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Poorly accepts a fame he ne'er repays;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unborn to cherish, sneakingly approves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wants the soul to spread the worth he loves.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In a letter to Hill Pope complained of these lines, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+had the hypocrisy to say that he never thought any great
+matters of his poetical capacity, but prided himself on the
+superiority of his moral life. Hill returned a masterly
+and incisive reproof to this ridiculous statement, in the
+course of which he says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'I am sorry to hear you say you never thought any
+great matters of your poetry. It is in my opinion the
+characteristic you are to hope your distinction from. To
+be honest is the duty of every plain man. Nor, since the
+soul of poetry is sentiment, can a great poet want morality.
+But your honesty you possess in common with a million
+who will never be remembered; whereas your poetry is a
+peculiar, that will make it impossible that you should be
+forgotten.'</p></div>
+
+<p>He adds that if Pope had not been in the spleen when he
+wrote, he would have remembered that humility is a moral
+virtue; and how, asks the writer, can you know that your
+moral life is above that of most of the wits 'since you tell
+me in the same letter that many of their names were
+unknown to you?'</p>
+
+<p>Aaron Hill, though he could write a sensible letter,
+was not a wise man. He was 'everything by turns and
+nothing long.' Poetry was but one of his accomplishments,
+and we are told that he cultivated it 'as a relaxation
+from the study of history, criticism, geography, physic,
+commerce, agriculture, war, law, chemistry, and natural
+philosophy, to which he devoted the greatest part of his
+time.'</p>
+
+<p>As a poet Hill has the facility in composition exhibited
+by so many of his contemporaries, and he has occasionally
+a pretty turn of fancy. His last labour was the successful
+adaptation of Voltaire's <i>Merope</i> to the English stage (1749);
+sixteen years before he had adapted <i>Zara</i> with equal
+success.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Thomas Parnell
+(1679-1718).</div>
+
+<p>Among the minor poets of the period an honourable
+place must be given to Parnell, who possessed
+the soul of a poet, but gave limited
+expression to it, for it was only during the
+later years of a short life that he discovered where his
+genius lay. The friend of Pope, Arbuthnot, and Swift,
+his biography has been written by Johnson, and more discursively
+by his countryman Goldsmith.</p>
+
+<p>Thomas Parnell was born in Dublin, 1679, entered Trinity
+College at the early age of thirteen, and in 1700 obtained the
+degree of Master of Arts. Having taken orders he gained
+preferment in the Church, became, in 1706, Archdeacon of
+Clogher, and through the recommendation of Swift obtained
+also a good living. Parnell was fond of society, and was
+accustomed as often as possible to join the wits in London.
+He was a member of the Scriblerus Club, wrote for the
+<i>Spectator</i>, preached eloquent sermons, and had the ambition
+of a poet. But the loss of his wife preyed upon his mind,
+and he is said, though I believe chiefly on Pope's authority,
+to have given way to intemperance. He died suddenly at
+Chester at the age of thirty-nine in 1718.</p>
+
+<p>Parnell was one of the poets whose fortunes Swift did
+his best to promote. Writing in 1712, he says, 'I gave Lord
+Bolingbroke a poem of Parnell's. I made Parnell insert
+some compliments in it to his lordship. He is extremely
+pleased with it, and read some parts of it to-day to Lord
+Treasurer, who liked it as much. And indeed he outdoes
+all our poets here a bar's length.' And a month later he
+writes, 'Lord Bolingbroke likes Parnell mightily, and it is
+pleasant to see that one who hardly passed for anything in
+Ireland, makes his way here with a little friendly forwarding.'</p>
+
+<p><i>The Hermit</i>, the <i>Hymn to Contentment</i>, an <i>Allegory on
+Man</i>, and a <i>Night Piece on Death</i>, give Parnell his title<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
+to a place among the poets. <i>The Rise of Woman</i>, and <i>Health,
+an Eclogue</i>, have also much merit, and were praised by
+Pope (but this was to their author) as 'two of the
+most beautiful things he ever read.' The story of <i>The
+Hermit</i>, written originally in Spanish, is given in <i>Howell's
+Letters</i> (1645-1655), and is admirably told by Parnell,
+but much that he wrote, including a series of long
+poems on Scripture characters, is poetically worthless.
+His poems, published five years after his death, were
+edited by Pope, who wisely suppressed some pieces unworthy
+of the poet. Then, as now, literary scavengers
+were at work. In 1758 the suppressed poems were published,
+and called forth the comment from Gray, 'Parnell
+is the dunghill of Irish Grub Street.' To Parnell Pope
+was indebted for the <i>Essay on Homer</i> prefixed to the translation,
+with which he does not seem to have been well
+pleased. He complained of the stiffness of the style, and
+said it had cost him more pains in the correcting than the
+writing of it would have done.</p>
+
+<p>If Parnell's prose has the defect of stiffness, his lines
+glide with a smoothness that must have satisfied the ear of
+Pope. The higher harmonies of verse were unknown to
+him, but ease is not without a charm, and in illustration of
+Parnell's gift the final lines of <i>A Night Piece on Death</i>
+shall be quoted:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'When men my scythe and darts supply,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How great a king of fears am I!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They view me like the last of things,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They make and then they draw my stings.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fools! if you less provoked your fears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No more my spectre form appears.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Death's but a path that must be trod,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If man would ever pass to God;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A port of calms, a state to ease<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the rough rage of swelling seas.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Why then thy flowing sable stoles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Deep pendent cypress, mourning poles,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Loose scarfs to fall athwart thy weeds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Long palls, drawn hearses, covered steeds,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And plumes of black that as they tread,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nod o'er the scutcheons of the dead?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor can the parted body know,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor wants the soul these forms of woe;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As men who long in prison dwell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With lamps that glimmer round the cell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whene'er their suffering years are run,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spring forth to greet the glittering sun;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such joy, though far transcending sense,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have pious souls at parting hence.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On earth and in the body placed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A few and evil years they waste;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But when their chains are cast aside,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See the glad scene unfolding wide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Clap the glad wing, and tower away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And mingle with the blaze of day.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Thomas Tickell
+(1686-1740).</div>
+
+<p>Tickell wished to be remembered as the friend of Addison,
+and with Addison his name is indissolubly
+associated. The poem dedicated
+to the essayist's memory is perhaps over-praised
+by Macaulay when he says that it would do honour
+to the greatest name in our literature, but it proved incontestibly
+that Tickell, as a poet, was superior to the master
+whom he so loved and honoured. His reputation hangs
+upon this elegy, which Fox pronounced perfect.<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> The <i>Prospect
+of Peace</i>, which passed through several editions, had
+at one time a considerable reputation, not assuredly for its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
+poetry, but because it appealed to the spirit of the time
+The style of the poem may be judged from these lines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Accept, great Anne, the tears their memory draws,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who nobly perished in their sovereign's cause;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For thou in pity bidd'st the war give o'er,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mourn'st thy slain heroes, nor wilt venture more.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Vast price of blood on each victorious day!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(But Europe's freedom doth that price repay.)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lamented triumphs! when one breath must tell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That Marlborough conquered and that Dormer fell.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>His <i>Colin and Lucy</i> called forth high praise from Goldsmith
+as one of the best ballads in our language, and Gray
+terms it the prettiest ballad in the world. Three stanzas
+from this once famous poem shall be quoted:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'"I hear a voice you cannot hear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which says I must not stay;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I see a hand you cannot see,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which beckons me away.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By a false heart and broken vows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In early youth I die;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was I to blame because his bride<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Was thrice as rich as I?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'"Ah, Colin, give not her thy vows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Vows due to me alone;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor thou, fond maid, receive his kiss,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor think him all thy own.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To-morrow in the church to wed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Impatient, both prepare!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But know, fond maid, and know, false man,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That Lucy will be there!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'"Then bear my corse, my comrades, bear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">This bridegroom blithe to meet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He in his wedding trim so gay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I in my winding-sheet."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She spoke, she died; her corse was borne<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The bridegroom blithe to meet,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He in his wedding trim so gay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">She in her winding-sheet.'<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>There is some fancy but no imagination in the machinery
+of Tickell's long poem on <i>Kensington Gardens</i>, a title which
+recalls Matthew Arnold's exquisite stanzas. But the pathetic
+beauty of Arnold's lines belongs to a world of poetry wholly
+unlike that in which even the best of the Queen Anne poets
+lived and moved.</p>
+
+<p>Tickell's translation of the first book of the <i>Iliad</i> led to
+the quarrel already mentioned in the account of Pope. He
+wrote, also, a rather lengthy poem on Oxford, in which there
+is some absurd criticism of insignificant poetasters, and,
+as a matter of course, an extravagant eulogium of Addison.</p>
+
+<p>The few facts recorded of Tickell's life may be summed
+up in a paragraph. He was born in 1686 at Bridekirk, in
+Cumberland, and entered Queen's College, Oxford, in 1701.
+In 1708 he obtained his M.A. degree, and two years later
+was chosen Fellow. For sixteen years Tickell held his
+fellowship, but resigned it on his marriage in 1726. In
+a poem addressed to the lady before marriage, he asks
+whether</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'By thousands sought, Clotilda, canst thou free<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thy crowd of captives and descend to me?'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Praise which in those days would be regarded as fulsome
+secured the friendship and patronage of Addison, who
+employed him in public affairs, and when he became Secretary
+of State made Tickell Under-Secretary. To him Addison
+left the charge of editing his works, which were published
+by subscription, and appeared in four quarto volumes
+in 1721. In 1725 he was made secretary to the Lord Justices
+of Ireland, 'a place of great honour,' which he held
+until his death in 1740. The praise of Wordsworth, a poet
+always chary of expressing approbation, has been bestowed
+upon Tickell. 'I think him,' he said, 'one of the very best
+writers of occasional verses.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">William Somerville
+(1692-1742).</div>
+
+<p>Tickell had written some lines on hunting, which he
+published as a fragment. His contemporary
+Somerville, selecting the same
+subject, wrote <i>The Chase</i> (1735), a poem
+in blank verse. He was born at Edston, in Warwickshire,
+and was said, Dr. Johnson writes, 'to be of the first family
+in his county.' He was educated at Winchester and Oxford,
+and had the tastes of a scholar as well as of a country
+gentleman, which, among other accomplishments, included
+that of hard drinking. We know little about him, and
+what we do know is deplorable, for his friend Shenstone
+writes that he was plagued and threatened by low wretches,
+and 'forced to drink himself into pains of the body in order
+to get rid of the pains of the mind.' He died in 1742, the
+owner of a good estate, which, owing to a contempt for
+economy, he was never able to enjoy. 'I loved him for
+nothing so much,' said Shenstone, 'as for his flocci-nauci-nihili-pili-fication
+of money.'</p>
+
+<p>In <i>The Chase</i> Somerville had the advantage of knowing
+his subject, but knowledge is not poetry, and the interest
+of the poem is not due to its poetical qualities. He deserves
+some credit for his skill in handling a variety of
+metres as well as blank verse, in which his principal poem
+is written. In an address <i>To Mr. Addison</i>, the couplet,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'When panting Virtue her last efforts made,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You brought your Clio to the virgin's aid,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>is praised by Johnson as one of those happy strokes which
+are seldom attained. In the same poem Shakespeare and
+Addison are brought together in a way that is far from
+happy:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'In heaven he sings; on earth your muse supplies<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Th' important loss, and heals our weeping eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Correctly great, she melts each flinty heart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With equal genius, but superior art.'<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Praise can be too strong even for a poet's digestion, and
+Somerville, who writes a great deal more nonsense in the
+same strain, should have remembered that he was not
+addressing a fool. If the poetical adulation of the time is
+to be excused, it must be on the ground that a poet had to
+live by patronage and not by the public. In a pecuniary
+point of view his subservience to men in high position was
+often successful. An almost universal custom, it was not
+regarded as degrading; but the poet must have been peculiarly
+constituted who was not degraded by it.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">John Dyer
+(1698(?)-1758).</div>
+
+<p>In the last century any subject was deemed suitable for
+poetry, and the Welsh poet, John Dyer, who was
+born about 1698, found in his later life poetical
+materials in <i>The Fleece</i> (1757), a poem in four
+books of blank verse. His genius for descriptive poetry and
+his passionate and intelligent delight in natural objects are
+seen more pleasantly in <i>Grongar Hill</i> (published in the
+same year as Thomson's <i>Winter</i>), a poem not without grammatical
+inaccuracies, one of which deforms the first couplet,
+but full of poetical feeling. In an ease of composition
+which runs into laxity he reminds us occasionally of George
+Wither. His chief merit is, that while independent of
+Thomson, he was inspired by the same love, and wrote
+with the same aim. Dyer is not content with bare description,
+but likes to moralize on the landscape he surveys.
+Thus, when looking on a ruined tower, the poet exclaims:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Yet time has seen, that lifts the low,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And level lays the lofty brow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Has seen this broken pile compleat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Big with the vanity of state;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But transient is the smile of fate!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A little rule, a little sway,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A sunbeam in a winter's day,'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is all the proud and mighty have<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Between the cradle and the grave.'<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Dyer who is best seen in the octosyllabic metre, chose it
+also for <i>The Country Walk</i>, a poem in which, notwithstanding
+an occasional lapse into the conventional diction
+of the period, the rural pictures are drawn from life. He
+takes the reader into the farm-yard and fields as he writes:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I am resolved this charming day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the open field to stray,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And have no roof above my head<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But that whereon the gods do tread.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before the yellow barn I see<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A beautiful variety<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of strutting cocks, advancing stout,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And flirting empty chaff about;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hens, ducks, and geese, and all their brood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And turkeys gobbling for their food;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While rustics thrash the wealthy floor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And tempt all to crowd the door.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And now into the fields I go,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where thousand flaming flowers glow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And every neighbouring hedge I greet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With honey-suckles smelling sweet;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now o'er the daisy meads I stray<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And meet with, as I pace my way,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweetly shining on the eye<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A rivulet gliding smoothly by,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which shows with what an easy tide<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The moments of the happy glide.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><i>An Epistle to a Friend in Town</i>, records his satisfaction with
+the country retirement in which his days are passed. In a
+rather awkward stanza he says that he is more than content,
+and is indeed charmed with everything, and the lines
+close with the moralizing that was dear to Dyer's heart:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Alas! what a folly that wealth and domain<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">We heap up in sin and in sorrow!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Immense is the toil, yet the labour how vain!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is not life to be over to-morrow?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then glide on my moments, the few that I have,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Smooth-shaded and quiet and even;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While gently the body descends to the grave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the spirit arises to heaven.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Dyer was an artist as well as a poet, and visited Italy,
+which suggested a poem in blank verse, <i>The Ruins of
+Rome</i> (1740). After his return to England he entered into
+holy orders, took a wife, who is said to have been a descendant
+of Shakespeare, and settled at Calthorp in Leicestershire,
+which he afterwards exchanged for a living in
+Lincolnshire. There is much to like in Dyer, and he has
+had the good fortune to win the applause of two great
+poets. Gray says, in a letter to Horace Walpole, that
+he had 'more of poetry in his imagination than almost any
+of our number,' and Wordsworth in a sonnet, <i>To the Poet,
+John Dyer</i>, writes:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Though hasty Fame hath many a chaplet culled<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For worthless brows, while in the pensive shade<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of cold neglect she leaves thy head ungraced,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet pure and powerful minds, hearts meek and still,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A grateful few, shall love thy modest Lay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Long as the shepherd's bleating flock shall stray<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O'er naked Snowdon's wide aerial waste;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Long as the thrush shall pipe on Grongar Hill!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote">William Shenstone
+(1714-1764).</div>
+
+<p>'The true rustic style,' Charles Lamb writes, 'I think is
+to be found in Shenstone,' and he calls
+his <i>Schoolmistress</i> the 'prettiest of poems.'</p>
+
+<p>William Shenstone was born in 1714 at the Leasowes in
+Hales-Owen, a spot upon which he afterwards expended his
+skill as a landscape gardener. In 1732 he went up to
+Pembroke College, Oxford, and remained there for some
+years without taking a degree. Those years appear to
+have been devoted to poetry. In 1737 Shenstone published<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+a small volume anonymously. This was followed by the
+<i>Judgment of Hercules</i> (1741), and by the <i>Schoolmistress</i>
+(1742). In 1745 he undertook the management of his
+estate, and began, to quote Dr. Johnson's quaint description,
+'to point his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle
+his walks, and to wind his waters; which he did with such
+judgment and such fancy, as made his little domain the
+envy of the great and the admiration of the skilful; a
+place to be visited by travellers and copied by designers.'
+On this estate, with its lakes and cascades, its urns and
+poetical inscriptions, its hanging woods, and 'wild shaggy
+precipice,' Shenstone appears to have spent all his fortune.
+He led the life of a dilettante, and died unmarried at the
+age of fifty. His elegies and songs are dead, and whatever
+vitality remains in his verse will be found in the <i>Pastoral
+Ballad</i> and the <i>Schoolmistress</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The ballad written in anapæstic verse has an Arcadian
+grace, against which even Johnson's robust intellect was
+not proof. For the following lines he says, 'if any mind
+denies its sympathy it has no acquaintance with love or
+nature':</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'When forced the fair nymph to forego,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">What anguish I felt in my heart!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet I thought&mdash;but it might not be so&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">'Twas with pain that she saw me depart.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She gazed as I slowly withdrew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">My path I could hardly discern;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So sweetly she bade me adieu,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I thought that she bade me return.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The <i>Schoolmistress</i>, written in imitation of Spenser, has
+the merits of simplicity and homely humour. The village
+dame is a life-like character, and the urchins whom she is
+supposed to teach, and does sometimes teach by chastisement,
+are cunningly portrayed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>From the verses <i>Written at an Inn in Henley</i> three
+stanzas may be quoted. The last will be already known
+to readers familiar with their Boswell:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I fly from pomp, I fly from plate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I fly from falsehood's specious grin!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Freedom I love, and form I hate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And choose my lodgings at an inn.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Here, waiter! take my sordid ore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which lacqueys else might hope to win;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It buys what courts have not in store,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">It buys me freedom at an inn!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where'er his stages may have been,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May sigh to think he still has found<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The warmest welcome at an inn.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Unhappily this final verse, which Johnson is said to have
+repeated 'with great emotion,' has lost its application.
+The modern traveller, instead of being warmly welcomed
+at an inn, loses his identity and becomes a number.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Mark Akenside
+(1721-1770).</div>
+
+<p>Akenside, who was born at Newcastle, 1721, received his
+education in Edinburgh, where he was
+sent to prepare for the ministry among
+the Dissenters. He, however, changed
+his mind, became a medical student, and finally, though
+much disliked for his manners, gained reputation as a physician
+in London. He is stated to have been excessively
+stiff and formal, and a frigid stiffness marks the <i>Pleasures
+of Imagination</i> (1744), a remarkable work considering the
+writer's age, since it is without the faults of youth. The
+poem is founded on Addison's <i>Essays</i> on the subject in the
+<i>Spectator</i>, and the poet also owes a considerable debt to
+Shaftesbury. Akenside's blank verse has the merits of
+dignity and strength. But the work is as cold as the
+author's manners were said to be, and in spite of what may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
+be called poetical power, as distinct from a high order of
+inspiration, the poem leaves the reader unmoved. Pope,
+who saw it in MS., said that Akenside was 'no everyday
+writer,' which is a just criticism. The <i>Pleasures of Imagination</i>
+has the merits of careful workmanship and of some
+originality, but the interest which it at one time excited is
+not likely to be revived. In 1757 Akenside re-wrote the
+poem, and I believe that no critic, with the exception of
+Hazlitt, regards the second attempt as an improvement
+on the first. His skill in the use of classical imagery is
+seen to advantage in the <i>Hymn to the Naiads</i> (1746), and
+he deserves praise, too, for his inscriptions, which are distinguished
+for conciseness and vigour of style. The poet,
+it may be added, wrote a great number of odes that lack
+all, or nearly all, the qualities which should distinguish
+lyrical poetry. Not a spark of the divine fire warms or
+illuminates these reputable verses, but the author states
+that his chief aim was to be correct, and in that he has
+succeeded.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">David Mallet
+(1700-1765).</div>
+
+<p>David Mallet, a friend or acquaintance of Thomson, was
+contemptible as a man and comparatively
+insignificant as a poet. He did a large
+amount of dirty work, and appears to have
+made a good income by it. The base character of the man
+was known to Bolingbroke, of whose basest purpose he
+made him the instrument (see c. vii.). Mallet's ballad of
+<i>William and Margaret</i> (1724) is known to many readers,
+and so is the inferior ballad <i>Edwin and Emma</i>, which was
+written many years afterwards. In 1728 he published
+<i>The Excursion</i>, a poem not sufficiently significant to prevent
+Wordsworth from selecting the same title. In Mallet's
+poem on <i>Verbal Criticism</i> (1733), Johnson states that he
+paid court to Pope, and was rewarded by a travelling
+tutorship gained through the poet's influence. In 1731 his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>
+tragedy, <i>Eurydice</i>, was acted at Drury Lane. He joined
+Thomson, as we have said elsewhere, in the composition of
+the masque of <i>Alfred</i>, and 'almost wholly changed' the
+piece after Thomson's death. <i>Amyntor and Theodora</i>, a
+long poem in blank verse, appeared in 1747; <i>Britannia</i>,
+a masque, in 1753, and <i>Elvira</i>, a tragedy, in 1763. Mallet,
+who was without qualifications for the task, wrote a life of
+Lord Bacon. He is said to have obtained a pension for
+inflaming the mind of the public against Admiral Byng,
+and thereby hastening his execution.</p>
+
+<p>In Anderson's edition of the poets, Mallet's biography is
+related with more fulness than by Dr. Johnson, and, after
+frankly recording acts which fully justify Macaulay's statement
+that Mallet's character was infamous, the writer
+adds, 'his integrity in business and in life is unimpeached.'</p>
+
+
+<p class="center gap3"><span class="smcap">Scottish Song-Writers.</span></p>
+
+<p>When the poets of England were writing satires, moral
+essays, and elaborate didactic treatises, the poets of Scotland
+were singing, in bird-like notes, songs of humour and
+of love. It is remarkable that the Scotch, the shrewdest,
+hardest, and most business-like people in these islands,
+should be so richly endowed with a gift shared and enjoyed
+by rich and poor alike. The most exquisite of English
+lyrics fall, where culture is wanting, on regardless ears;
+the songs of Ramsay and of Burns, of Lady Anne Lindsay
+and Jane Elliot, of Hogg and Lady Nairne, of Tannahill
+and Macneil, are household words in Scotland to
+gentle and simple. A few of the choicest songs of Scotland
+are due to ladies of rank, but the larger number have
+sprung from 'the huts where poor men lie.' Ramsay was a
+barber and wig-maker; Burns, as all the world knows,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+followed the plough; Tannahill was a weaver; Hogg a
+shepherd; and Robert Nicoll the son of a small farmer,
+'ruined out of house and hold.'</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Allan Ramsay
+(1686-1758).</div>
+
+<p>Allan Ramsay was, born at Leadhills, in Lanarkshire, in
+1686, and was therefore Pope's senior by
+two years. He has been called 'the restorer
+of Scottish poetry,' and by his compilation
+of <i>The Evergreen</i> (1724), and of <i>The Tea-Table
+Miscellany</i>, published in the same year, he gathered up
+the wealth of song scattered through the country. <i>The
+Miscellany</i> extended to four volumes, and before the poet's
+death had reached twelve editions. An undying interest
+belongs to both anthologies. <i>The Evergreen</i> was the first
+poetry Walter Scott perused, and in a marginal note on
+his copy of <i>The Tea-Table Miscellany</i> he writes: 'This book
+belonged to my grandfather, Robert Scott, and out of it I
+was taught <i>Hardiknute</i> by heart before I could read the
+ballad myself. It was the first poem I ever learnt, the
+last I shall ever forget.' The ballad Scott loved so well, I
+may say in passing, was written as a whole or in part by
+Lady Wardlaw (1677-1727),<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> and belongs therefore either
+to our period or to the later years of the seventeenth
+century.</p>
+
+<p>In 1725 Ramsay published <i>The Gentle Shepherd</i>, a pastoral
+that puts to shame the numerous semi-classical and
+mythological poems which appeared under that name in
+England. It is essentially a rural poem, in which the
+action and language harmonize with what we know, or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>
+think we know, of country manners and life. There is
+neither striking invention in the plot nor much individuality
+in the characters, but there is poetical harmony
+throughout, many pretty rustic scenes, and sufficient interest
+to carry the reader pleasantly over the ground. <i>The
+Gentle Shepherd</i> is the work of a poet, and gives a higher
+impression of Ramsay's power than his songs alone would
+warrant. His lyrical pieces, though not wholly without
+the lilt and charm such verse exacts, are perhaps mainly
+of service in showing the immeasurable superiority of
+Burns. Ramsay was a successful poet, and not too much
+of a poet to be also a successful man of business.
+He exchanged wig-making for bookselling, kept a shop
+in the High Street of Edinburgh, and finally retired
+to a villa which he had built for himself on the Castle
+Hill. A good-humoured, care-defying man, he enjoyed
+life in an easy way, and was not disposed to repine when
+his road lay down the hill. In an epistle to a friend he
+writes:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'And now in years and sense grown auld,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In ease I like my limbs to fauld,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Debts I abhor, and plan to be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From shackling trade and dangers free;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I may, loosed frae care and strife,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With calmness view the edge of life;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when a full ripe age shall crave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Slide easily into my grave.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Among the Scottish song-writers of the period may be
+mentioned Robert Crawford (1695?-1732), whose love
+verses, written in a conventional strain, are not without
+music; Lord Binning (1696-1732), the author of a pretty
+song called <i>Ungrateful Nanny</i>; and William Hamilton of
+Bangour (1704-1754), who wrote the well-known <i>Braes of
+Yarrow</i>. The most charming of Scottish lyrics belong,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
+however, to a later period of the century than the age of
+Pope.</p>
+
+
+<p class="gap3">The student who reads the minor poets who figured, in
+some cases with much applause, during the years of Pope's
+ascendency, will be struck by the almost total absence from
+their works of creative power. These rhymers wrote for
+the age, and illustrate it, but they did not write for all time,
+and a small volume would suffice to hold all their verse
+which is of permanent value. Too often they imagined that
+by the composition of flowing couplets they proved their
+title to rank with inspired poets. They confounded the art
+of verse-making with the divine art of poetry, and were not
+aware that the substance of their work is prose. Now and
+then the digger in this mine will discover a small nugget
+of gold, but for the most part the interest called forth by
+the poets mentioned in the present chapter, is more historical
+than poetical, and the reader in passing to the great
+prose writers of the age will be conscious of gain rather
+than of loss.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> Cowper's line,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Where tempests never beat nor billows roar,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>is not an improvement upon Garth's. Tempests, it has been justly
+said, do not beat.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> The <i>Spectator</i>, No. 335.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> Elwin and Courthope's <i>Pope</i>, vol. vii., p. 62.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> Edward Young tried his skill on the same theme in a poetical
+epistle to Tickell, but his lines are leaden and his praise absurd.
+Addison's glory was so great, he says, as a statesman and a patriot,
+that
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">'It borders on disgrace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To say he sung the best of human race.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> To Lady Wardlaw Dr. Robert Chambers attributed twenty-five
+ballads, and among them several of the finest we possess, which are
+regarded as ancient by every other authority. If the assumption
+were proved, this lady would hold a distinguished and unique
+position among the poets of the Pope period, but there is absolutely
+no ground for the theory so zealously advocated by Chambers.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3 class="gap3"><a name="PART_II" id="PART_II"></a>PART II.</h3>
+
+<h2>THE PROSE WRITERS</h2>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+<h3>JOSEPH ADDISON&mdash;SIR RICHARD STEELE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>As essayists, the writings of Addison and of Steele are
+familiar to all readers of eighteenth-century literature.
+Their work in other departments may be neglected without
+much loss; but the student who disregards the <i>Tatler</i>,
+the <i>Spectator</i>, the <i>Guardian</i>, and some of the essay-volumes
+which follow in their wake, will be blind to one of the
+most significant literary features of the period.</p>
+
+<p>The alliance between Addison and Steele was so intimate,
+that to judge of one apart from the other, would be
+fair to neither. It may be well, therefore, after giving the
+leading facts in the lives of the two friends, to bring them
+together again while considering the work they accomplished
+in their literary partnership. One point, I think,
+will come out clearly in this examination, namely, that
+while Steele might, under very inferior conditions, have
+produced the <i>Tatler</i> and <i>Spectator</i> without Addison,
+it is highly improbable that Addison, as an essayist,
+would have existed without Steele.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Joseph Addison
+(1672-1719).</div>
+
+<p>Addison lives on the reputation of his prose works,
+but he thought that he was a poet, and
+was regarded as a poet by his contemporaries.
+It was by verse that he won his
+earliest reputation, and it was on his Pegasus that he
+rose to be Secretary of State. He was born on May 1st,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
+1672, at Milston, in Wiltshire, a parish of which his
+father was the rector, and was educated at the Charterhouse,
+where he contracted his memorable friendship with
+Steele. Thence, in 1687, at the boyish age of fifteen,
+he went up to Queen's College, Oxford, and in a few
+months, thanks to his Latin verses, gained a scholarship
+at Magdalen, of which college ten years later he became
+a fellow.</p>
+
+<p>While at Oxford he acquired, after the fashion of the
+day, what Johnson calls 'the trade of a courtier.' His
+Latin poem on the <i>Peace of Ryswick</i> was dedicated to
+Montague, and two years later a pension of £300 a year,
+gained through Somers and Montague, enabled him to
+travel, in order that by gaining a knowledge of French
+and Italian, he might be fitted for the diplomatic service.
+Some time after his return to England he published his
+<i>Remarks on Several Parts of Italy</i> (1705), and dedicated the
+volume to Swift, 'the most agreeable companion, the truest
+friend, and the greatest genius of his age.'</p>
+
+<p>Addison's patrons had now lost their power, and he was
+left to his own exertions. His difficulties did not last long.
+In 1704 the battle of Blenheim called forth several weak
+efforts from the poetasters, and as the Government
+required verse more worthy of the occasion, the Chancellor
+of the Exchequer, on the recommendation of Montague,
+now Earl of Halifax, applied to Addison, who, in answer
+to the appeal, published <i>The Campaign</i>, in 1705. The
+poem contains the well-known similitude of the angel,
+and also an apt allusion to the great storm that had lately
+destroyed fleets and devastated the country.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'So when an angel by divine command<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><i>The Campaign</i>, which has no other passage worth
+quoting, proved a happy hit, and was of such service to
+the Ministry, that Addison found the way to fame and
+fortune. He was appointed Commissioner of Appeals,
+and not long after Under Secretary of State. In 1707 he
+accompanied his friend and patron, Halifax, on a mission
+to Hanover, and two years later he was appointed Chief
+Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. In Dublin
+he gained golden opinions. 'I am convinced,' Swift
+writes, 'that whatever Government come over, you will
+find all marks of kindness from any parliament here with
+respect to your employment; the Tories contending with
+the Whigs which should speak best of you. In short, if
+you will come over again when you are at leisure, we will
+raise an army and make you king of Ireland.' When the
+Whig Ministry fell in 1710, and Addison lost his appointment,
+he must have gained a fortune, for he was able to
+purchase an estate for £10,000.</p>
+
+<p>In the early years of the century the Italian opera,
+which had been brought into England in the reign of
+William and Mary, excited the mirth and opposition of the
+wits. Lord Chesterfield, who called it 'too absurd and extravagant
+to mention,' said, 'Whenever I go to the opera
+I leave my sense and reason at the door with my half-guinea,
+and deliver myself up to my eyes and ears.'
+Steele, Gay, and Pope ridiculed the new-fangled entertainment,
+and Colley Cibber, too, pointed his jest at these
+'poetical drams, these gin-shops of the stage that intoxicate
+its auditors, and dishonour their understanding with
+a levity for which I want a name.' Addison, who has
+some lively papers on the subject in the <i>Spectator</i>, undertook
+to give a faithful account of the progress of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
+Italian opera on the English stage, 'for there is no question,'
+he writes, 'but our great grandchildren will be very
+curious to know why their forefathers used to sit together
+like an audience of foreigners in their own country; and to
+hear whole plays acted before them in a tongue which
+they did not understand.'</p>
+
+<p>Before writing thus in the <i>Spectator</i>, Addison, in order
+to oppose the Italian opera, by what he regarded as a
+more rational pastime, produced his English opera of
+<i>Rosamond</i>, which was acted in 1706, and proved a failure
+on the stage. The music is said to have been bad, and the
+poetry is the work of a writer destitute of lyrical genius.
+Lord Macaulay, who finds a merit in almost everything
+produced by Addison, praises 'the smoothness with which
+the verses glide, and the elasticity with which they
+bound,' and considers that if he 'had left heroic couplets
+to Pope, and blank verse to Rowe, and had employed himself
+in writing airy and spirited songs, his reputation as a
+poet would have stood far higher than it now does.' The
+gliding movement of the verse may be admitted; but lyric
+poetry demands the higher qualities of music and imaginative
+treatment, and Addison's 'smoothness,' so far from
+being a poetical gift, is a mechanical acquisition.</p>
+
+<p>In 1713 his <i>Cato</i>, with its stately rhetoric and cold
+dignity, received a very different reception. The prologue,
+written by Pope, is in admirable accordance with the spirit
+of the play. Addison's purpose is to exhibit a great man
+struggling with adversity, and Pope writes:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'He bids your breasts with ancient ardour rise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And calls forth Roman drops from British eyes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Virtue confessed in human shape he draws,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What Plato thought, and God-like Cato was:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No common object to your sight displays,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But what with pleasure Heaven itself surveys;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And greatly falling with a falling state!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While Cato gives his little senate laws,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What bosom beats not in his country's cause?'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Addison has proved that he could draw a life-like character
+in his representation of Sir Roger de Coverley, but
+the <i>dramatis personæ</i>, who act a part, or are supposed to
+act one, in <i>Cato</i>, are mere dummies, made to express fine
+sentiments. There is no flesh and blood in them, and
+owing to the dramatist's regard for unity of place, the play
+is full of absurdities. Yet <i>Cato</i> was received with immense
+applause. It was regarded from a political aspect, and
+both Whig and Tory strove to turn the drama to party
+account. 'The numerous and violent claps of the Whig
+party,' Pope writes, 'on the one side of the theatre, were
+echoed back by the Tories on the other; while the author
+sweated behind the scenes with concern to find their
+applause proceeding more from the hand than the head.'</p>
+
+<p>In another letter he says: 'The town is so fond of it,
+that the orange wenches and fruit women in the parks
+offer the books at the side of the coaches, and the prologue
+and epilogue are cried about the streets by the common
+hawkers.' It would be interesting to ascertain what
+there was in the state of public affairs in the spring of
+1713, which created this enthusiasm. Swift, writing to
+Stella, alludes to a rehearsal of the play, but makes no
+criticism upon it; and Berkeley, who was in London at
+the time, and had a seat in Addison's box on the first night,
+is also silent about it. In a letter written, as it happens,
+by Bolingbroke, on the day that <i>Cato</i> was produced, he
+indicates the signs of the time, as they appeared to a Tory
+statesman: 'The prospect before us,' he writes, 'is dark
+and melancholy. What will happen no man is able to
+foretell.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was this sense of doubt and insecurity in the nation
+that gave significance to trifles. The political atmosphere
+was charged with electricity. The Tories, though in office,
+were far from feeling themselves secure, and both Harley
+and Bolingbroke were in correspondence with the Pretender.
+Atterbury, who was heart and soul with him, had
+just been made a bishop, Protestant ascendancy was in
+danger, the security of the country seemed to hang on the
+frail life of the Queen, and the strong party spirit of the
+time was easily fanned into a flame. We cannot now
+place ourselves in the position of the spectators whose
+passions gave such popularity to <i>Cato</i>. Its mild platitudes
+and rhetorical periods, its coldness and sobriety, seem ill
+fitted to arouse the fervour of playgoers, but Addison,
+whose good luck rarely failed him, was especially fortunate
+in the moment chosen for the representation of the play.
+Had <i>Cato</i> exhibited genius of the highest order, it could
+not have been more successful. Cibber writes that it
+was acted in London five times a week for a month to constantly
+crowded houses, and when the tragedy was acted
+at Oxford, 'Our house,' he says, 'was in a manner invested,
+and entrance demanded by twelve o'clock at noon,
+and before one it was not wide enough for many who came
+too late for places.'<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a></p>
+
+<p><i>Cato</i> had the good fortune to run in London for thirty-five
+nights, and gained also some reputation on the continent.
+It is formed on the French model, and Addison was therefore
+praised by Voltaire as 'the first English writer who
+composed a regular tragedy.' He added that <i>Cato</i> was
+'a masterpiece.' If so, it is one of the masterpieces that
+has long ceased to be read. Little could its author have
+surmised that his tragedy, received with universal praise,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
+had but a brief life to live, while the Essays which he had
+already contributed to the <i>Tatler</i> and <i>Spectator</i> would make
+his name familiar to future generations.</p>
+
+<p>Addison's poetry may now be regarded as extinct, and
+most of the poems he wrote are probably unknown to the
+present generation of readers even by name. His Latin
+verses are pronounced excellent by all competent critics,
+but when a man writes verses in a dead language he does
+so generally to show his scholarship, and not to express his
+inspiration. Latin verse is, as M. Taine says, a faded
+flower. Now and then, indeed, a poem has been written
+with merits apart from its latinity&mdash;witness the <i>Epitaphium
+Damonis</i> of Milton&mdash;but Addison, who lacked poetic fire in
+his native language, was not likely to find it in a dead tongue.
+His English poems are generally dull, and sometimes, as
+in his earliest poem, the <i>Account of the greatest English
+Poets</i> (1694), the tameness of the verse is matched by the
+ignorance of the criticism. The student will observe how
+differently the theme is treated by a true poet like Drayton
+in his <i>Epistle to Reynolds</i>; or, like Ben Jonson, in the
+many allusions that he makes to his country's poets. Compare,
+too, Addison's <i>Letter from Italy</i> (1701) with the
+lovely lines on a like theme in Goldsmith's <i>Traveller</i>, and
+the contrast between a verseman and a poet is at once
+apparent. Addison, it may be added, is remembered for
+his hymns, which may be found in most selections of
+sacred verse, and deserve a place in the best of them. As
+the forerunner of Isaac Watts (1674-1748) and of Charles
+Wesley (1708-1788), he struck upon what at that time
+might, in our country, be almost called a new department
+of literature; and it is remarkable that an age which so
+dreaded enthusiasm should have originated verse which
+gives utterance to the most emotional form of spiritual
+aspiration. As hymn-writers, Englishmen were more than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
+a century behind the best sacred poets of Germany.
+Luther had taught the German people the power of
+hymnody, but it was during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648),
+and after its conclusion, that the spirit of devotion
+found full expression in religious verse. Just before the
+engagement at Leipzic, Gustavus Adolphus wrote his well-known
+battle hymn, and the peace was celebrated in a
+noble hymn by Martin Rinkart. He was followed by a
+succession of sacred singers whose devout utterances influenced
+and in some degree inspired the Wesleys.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"A verse may find him whom a sermon flies,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>says George Herbert, and the enormous power wielded
+by Methodism owes a large portion of its strength to
+song.</p>
+
+<p>Amidst much in their writings that is questionable in
+taste and weak in expression, both Watts and Charles
+Wesley have written hymns which prove their incontestible
+right to a place among the poets, and the influence
+they have exerted over the English-speaking race is beyond
+the power of the literary historian to estimate. The external
+divisions of the Christian Church are numerous; its
+unity is to be seen in the Hymn Book. 'Men whose theological
+views contrast most strongly,' says Mr. Abbey in
+his essay on <i>The English Sacred Poetry of the Eighteenth
+Century</i>, 'meet on common ground when they express in
+verse the deeper aspirations of the heart and the voice of
+Christian praise.'</p>
+
+<p>In 1714, on the death of the Queen, Addison was once
+more in office, and held his old position of Irish Secretary.
+In the following year he defended the Whig Government
+and Whig principles in the <i>Freeholder</i>, a paper published
+twice weekly. In it he gives no niggard praise to the
+Government of George I., and to the King himself, for his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
+'civil virtues,' and for his martial achievements. Addison's
+praise disagrees, it need scarcely be said, with the more
+minute and veracious description of the King given by
+Thackeray, but a party politician in those days could
+scarcely be a faithful chronicler. He could see what he
+wished to see, but found it necessary to shut his eyes when
+the prospect became unpleasant. George was a heartless
+libertine, but Addison observes with great satisfaction that
+the women most eminent for virtue and good sense are in
+his interest. 'It would be no small misfortune,' he says,
+'to a sovereign, though he had all the male part of the
+nation on his side, if he did not find himself king of the
+most beautiful half of his subjects. Ladies are always
+of great use to the party they espouse, and never fail
+to win over numbers to it. Lovers, according to Sir
+William Petty's computation, make at least the third
+part of the sensible men of the British nation, and it
+has been an uncontroverted maxim in all ages, that though
+a husband is sometimes a stubborn sort of a creature, a
+lover is always at the devotion of his mistress. By this
+means it lies in the power of every fine woman to secure at
+least half-a-dozen able-bodied men to his Majesty's service.
+The female world are likewise indispensably necessary in
+the best causes to manage the controversial part of them, in
+which no man of tolerable breeding is ever able to refute
+them. Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.'</p>
+
+<p>The essayist thinks it fortunate for the Whigs 'that
+their very enemies acknowledge the finest women of Great
+Britain to be of that party;' and in an amusing but rather
+absurd way he discourses to maids, wives, and widows on
+the advantages of adhering to the Hanoverian Government.
+It is characteristic of Addison that a political paper like
+the <i>Freeholder</i> should be flavoured with the humour and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>
+badinage he found so effective in the <i>Spectator</i>. To the
+ladies he appeals again and again, but not to their reason.
+He gives them mirth instead of argument, and thinks it
+more likely to prevail with the 'Fair Sex.' The <i>Freeholder</i>
+has several papers worthy of the author in his best moods,
+the best of them, perhaps, being the 'Tory Fox-hunter,'
+with which, to quote Johnson's words, 'bigotry itself must
+be delighted.' In the year which gave birth to the <i>Freeholder</i>,
+<i>The Drummer</i>, a comedy, was acted at Drury Lane,
+and ran three nights. The play was not acknowledged
+by Addison, neither was it printed in Tickell's edition of
+his works; but Steele, who published an edition of the
+play, with a dedication to Congreve, never doubted, and
+there is no reason to doubt, that Addison was the
+author. 'The piece,' Mr. Courthope writes, 'is like <i>Cato</i>,
+a standing proof of Addison's deficiency in dramatic
+genius. The plot is poor and trivial, nor does the dialogue,
+though it shows in many passages traces of its author's
+peculiar vein of humour, make amends by its brilliancy
+for the tameness of the dramatic situation.'<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a></p>
+
+<p>After the <i>Freeholder</i> Addison wrote nothing of importance,
+unless we except the essay published after his death
+<i>On the Evidences of Christianity</i>. Of this essay it will
+suffice to quote the judgment of his most distinguished
+eulogist. After observing that the treatise shows the
+narrow limits of Addison's classical knowledge, Lord
+Macaulay adds: 'It is melancholy to see how helplessly
+he gropes his way from blunder to blunder. He assigns
+as grounds for his religious belief stories as absurd as that
+of the Cock Lane Ghost, and forgeries as rank as Ireland's
+Vortigern; puts faith in the lie about the Thundering
+Legion; is convinced that Tiberius moved the senate to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>
+admit Jesus among the gods, and pronounces the letter of
+Agbarus, King of Edessa, to be a record of great authority.
+Nor were these errors the effects of superstition, for to
+superstition Addison was by no means prone. The truth
+is, that he was writing about what he did not understand.'</p>
+
+<p>In 1716, after having been made one of the Commissioners
+for Trades and Colonies, he married the Countess
+Dowager of Warwick, with whom he had been acquainted
+for some years. The marriage, according to the doubtful
+authority of Pope, was not a happy one, and is said to
+have driven Addison to the consolations of the tavern.
+He did not need them long. In 1717 Sunderland became
+Prime Minister, and made Addison a Secretary of State,
+an appointment which he resigned eleven months afterwards;
+and in 1719 he died at Holland House at the age of forty-seven,
+leaving one daughter as the memorial of the union.
+He lies, as is fitting, in the great Abbey of which he has
+written so beautifully.</p>
+
+<p>Tickell's noble tribute to his friend's memory belongs
+to the undying poetry which neither age nor fresher forms
+of verse can render obsolete. It must suffice to quote here
+a few lines from a poem which, despite some conventional
+expressions common to the time, is worthy of its theme
+throughout:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'If pensive to the rural shades I rove,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His shape o'ertakes me in the lonely grove;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Twas there of Just and Good he reasoned strong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cleared some great truth, or raised some serious song;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There patient showed us the wise course to steer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A candid censor, and a friend severe;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There taught us how to live; and (oh! too high<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The price for knowledge) taught us how to die.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There are few men of literary eminence in the eighteenth
+century of whom we know so little as of Addison. His<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
+own <i>Spectator</i>, who never opened his lips but in his club,
+is scarcely more silent than the essayist's biographers, so
+trifling are the details they have to record beyond the
+bare facts of his official and literary career. Steele knew
+him better, and, in spite of an unhappy estrangement at
+the last, probably loved him more than anyone else, and
+had he written his story, as he once proposed doing, the
+narrative might have been charming; but, alas for Steele's
+resolutions!</p>
+
+<p>That Addison was a shy man we know&mdash;Lord Chesterfield
+said he was the most timid man he ever knew&mdash;and
+it speaks well for his resolution and strength of purpose
+that he should have risen notwithstanding this timidity
+to so high a position in public affairs. His want of oratorical
+power was a drawback to his efficiency, and Sir
+James Macintosh was probably right in saying that
+Addison as Dean of St. Patrick's, and Swift as Secretary
+of State, would have been a happy stroke of fortune,
+putting each into the place most fitted for him. The
+essayist's reserve, while it closed his lips in general
+society, did not prevent him from being one of the most
+fascinating of companions in the freedom of conversation
+with a few intimate friends. Swift, Steele, and even
+Pope, testify to Addison's irresistible charm in the select
+society that he loved. Young said he could chain the
+attention of every hearer, and Lady Mary Montagu declared
+that he was the best company in the world.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Richard Steele
+(1672-1729).</div>
+
+<p>Richard Steele was born in Dublin, 1672, of English
+parents, and educated at the Charterhouse,
+where, as we have said, Addison was at the
+same time a pupil. In 1690 he matriculated
+at Christ Church, Oxford, Addison being then demy at
+Magdalen. Steele left college without taking a degree,
+and entered the army as a cadet. After a time he ob<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>tained
+the rank of captain in Lord Lucas's fusiliers, and
+wrote his treatise, <i>The Christian Hero</i> (1701), with the
+design, he says, 'principally to fix upon his own mind a
+strong impression of virtue and religion in opposition to
+a stronger propensity towards unwarrantable pleasure.'
+Steele was an honest lover of the things most worthy of
+love, but his frailty too often proved stronger than his
+virtue, and the purpose of <i>The Christian Hero</i> was not
+answered.</p>
+
+<p>Jeremy Collier's <i>Short View of the Immorality and Profanity
+of the English Stage</i>, published in 1698, had made,
+as it well might, a powerful impression, and Steele, who
+was always ready to inculcate morality on other people,
+wrote four comedies with a moral purpose. <i>The Funeral;
+or Grief à-la-Mode</i> was acted with success at Drury Lane
+in 1701, and when published passed through several
+editions. <i>The Lying Lover</i> followed two years later,
+and was, in the comfortable judgment of the author,
+'damned for its piety.' This was followed, in 1705, by
+<i>The Tender Husband</i>, a play suggested by the <i>Sicilien</i>
+of Molière, as <i>The Lying Lover</i> had been founded on the
+<i>Menteur</i> of Corneille. Many years later Steele's last play,
+<i>The Conscious Lovers</i> (1722), completed his performances
+as a dramatist. It was dedicated to the King, who is said
+to have sent the author £500. The modern reader will
+find little worthy of attention in the dramas of Steele.
+His sense of humour enlivens some of the scenes, and is,
+perhaps, chiefly visible in <i>The Funeral</i>; but for the most
+part dulness is in the ascendant, and the sentiment is
+frequently mawkish. <i>The Conscious Lovers</i>, said Parson
+Adams, contains 'some things almost solemn enough for
+a sermon.' This may be true, but we do not desire a
+sermon in a play, and Steele, who is always a lively
+essayist, loses his liveliness in writing for the stage. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
+has been observed by Mr. Ward that, taking a hint from
+Colley Cibber, he 'became the real founder of that sentimental
+comedy which exercised so pernicious an influence
+upon the progress of our dramatic literature.' 'It would
+be unjust,' he adds, 'to hold him responsible for the
+feebleness of successors who were altogether deficient in
+the comic power which he undoubtedly even as a dramatist
+exhibits; but in so far as their aberrations were the result
+of his example, he must be held to have contributed,
+though with the best of motives, to the decline of the
+English drama.'<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> One of the prominent offenders who
+followed in Steele's wake was George Lillo (1693-1739),
+whose highly moral tragedies, written for the edification
+of playgoers, have the kind of tragic interest which is
+called forth by any commonplace tale of crime and
+misery. In Lillo's two most important dramas, <i>George
+Barnwell</i> (1731), a play founded on the old ballad, and
+<i>The Fatal Curiosity</i> (1736), there is a total absence of the
+elevation in character and language which gives dignity to
+tragedy. His plays are like tales of guilt arranged and
+amplified from the Newgate Calendar. The author wrote
+with a good purpose, and the public appreciated his work,
+but it is not dramatic art, and has no pretension to the
+name of literature.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout his life Steele was at war with fortune.
+His hopefulness was inexhaustible, but he learnt no lessons
+from experience, and escaped from one slough to fall into
+another. He was as unthrifty as Goldsmith, whom in
+many respects he resembles, and his warm, impulsive
+nature was allied to a combativeness and jealousy which
+sometimes led him to quarrel with his best friends. Of
+his passion for the somewhat exacting lady whom he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
+married,<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> and of the 400 and odd notelets addressed by
+the lover-husband to his 'dear, dearest Prue,' and 'absolute
+Governess,' it is enough to say here, that the story
+told offhand in his own words, shows how lovable the man
+was in spite of the faults which he never attempted to
+conceal. Only about a week before the marriage the
+lady had fair warning of one probable drawback to her
+happiness as a wife.<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> On the morning of August 30th,
+1707, Steele advised his 'fair one' to look up to that
+heaven which had made her so sweet a companion, and in
+the evening of that day he wrote:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p style="margin-left:2em;">'<span class="smcap">Dear lovely Mrs. Scurlock</span>,</p>
+
+<p>'I have been in very good company, where your
+health, under the character of <i>the woman I loved best</i>, has
+been often drunk, so that I may say I am dead drunk for
+your sake, which is more than I <i>die for you</i>.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-right:2em;text-align:right;">'<span class="smcap">Rich. Steele</span>.'</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>After marriage Steele's extravagance and impecuniosity
+must have proved a severe trial to Prue. At times he
+would live in considerable style, and Berkeley, who writes,
+in 1713, of dining with him frequently at his house in
+Bloomsbury Square, praises his table, servants, and coach
+as 'very genteel.' At other times the family were without
+common necessaries, and on one occasion there was not 'an
+inch of candle, a pound of coal, or a bit of meat in the
+house.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p><p>On the 12th April, 1709, Steele issued the first number
+of the <i>Tatler</i>, its supposed author being the Isaac Bickerstaff,
+whose name, thanks to Swift, had been 'rendered
+famous through all parts of Europe.' The essays appeared
+every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, for the convenience
+of the post, and at the outset contained political
+news, which Steele, by his government appointment of
+Gazetteer, was enabled to supply. After awhile, however,
+much to the advantage of the <i>Tatler</i>, this news was
+dropped. The articles are dated from White's Chocolate-house,
+from Will's Coffee-house, from the Grecian, and
+from the St. James's. It is probable that the column in
+Defoe's <i>Review</i>, containing <i>Advice from the Scandal Club</i>,
+suggested his 'Lucubrations' to Steele. If so, it does not
+detract from his originality of treatment, for Defoe's town
+gossip is poor stuff. Addison, who knew nothing of the
+project beforehand, came, ere long, to his friend's assistance;
+but it was not until about eighty numbers had
+appeared, that he became a frequent contributor, and
+before that time Steele had made his mark. When the
+essays were afterwards reprinted in four volumes, Steele,
+who was never wanting in gratitude, generously acknowledged
+the help he had received. 'I fared,' he says,
+'like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbour
+to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary. When I had
+once called him in, I could not subsist without dependence
+on him.' The <i>Tatler</i> still supplies delightful
+entertainment, and in the almost total absence of amusing
+and wholesome reading in Steele's time, must have proved
+a welcome companion. Readers who are inundated by
+what is called 'light literature' can with difficulty
+imagine the dearth suffered in Pope's day, when the interminable
+romances of Calprenède, of Mdlle. de Scuderi
+and her brother, and of Madame la Fayette, were the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
+liveliest books considered fit for a modest woman to read.
+A novel, however, in ten volumes, like the <i>Grand Cyrus</i>
+or <i>Clélie</i>, had one advantage over the cheap fictions of
+our time, its interest was not soon exhausted.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Tatler</i> has claims upon the student's attention,
+apart from the entertainment it affords. Steele, who lived
+from hand to mouth, and wrote, as he lived, on the impulse
+of the moment, had unwittingly begun a work
+destined to form an epoch in English literature. The
+<i>Essay</i>, as we now understand the word, dates from the
+<i>Lucubrations of Isaac Bickerstaff</i>, and Steele and Addison,
+who may boast a numerous progeny, have in Charles
+Lamb the noblest of their sons.</p>
+
+<p>On the 2nd January, 1711, Steele wrote the final number
+of the <i>Tatler</i>, partly on the plea that the essays would
+suffice to make four volumes, and partly because he was
+known to be the author, and could not, as Mr. Steele,
+attack vices with the freedom of Mr. Bickerstaff. Addison,
+who had done so much to assist Steele in his first venture,
+was as ignorant of his intention to close the work as he
+was of its initiation. Two months later <i>The Spectator</i>
+appeared, and this time the friends worked in concert. It
+proved a brilliantly successful partnership. The second
+number, in which the characters of the club are introduced,
+was written by Steele, and to him we owe the first
+sketch of the immortal Sir Roger de Coverley:</p>
+
+<p>'When he is in town he lives in Soho Square. It is
+said he keeps himself a bachelor by reason he was crossed
+in love by a perverse, beautiful widow of the next county
+to him. Before his disappointment, Sir Roger was what
+you call a fine gentleman, had often supped with my Lord
+Rochester and Sir George Etheridge, fought a duel upon
+his first coming to town, and kicked bully Dawson in a
+public coffee-house for calling him youngster. But being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>
+ill-used by the above-mentioned widow, he was very
+serious for a year and a half; and though, his temper
+being naturally jovial, he at last got over it, he grew careless
+of himself, and never dressed afterwards. He continues
+to wear a coat and doublet of the same cut that
+were in fashion at the time of his repulse, which, in his
+merry humours, he tells us has been in and out twelve
+times since he first wore it.... He is now in his fifty-sixth
+year, cheerful, gay, and hearty, keeps a good house
+both in town and country; a great lover of mankind; but
+there is such a mirthful cast in his behaviour, that he is
+rather beloved than esteemed. His tenants grow rich, his
+servants look satisfied, all the young women profess love
+to him, and the young men are glad of his company.
+When he comes into a house he calls the servants by their
+names, and talks all the way upstairs to a visit. I must
+not omit that Sir Roger is a justice of the quorum; that
+he fills the chair at a quarter-session with great abilities;
+and three months ago gained universal applause by explaining
+a passage in the Game Act.'</p>
+
+<p>In their daily issue, as well as afterwards in volumes,
+the essays had an extensive sale. They were to be found
+on every breakfast-table, and so popular did they prove,
+that when the imposition of a halfpenny tax destroyed a
+number of periodicals, Steele found it safe to double the
+price of the <i>Spectator</i>. The vivacity and humour of the
+paper were visible from the beginning. 'Mr. Steele,' Swift
+wrote, 'seems to have gathered new life, and to have a new
+fund of wit.' Of 555 papers, Addison wrote 274 and
+Steele 236, while the remaining forty-five were the work
+of occasional contributors. In the full tide of its success,
+and without any assigned reason, the <i>Spectator</i> was
+brought to a conclusion in December, 1712, and in the following
+spring Steele started the <i>Guardian</i>, which might<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>
+have been as fortunate as its predecessor, had not the
+editor's zeal tempted him to diverge to politics. He
+had also a disagreement with his publisher, and the
+<i>Guardian</i> was allowed but a short life of 175 numbers.
+Of these about fifty were due to Addison, and upwards of
+eighty to Steele.</p>
+
+<p>Steele's political ardour was irrepressible, and a paper in
+the <i>Guardian</i> (No. 128), demanding the abolition of Dunkirk,
+called forth a pamphlet from Swift, in which the
+weaknesses of his former friend are sneered at and denounced
+with enough of truthfulness to enhance their
+malice. After allowing that Steele has humour, and is no
+disagreeable companion 'after the first bottle,' Swift adds,
+'Being the most imprudent man alive, he never follows the
+advice of his friends, but is wholly at the mercy of fools
+and knaves, or hurried away by his own caprice, by which
+he has committed more absurdities in economy, friendship,
+love, duty, good manners, politics, religion, and writing
+than ever fell to one man's share.' A little later, in
+anticipation of the Queen's death, Steele published <i>The
+Crisis</i> (1714), a political pamphlet, which led to his expulsion
+from the House of Commons. It was answered
+by one of the most masterly of Swift's pamphlets, <i>The
+Public Spirit of the Whigs</i>, in which it is suggested that
+Steele might be superior to other writers on the Whig side
+'provided he would a little regard the propriety and disposition
+of his words, consult the grammatical part, and get
+some information in the subject he intends to handle.'</p>
+
+<p>The reader is chiefly concerned with Steele as an essayist,
+and it is unnecessary to follow his career in the House of
+Commons and out of it. Yet there is one anecdote too
+characteristic to be omitted in the briefest notice of his
+life. Lady Charlotte Finch had been attacked in the
+<i>Examiner</i> 'for knotting in St. James's Chapel during<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+divine service, in the immediate presence both of God and
+her Majesty, who were affronted together.' Steele denounced
+the calumny in the <i>Guardian</i>. Upon taking his
+seat as member for Stockbridge, he was attacked by the
+Tories on account of <i>The Crisis</i>, which they deemed an inflammatory
+libel, and defended himself in a speech which
+occupied three hours. When he left the House, Lord Finch,
+who, like Steele, was a new member, rose to make his maiden
+speech in defence of the man who had defended his sister;
+a nervous feeling caused him to hesitate, and he sat down,
+exclaiming, 'It is strange I cannot speak for this man,
+though I could readily fight for him.' The House cheered
+these generous words, and Lord Finch rising again, made
+an able speech. The effort was a vain one, and Steele
+lost his seat. A few months later, after the death of
+Queen Anne, he entered the House again as member for
+Boroughbridge, and having been placed in the commission
+of peace for Middlesex, on presenting an address from the
+county, he received the honour of knighthood.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile he had not renounced his vocation of essayist.
+The <i>Guardian</i> was followed by the <i>Englishman</i> (1713),
+the <i>Englishman</i> by the <i>Lover</i> (1714), and the <i>Lover</i> by the
+<i>Reader</i> (1714), a journal strongly political in character.
+Of this only nine numbers were issued. Then came <i>Town
+Talk</i>, the <i>Tea Table</i>, <i>Chit-chat</i>, and the <i>Theatre</i>. Sir Richard
+appears to have been always in a hurry to break new
+ground, a foible not confined to literature. He was continually
+starting new projects, and never doubted, in spite
+of numberless failures, that his latest effort to make a
+fortune would be successful.</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding his appointments as manager of Drury
+Lane and as a Commissioner in Scotland to inquire into the
+Estates of Traitors, Steele's money difficulties did not lessen
+as he advanced in life; worse still, he had the misfortune to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>
+quarrel with his oldest and dearest friend. For this he and
+Addison were alike to blame, and Addison dying a few months
+later, there was no time for reconciliation. In 1718 Steele
+had lost his wife, and some years afterwards his only remaining
+son. Ultimately, broken in health and fortune, Sir
+Richard retired to Carmarthen, and there, in 1729, he died.</p>
+
+<p>'I was told,' says Victor, 'he retained his cheerful sweetness
+of temper to the last; and would often be carried out
+in a summer's evening, when the country lads and lasses
+were assembled at their rural sports, and with his pencil
+give an order on his agent, the mercer, for a new gown to
+the best dancer.'<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a></p>
+
+<p>All literature worthy of the name is the expression of the
+writer's life, of his aspirations, and of his ultimate aims;
+and since man is a moral being, it cannot be severed from
+morality. To point a moral, if it be within the scope of
+imaginative art, is subordinate to its main purpose. To
+delight by stimulating the imagination, to give a new
+beauty to existence by widening the realm of thought,&mdash;these
+are some of the noblest purposes of literature;
+and while men and women of creative genius are among
+our wisest teachers, the wisdom we gain from them
+comes to us without direct enforcement. In the last century,
+however, authors of good character, and authors who
+had no character to boast of, were equally impressed with
+the necessity of adorning their pages with moral maxims,
+and if this moral was not inserted in the body of the
+work, it was inevitable that it should be tacked on to the
+end of it like a tail to a kite. Steele in his artless way had
+a moral end in view, though his method of reaching it was
+not always wise or even discreet. Addison had his moral
+also. It pervades everything he wrote, but so artfully does<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>
+he make use of it, that the reader is not unpleasantly conscious
+of a purpose. His allegories belong to an obsolete
+form of literature, but one of them at least <i>The Vision of
+Mirza</i>, may be still read with pleasure. His Saturday
+essays, which are nearly always serious in character, are
+the sermons of a layman, expressed in the most lucid
+style and in the purest English. His tales, like his allegories,
+have lost much of their flavour, but the humorous
+essays, in which he depicts the manners of the time, as
+well as the numbers devoted to the Spectator Club and to
+Addison's beloved Sir Roger, have a perennial charm.
+There is a felicity in the essayist's touch which is beyond
+imitation, although a reader might give, as Johnson suggested,
+days and nights to the study. The style is the
+man, and to write as Addison wrote it would be necessary
+to reach his moral and intellectual level, to see with his
+shrewd but kindly eyes, and to have his fine sense of
+humour. His faults, too, must be shared by his imitator&mdash;the
+somewhat too delicate refinement of a nature that
+never yields to impulse&mdash;the feminine sensitiveness that is
+allied to jealousy. Addison, in the judgment of his admirers,
+comes very near to perfection, and that is an irritating
+quality in a fellow mortal. It is, if it be not paradoxical
+to say so, the defect of his essays. There is nothing
+definite to find fault with in them, but we feel that strength
+is wanting. The clear and silent stream is a beautiful object,
+but after awhile it becomes monotonous, and we long for
+the swift and impetuous movement of a mountain torrent.
+It would be a thankless task, however, to dwell insistently
+on the deficiencies of a writer who has done so much for literature,
+and so much, too, for what is better than literature.
+We may wish that he had more warmth in him, somewhat
+more of energy and passion, yet such merits would be
+scarcely consonant with the graceful charm which gives to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
+the prose writings of Addison an unrivalled position in
+Pope's age, and, it might be added, in the eighteenth century,
+were it not for the priceless literary gift bestowed
+upon Oliver Goldsmith.</p>
+
+<p>Steele's fame as a writer has been overshadowed by the
+more exquisite genius of Addison, and his reputation has
+suffered partly from his own frailties and partly from the
+contemptuous way in which he has been treated by the
+panegyrists and critics of Addison. Pity is closely allied
+to contempt, and Sir Richard has come to be regarded as
+a scapegrace whose chief honour in life was the friendship
+of the accomplished essayist. Yet it was Steele who
+created the form of literature in which Addison earned his
+laurels, and without which he would in the present day be
+utterly forgotten. Steele was the discoverer of a new
+country, and if Addison took possession of its fairest portion,
+it was after his friend had pointed out the path and
+made the way easy. It would be very unjust, however, to
+treat of Steele solely as a pioneer. His own work, though
+less perfect than that of Addison, a consummate master
+of composition, is rich in variety and spirit, in pathos and
+in knowledge of the world. Steele is often careless, but
+he is never dull, and writes with a glow of enthusiasm
+that excites the reader's sympathy. Truly does Mr. Dobson
+say that while Addison's essays are faultless in their art
+and beyond the range of his friend's more impulsive
+nature, 'for words which the heart finds when the head is
+seeking; for phrases glowing with the white heat of a
+generous emotion; for sentences which throb and tingle
+with manly pity or courageous indignation, we must go to
+the essays of Steele.'<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a></p>
+
+<p>Sir Richard's pathetic touches and artless turns of ex<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>pression
+come from the heart. He is the most natural of
+writers, but does not seem to be aware that nature, in
+order to be converted into good literature, needs a little
+clothing. His essays have often a looseness or negligence
+of aim unpardonable in a man who can write so well. A
+conspicuous illustration of this defect may be seen in
+No. 181 of the <i>Tatler</i>, one of the most beautiful pieces
+from Steele's pen.</p>
+
+<p>'The first sense of sorrow,' he writes, 'I ever knew was
+upon the death of my father, at which time I was not
+quite five years of age; but was rather amazed at what all
+the house meant, than possessed with a real understanding
+why nobody was willing to play with me. I remember I
+went into the room where his body lay, and my mother
+sat weeping alone by it. I had my battledore in my hand,
+and fell a-beating the coffin and calling "Papa," for, I
+know not how, I had some slight idea that he was locked
+up there. My mother catched me in her arms, and transported
+beyond all patience of the silent grief she was
+before in, she almost smothered me in her embraces; and
+told me in a flood of tears, "Papa could not hear me, and
+would play with me no more, for they were going to put
+him under ground, whence he could never come to us again."
+She was a very beautiful woman of a noble spirit, and
+there was a dignity in her grief amidst all the wildness of
+her transport, which, methought, struck me with an instinct
+of sorrow, that before I was sensible of what it was
+to grieve, seized my very soul, and has made pity the
+weakness of my heart ever since.'</p>
+
+<p>Later on in the essay, and still looking back on the past,
+Steele recalls the untimely death of the first object his
+eyes ever beheld with love, and then abruptly dismissing
+his regrets he carelessly finishes the paper with this characteristic
+passage: 'A large train of disasters were coming<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
+on to my memory when my servant knocked at my closet
+door, and interrupted me with a letter, attended with a
+hamper of wine of the same sort with that which is to be
+put to sale on Thursday next at Garraway's Coffee-house.
+Upon the receipt of it I sent for three of my friends. We
+are so intimate that we can be company in whatever state
+of mind we meet, and can entertain each other without
+expecting always to rejoice. The wine we found to be
+generous and warming, but with such a heat as moved us
+rather to be cheerful than frolicsome. It revived the spirits,
+without firing the blood. We commended it until two
+of the clock this morning, and having to-day met a little
+before dinner, we found that though we drank two bottles
+a man, we had much more reason to recollect than forget
+what had passed the night before.'</p>
+
+<p>Steele, to quote Johnson's phrase, was 'the most agreeable
+rake that ever trod the rounds of indulgence,' but he
+had many a fine quality that does not harmonize with the
+character of a rake; and although he hurt himself by his
+follies, he did his best to help others by his genial wisdom.
+If he did not sufficiently regard his own interests, his
+thoughts, as Addison said, 'teemed with projects for his
+country's good.' Savage Landor, with an impulse of
+somewhat extravagant eulogy, exclaimed, 'What a good
+critic Steele was! I doubt if he has ever been surpassed.'
+This is one of the sayings that will not bear examination.
+Steele had doubtless the fine perception of what is
+noble in art and literature, which some men possess instinctively.
+He felt what was good, but does not appear
+either to have reached or strengthened his conclusions by
+any process of study.</p>
+
+<p>As an essayist Steele is careless, rapid, emotional, and
+disposed to be on the best terms with himself and with his
+readers. He makes them sure that if they could have met<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
+him in his rollicking mood at Will's Coffee-house, he would
+have treated them all round, even if, like Goldsmith, he
+had been forced to borrow the money to do it. But he
+was not always in this reckless humour. His heart was
+expansive in its sympathies and tender as a woman's; his
+mind was open to all kindly influences, and his essays
+have in them the rich blood and vivid utterances of a man
+who has 'warmed both hands before the fire of life.'</p>
+
+<p>Between Steele's <i>Guardian</i> (1713) and the <i>Rambler</i> of
+Johnson (1750), a period of thirty-seven years, a swarm
+of periodicals testify to the fame of Steele and Addison.
+The reader curious on the subject will find in Dr. Drake's
+essays a minute account of the numerous essayists who
+flourished, or who made an effort to live, between the
+close of the eighth volume of the <i>Spectator</i> and the beginning
+of the present century. Of these a few have still
+a place on our shelves, but for the most part they enjoyed
+a butterfly existence, and serve but to prove the immeasurable
+superiority of the writers who created the English
+Essay.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> Cibber's <i>Apology</i>, p. 386.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> Courthope's <i>Addison</i>, p. 150.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> <i>English Dramatic Literature</i>, vol. ii., p. 603.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> 'It is a strange thing,' he writes, 'that you will not behave
+yourself with the obedience people of worse features do, but that I
+must be always giving you an account of every trifle and minute of
+my time.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> Steele had been previously married to Mrs. Stretch, a widow,
+who possessed an estate in the West Indies; but the lady did not
+long survive the marriage.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> Victor's <i>Original Letters, Dramatic Pieces, and Poems</i>, vol. i.,
+p. 330.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> <i>Selections from Steele</i>, by Austin Dobson. Introduction, p. xxx.
+Clarendon Press.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<h3>JONATHAN SWIFT&mdash;JOHN ARBUTHNOT.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The booksellers who employed the most famous man of
+letters then living (1777), to write the <i>Lives of the Poets</i>,
+selected the authors whose biographies were to accompany
+the poems they proposed to publish. They did not know
+the difference between versemakers and poets; but they
+probably did know what authors of the rhyming tribe
+were likely to prove the most popular. Dr. Johnson,
+who was then in his sixty-ninth year, was willing to
+write the <i>Lives</i> to order. He added, indeed, three or four
+names to the list which had been given him; but he made
+no protest, and contented himself, as he told Boswell, in
+saying that a man was a dunce when he thought that he
+was one.</p>
+
+<p>Among the biographies included by Johnson in the
+<i>Lives</i>, appears the illustrious name of Swift. He was far
+indeed from being a dunce; but just as certainly he was
+not a poet, unless the title be given to him by courtesy. On
+the other hand, Swift ranks among the most distinguished
+prose writers of his time&mdash;many critics consider him the
+greatest&mdash;and he therefore finds his natural place in the
+prose section of this volume.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Jonathan Swift
+(1667-1745).</div>
+
+<p>Swift's life is an extraordinary psychological study, but
+it will suffice to state here the bare outline
+of his career. He was a posthumous child,
+and born in Dublin of English parents,
+November 30th, 1667. When a year old he was kidnapped<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>
+by his nurse out of pure affection, and carried off to
+Whitehaven, where she remained with the child for three
+years. At the age of six the boy was sent to Kilkenny
+school, and there he had William Congreve (1670-1729),
+the future dramatist, for a schoolfellow. Neither at school
+nor at Trinity College, Dublin, which he entered as a boy
+of fifteen, did Swift distinguish himself, and he left the
+University in disgrace. At the Revolution he found a
+refuge with his mother at Leicester, and she, through a
+family relationship, obtained a position for her boy in the
+house of Sir William Temple (1628-1698), who was accounted
+a great man in his own day, and was famous alike
+for statecraft and literature. By many readers he will be
+best remembered as the husband of the charming Dorothy
+Osborne, whose innocently sweet love-letters have not lost
+their freshness in the lapse of two centuries.</p>
+
+<p>There was a degree of servitude in Swift's position of
+secretary, which galled his proud spirit. But Temple, so
+far from treating him unkindly, introduced him to the
+King, and employed him in 'affairs of great importance.'
+In 1694 he left Temple, went to Dublin, took holy
+orders, and lived as prebend of Kilroot on £100 a year.
+In 1696 he resigned the office and returned to Moor
+Park, where he remained until Sir William Temple's
+death, in 1699. There he studied hard, ran up a steep hill
+daily for exercise, and cultivated the acquaintance of
+Esther Johnson, the 'Stella' destined to take a strange
+part in Swift's history, then a mere girl, and a companion
+of Temple's sister, who lived with him after his wife's death.</p>
+
+<p>Swift began his literary career by writing Pindaric
+odes, one of which led Dryden to say, and the prediction
+was amply verified, 'Cousin Swift, you will never be a
+poet.' Probably no man of genius ever wrote worse
+poetry than is to be found in these portentous efforts.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Here is one fair illustration of his flights as an ode
+writer, and the reader will not ask for more:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Were I to form a regular thought of Fame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which is perhaps, as hard to imagine right<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As to paint Echo to the sight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would not draw the idea from an empty name;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Because, alas! when we all die,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Careless and ignorant posterity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Although they praise the learning and the wit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And though the title seems to show<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The name and man by whom the book was writ,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Yet how shall they be brought to know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whether that very name was he, or you, or I?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Less should I daub it o'er with transitory praise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And water-colours of these days:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These days! where e'en th' extravagance of poetry<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Is at a loss for figures to express<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Men's folly, whimsies, and inconstancy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And by a faint description makes them less.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then tell us what is Fame, where shall we search for it?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Look where exalted Virtue and Religion sit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Enthroned with heavenly Wit!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Look where you see<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The greatest scorn of learned Vanity!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">(And then how much a nothing is mankind!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose reason is weighed down by popular air.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Who, by that, vainly talks of baffling death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And hopes to lengthen life by a transfusion of breath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which yet whoe'er examines right will find<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To be an art as vain as bottling up of wind!)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when you find out these, believe true Fame is there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Far above all reward, yet to which all is due;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And this, ye great unknown! is only known in you.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is remarkable that at the very time Swift was perpetrating
+these lyrical atrocities, he was at work on the <i>Tale
+of a Tub</i>, which is generally regarded as the most masterly
+effort of his genius. A critic has said that Swift's poetry
+'lacks one quality only&mdash;imagination,' but verse without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
+imagination is like a body without a soul, like a house without
+windows, like a landscape-painting without atmosphere, and
+no license of language will allow us to call Swift a poet.
+Enough that he became a master of rhyme, and used it
+with extraordinary facility. Dr. Johnson's estimate of
+Swift's powers in this respect is a just one:</p>
+
+<p>'In the poetical works of Dr. Swift there is not much
+upon which the critic can exercise his powers. They are
+often humorous, almost always light, and have the qualities
+which recommend such compositions, ease and gaiety.
+They are, for the most part, what their author intended.
+The diction is correct, the numbers are smooth, and the
+rhymes exact. There seldom occurs a hard-laboured expression,
+or a redundant epithet; all his verses exemplify
+his own definition of a good style; they consist of proper
+words in proper places.'</p>
+
+<p>The merits with which Swift's verse is credited are,
+therefore, not poetical merits, unless we accept what
+Schlegel calls the miserable doctrine of Boileau, that the
+essence of poetry consists in diction and versification.</p>
+
+<p>The great bulk of Swift's verse is suggested by the
+incidents of the hour. No subject is too trivial for his
+pen; but the poems which are addressed to Stella, and
+others which, like <i>Cadenus and Vanessa</i>, and <i>On the
+Death of Dr. Swift</i>, have a personal interest, are by far the
+most attractive. We see the best side of Swift when he
+addresses Stella, whether in verse or prose. The birthday
+rhymes he delighted to write in her praise have the mark
+of sincerity, and there is true feeling in the lines which
+describe her as a ministering angel in his sickness:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'When on my sickly couch I lay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Impatient both of night and day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lamenting in unmanly strains,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Called every power to ease my pains;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then Stella ran to my relief<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With cheerful face and inward grief;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And though by Heaven's severe decree<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She suffers hourly more than me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No cruel master could require<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From slaves employed for daily hire,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What Stella, by her friendship warmed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With vigour and delight performed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My sinking spirits now supplies<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With cordials in her hands and eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now with a soft and silent tread<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unheard she moves about my bed.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I see her taste each nauseous draught<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And so obligingly am caught,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I bless the hand from whence they came,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor dare distort my face for shame.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The poem in which Swift imagines what will take place
+upon his death, is full of satiric humour, combined with
+that vein of bitterness that is never long absent from his
+writings. His humour is always allied to sadness; his
+mirth often sounds like a cry of misery. In this poem he
+pictures his gradual decay, and how his special friends,
+anticipating the end, will show their tenderness by adding
+largely to his years:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'He's older than he would be reckoned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And well remembers Charles the Second.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He hardly drinks a pint of wine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that I doubt is no good sign.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His stomach too begins to fail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Last year we thought him strong and hale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But now he's quite another thing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I wish he may hold out till Spring.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>No enemy can match a friend, Swift adds, in portending a
+great misfortune:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'He'd rather choose that I should die<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than his prediction prove a lie,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No one foretells I shall recover,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But all agree to give me over.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>So he dies, and the first question asked is, 'What has
+he left and who's his heir?' and when these questions are
+answered, the Dean is blamed for his bequests. The news
+spreads to London and is told at Court:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Kind Lady Suffolk, in the spleen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Runs laughing up to tell the Queen.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Queen so gracious, mild, and good,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cries, "Is he gone? 'tis time he should."'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But the loss of the Dean will cause a brief regret to his
+most intimate friends:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Poor Pope will grieve a month; and Gay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A week; and Arbuthnot a day.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">St. John himself will scarce forbear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To bite his pen and drop a tear.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The rest will give a shrug, and cry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"I'm sorry&mdash;but we all must die."'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Why grieve, indeed, at the death of friends, since no loss is
+more easy to supply, and in a year the Dean will be forgotten,
+and his wit be out of date.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Some country squire to Lintot goes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Inquires for "Swift in Verse and Prose."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Says Lintot, "I have heard the name;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He died a year ago." "The same."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He searches all the shop in vain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Sir, you may find them in Duck Lane,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I sent them with a load of books<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Last Monday to the pastrycook's.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To fancy they could live a year!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I find you're but a stranger here.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Dean was famous in his time,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And had a kind of knack at rhyme.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His way of writing now is past,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The town has got a better taste."'<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>Enough has been transcribed to show Swift's art in this
+poem, which is of considerable, but not of wearisome
+length. Perhaps ten or twelve pieces, in addition to those
+already mentioned, will repay the student's attention.
+One of the worthiest is a <i>Rhapsody on Poetry</i>. <i>Baucis and
+Philemon</i>, too, is a lively piece that pleased Goldsmith,
+and will please every reader. It was much altered from
+the original draught at Addison's suggestion; but the
+alterations are not improvements.<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> <i>The City Shower</i> is a
+piece of Dutch painting, reminding us of Crabbe. <i>Mrs.
+Harris's Petition</i> is an admirable bit of fooling; <i>Mary the
+Cook-Maid's Letter</i>, is in its way inimitable; and so, too, is
+the amusing talk of 'my lady's waiting-woman' in <i>The
+Grand Question Debated</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult, unhappily, to pursue one's way through
+Swift's poems, without being repelled again and again by
+the filth in which it pleases him to wade. <i>The Beast's
+Confession</i>, which has been reprinted in the <i>Selections from
+Swift</i> (Clarendon Press), is not obscene, like <i>The Lady's
+Dressing-Room</i>, <i>Strephon and Chloe</i>, and other poems of the
+class; but it has the inhumanity which deforms the description
+of the Houyhnhnms. Strange to say, in private
+life Swift appears to have been not only moral in conduct,
+but refined in conversation, and he is even said to have
+rebuked Stella on one occasion for a slightly coarse
+remark. His imagination was diseased, and he was himself
+always apprehensive of the calamity under which he
+became at last 'a driveller and a show.' 'I shall be like
+that tree,' he said once to the poet Young, 'I shall die at
+the top.'</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p>
+<p>It has been already said that <i>The Tale of a Tub</i> was
+written at Moor Park. It appeared in 1704, and although
+published anonymously and never owned, the book
+effectually stood in the way of Swift's high preferment in
+the Church. Queen Anne declined, and not without
+reason, to make its author a bishop.</p>
+
+<p>It is a satire of amazing power, written by a man who
+takes, as Swift took throughout life, a misanthropical view
+of human nature, and who agrees with the cynical judgment
+of Carlyle, that men are mostly fools. Swift, however,
+did not consider fools useless, but observes that they
+'are as necessary for a good writer as pen, ink, and paper.'
+Never was volume written which betrayed in larger
+characters the opinions and disposition of its author.
+Swift was consistent in defending the National Church as
+a political institution; but in the <i>Tale of a Tub</i> he does
+so with weapons an atheist might use if he possessed the
+skill. The author maintains that in his ridicule of the
+Church of Rome and of Protestant dissenters, he is only
+displaying the abuses which deform the Christian Church;
+but no defence can be urged for his wild and irreverent
+method of turning subjects into ridicule which by a vast
+number of people are regarded as sacred. In judging of
+Swift's satire from a moral standing-point, one test, as Mr.
+Leslie Stephen observes, may be supposed to guide our decision.
+'Imagine the <i>Tale of a Tub</i> to be read by Bishop
+Butler and by Voltaire, who called Swift a <i>Rabelais perfectionné</i>.
+Can anyone doubt that the believer would be
+scandalized, and the scoffer find himself in a thoroughly
+congenial element? Would not any believer shrink from
+the use of such weapons, even though directed against his
+enemies?'<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p>
+<p>Although the wit poured out with such profusion in the
+<i>Tale of a Tub</i>, in so far as it offends the moral sense, fails
+to give pleasure, the reader is astonished, as Swift in later
+life was himself, at the genius displayed in this allegory,
+the argument of which may be told in a few words.</p>
+
+<p>A man is supposed to have three sons by one wife, and
+all at a birth. On his deathbed he leaves to each of them
+a new coat, which he says will grow with their growth, and
+last as long as they live. In his will he leaves directions,
+saying how the coats are to be used, and warning them
+against neglecting his instructions. For some years all
+goes well, the will is studied and followed, and the
+brothers, Peter (the Church of Rome), Martin (the Church
+of England), and Jack (the Calvinist), live in unity. How
+by degrees they misinterpret their father's will, how Peter
+begins by adding topknots to his coat, and afterwards
+grows so scandalous that his brothers resolve to leave him,
+and then fall out between themselves, is told with abundant
+wit. A great part of the volume consists of digressions
+written in Swift's most vigorous style, and with the
+cynical humour in which he has no competitor.</p>
+
+<p>It is always interesting to observe the influence of a
+work of genius on other minds, and in connection with the
+<i>Tale of a Tub</i> a story told of his boyhood by William Cobbett
+is worth recording:</p>
+
+<p>'I was trudging through Richmond,' he writes, 'in my
+blue smock-frock, and my red garters tied under my knees,
+when, staring about me, my eyes fell upon a little book in
+a bookseller's window, on the outside of which was written,
+"<i>Tale of a Tub</i>, price threepence." The title was so odd
+that my curiosity was excited.... It was something so
+new to my mind that though I could not at all understand
+some of it, it delighted me beyond description; and it produced
+what I have always considered a sort of birth of in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>tellect.
+I read on till it was dark, without any thought of
+supper or bed.' Cobbett adds, that having read till he
+could see no longer, he put the volume in his pocket, and
+'tumbled down' by the side of a haystack, 'where I slept
+till the birds in Kew Gardens awakened me in the morning;
+when off I started to Kew, reading my little book.'</p>
+
+<p>One of the greatest masters of prose in the language has
+also recorded the impression made upon him by this wonderful
+book. At the age of eighty-three Landor wrote: 'I
+am reading once more the work I have read oftener than
+any other prose work in our language.... What a writer!
+Not the most imaginative or the most simple, not Bacon
+or Goldsmith had the power of saying more forcibly or
+completely whatever he meant to say.' 'Simplicity,' said
+Swift, 'is the best and truest ornament of most things in
+human life;' and Landor, commenting on Swift's style,
+observes that 'he never attempted to round his sentences
+by redundant words, aware that from the simplest and the
+fewest arise the secret springs of genuine harmony.'</p>
+
+<p>The volume containing the <i>Tale of a Tub</i> had also within
+its covers the <i>Battle of the Books</i>, which was suggested by
+a controversy that originated in France, and had been
+carried on by Sir W. Temple in England, as to the relative
+merits of the Ancients and the Moderns. Out of this, too,
+arose a discussion by some <i>savants</i>, with Richard Bentley
+(1662-1742), the greatest scholar of the age, at their head,
+with regard to the genuineness of the <i>Epistles of Phalaris</i>,
+a subject discussed in Macaulay's essay on Temple in his
+usually brilliant style. Swift, in the <i>Battle of the Books</i>
+sides with Temple and with Charles Boyle, the nominal
+editor of the <i>Epistles</i>, who, in the famous <i>Reply to Bentley</i>,
+fought behind the shield of Atterbury. In a combat,
+which takes place in the Homeric style, the enemies of
+the Ancients, Bentley and Wotton, are slain by one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>
+lance upon the field. The mighty deed was achieved
+by Boyle. 'As when a slender cook has trussed a brace
+of woodcocks, he with iron skewer pierces the tender
+sides of both, their legs and wings close pinioned to their
+ribs, so was this pair of friends transfixed, till down they
+fell joined in their lives, joined in their deaths; so closely
+joined, that Charon would mistake them both for one, and
+waft them over Styx for half his fare.' The humour of the
+piece is delightful, and it matters not a whit for the enjoyment
+of it, that the wrong heroes gain the victory.</p>
+
+<p>In 1708 Swift produced several pamphlets or tracts, and
+in one of them, the <i>Argument against Abolishing Christianity</i>,
+he found ample scope for the irony of which he was so
+consummate a master.</p>
+
+<p>'Great wits,' he writes, 'love to be free with the highest
+objects; and if they cannot be allowed a God to revile or renounce,
+they will speak evil of dignities, abuse the Government,
+and reflect upon the ministry; which I am sure few
+will deny to be of much more pernicious consequence;' and
+he observes, in concluding the argument: 'Whatever some
+may think of the great advantages to trade by this favourite
+scheme, I do very much apprehend that in six months'
+time the Bank and East India Stock may fall at least one
+<i>per cent.</i> And since that is fifty times more than ever the
+wisdom of our age thought fit to venture for the preservation
+of Christianity, there is no reason we should be at so
+great a loss merely for the sake of destroying it.'</p>
+
+<p>An amusing piece which appeared also at this time from
+Swift's pen, is of literary interest. Under the name of
+Isaac Bickerstaff he predicted the death, upon a certain
+day, of Partridge, a notorious astrologer and almanac
+maker. When the day arrived his decease was announced,
+and he was afterwards decently buried by Swift, despite
+a loud protest from the poor man that he was not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
+only alive, but well and hearty. The town took up the
+joke, all the wits joined in it, and Steele, who started
+the <i>Tatler</i> in the following year (1709), found it of
+advantage to assume the name of Bickerstaff, which these
+squibs had made so popular. Swift loved practical
+jokes, and sometimes yielded to a license that bordered
+on buffoonery. He was now in London, charged with a
+mission from the Irish Church, and hoping for Church
+preferment himself. With the latter object in view
+he published the <i>Sentiments of a Church of England
+Man</i> (1708). Two years later, vexed at heart at being
+unable to gain for the Irish clergy privileges enjoyed by
+their English brethren, and foiled, too, in his ambition,
+Swift forsook the Whig party, which he had never loved,
+and going over to the Tories, fought their battle for some
+years with so masterly a pen, as to become a great power
+in the country.</p>
+
+<p>Some time before his return to London in 1710, a
+weekly Tory paper had been started by Bolingbroke and
+Prior called <i>The Examiner</i>, and in opposition to it, upon
+September 14th in that year, Addison produced the <i>Whig
+Examiner</i> which lived a brief life of five numbers and died
+on the 8th of October. Three weeks later, on the 2nd
+November, after thirteen numbers of the <i>Examiner</i> had
+been published, Swift took up the pen, and from that date
+to June 14th, 1711, every paper was from his hand. Never
+before had a political journal exercised such power. In
+his change of party Swift was sincere in purpose, but unscrupulous
+in his methods of pursuing it, and to gain his
+ends told lies with a vigour that has rarely been surpassed.
+He is never delicate in his treatment of opponents,
+and when finer weapons would be useless, strikes
+with a sledge hammer. That such a writer, a master of
+every method most effective in controversy, should have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+been valued by the statesmen of the day is not surprising.
+When he forsook the Whig camp there was no opponent to
+pit against him, for neither Addison with his delicate
+humour, nor Steele with his brightness and versatility,
+could grapple with an enemy like this.</p>
+
+<p>Swift's arrogance in these days of his power was that of
+a despot. He was doing great things for ministers, and
+took care that they should know it. He was proud of his
+self-assertion, proud of being rude. Great men, and great
+ladies too, who wished for his acquaintance, had to make
+the first advances. He caused Lady Burlington to burst
+into tears by rudely ordering her to sing. 'She should
+sing or he would make her.' 'I was at court and church
+to-day,' he tells Stella, 'I generally am acquainted with about
+thirty in the drawing-room, and am so proud I make all the
+lords come up to me.' On one occasion he sent the Lord
+Treasurer into the House of Commons to call out the principal
+Secretary of State in order to say that he would not dine
+with him if he intended to dine late. He relates, too, how
+he warned St. John not to appear cold to him, for he would
+not be treated like a school-boy, and if he heard or saw anything
+to his disadvantage to let him know in plain words,
+and not to put him in pain by the change of his behaviour,
+for it was what he would hardly bear from a crowned head.
+'If we let these great ministers pretend too much,' he says,
+'there will be no governing them.' And in a letter to
+Pope he makes the following confession: 'All my endeavours
+from a boy to distinguish myself were only for want
+of a great title and fortune that I might be treated like a
+lord ... whether right or wrong it is no great matter;
+and so the reputation of great learning does the work of a
+blue ribbon, and of a coach and six horses.'</p>
+
+<p>It would be out of place in this volume to dwell on
+Swift's feats as a political writer; for us the most interest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>ing
+fact connected with the years 1710-14 is that during
+that eventful period of Swift's life, in which he was hobnobbing
+with Ministers of State and doing them infinite
+service by his pen, he was writing at odd moments
+his inimitable <i>Journal to Stella</i>, and gaining the love which
+ended so tragically, of Hester Vanhomrigh. This strange
+chapter in Swift's life is closely bound up with his literary
+history, and must therefore be briefly noticed.</p>
+
+<p>At Moor Park Swift, who was more than twenty years
+her senior, had seen Esther Johnson growing up into
+womanhood. He had been to her as a master, a position
+he always liked to assume towards women.<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> When he
+settled in Ireland it was arranged that Esther and her
+companion, Mrs. Dingley, should also live there. Her
+preceptor, in his regard for propriety, appears never to
+have seen Esther apart from the useful Dingley, and his
+letters are apparently addressed to both of them, but
+Esther knew, as we know, that all the tenderness and affectionate
+humour they contain was meant for her alone.
+Swift never writes as a lover, but the kind of love he gave
+to 'Stella' sufficed to bind her to him for life. If there
+were moments when she wished to escape from his power,
+the wish was hopeless. Having once submitted to his
+fascination, she was held by it to the end. Hester Vanhomrigh,
+who was about ten years younger than Stella, felt
+the same spell, and having a far less restrained nature than
+Miss Johnson, gave free expression to the passion which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
+devoured her. Between his two admirers, for such they
+were, Swift had a difficult course to steer. To Stella he
+was linked by strong ties of companionship, and to her,
+according to some authorities, he was secretly married.
+Whether this were the case or not she had the larger claims
+upon him, and if one of the twain had to be sacrificed,
+Vanessa must be the victim.</p>
+
+<p>In <i>Cadenus and Vanessa</i> (1713) a poem which every
+student of Swift will read, the author strove to achieve an
+impossibility. His aim was to ignore the lover and to
+assume the character of a master to an intelligent and
+favourite pupil, or of a father to a daughter. His dignity
+and age, he says, forbade the thought of warmer feelings.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'But friendship in its greatest height,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A constant rational delight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On Virtue's basis fixed to last<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When love's allurements long are past,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which gently warms but cannot burn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He gladly offers in return;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His want of passion will redeem<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With gratitude, respect, esteem;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With that devotion we bestow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When goddesses appear below.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And this was Swift's method of dealing with a woman
+who confessed the 'inexpressible passion' she had for him,
+and that his 'dear image' was always before her eyes.
+'Sometimes,' she wrote, 'you strike me with that prodigious
+awe, I tremble with fear; at other times a charming compassion
+shines through your countenance which moves my soul.'
+Swift had acted far more than indiscreetly in encouraging
+a friendship with Vanessa, and when she followed him to
+Dublin, in the neighbourhood of which she had some property,
+he knew not how to escape from the snare his own
+folly had laid. To Stella he had given 'friendship and
+esteem,' but, as he is careful to add, 'ne'er admitted love a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>
+guest;' the same cold gift was offered to Vanessa, but in vain.
+According to a report, the authority of which is doubtful,
+Miss Vanhomrigh wrote to Stella, in 1723, asking if she
+was Swift's wife. She replied that she was, and sent the
+letter she had received to Swift. In a towering passion he
+rode to Vanessa's house, threw the letter on the table, and
+left again without saying a word. The blow was fatal, and
+Vanessa died soon afterwards, revoking her will in Swift's
+favour and leaving to him the legacy of remorse. Having
+told in outline this episode in Swift's story, I return to the
+<i>Journal to Stella</i>, which dates from September 2nd, 1710,
+to June 6th, 1713.</p>
+
+<p>Little did Swift imagine that the chit-chat he was
+writing every day for Esther Johnson's sake would be read
+and enjoyed by thousands who care little or nothing for
+the party questions upon which the strenuous efforts
+of his intellect were expended. The early years of the
+eighteenth century contain nothing more delightful than
+this <i>Journal</i>. Its gossip, its nonsense, its freshness and
+ease of style, the tenderness concealed, or half-revealed, in
+its 'little language,' and the illustrations it supplies incidentally
+of the manners of the court and town, these are
+some of the charms that make us turn again and again to
+its pages with ever-increasing pleasure. We enjoy Swift's
+egotism and trivialities, as we enjoy the egotism of Pepys
+or Montaigne, and can imagine the eagerness with which the
+<i>Letters</i> were read by the lovely woman whose destiny it
+was to receive everything from Swift save the love which
+has its consummation in marriage. The style of the <i>Journal</i>
+is not that of an author composing, but of a companion
+talking; and it is all the more interesting since it reveals
+Swift's character under a pleasanter aspect than any of his
+formal writings. We see in it what a warm heart he had
+for the friends whom he had once learnt to love, and with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>
+what zeal he exerted himself in assisting brother-authors,
+while receiving little beyond empty praise from ministers
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>In the winter of 1713-14 Swift joined the Scriblerus
+Club, an association of such wits as Pope, Parnell, Arbuthnot,
+and Gay, and it was about this time that his friendship
+with Pope began. The members proposed writing a
+satire between them, and when Swift was exiled to Dublin
+as Dean of St. Patrick's, he pursued indirectly the suggestion
+of the Scriblerus wits by writing <i>Gulliver's Travels</i>
+(1726), a book that has made his name known throughout
+Europe, and in all the lands where English literature is
+read. Although Swift did not hesitate to make use of
+hints and descriptions which he had met with in the
+course of his reading, this is one of the most original works
+of fiction ever written, and one of the wittiest. Yet like
+almost everything that Swift wrote, it is deformed by grossness
+of expression, and in the latter portion by a malignant
+contempt for human nature which betrays a diseased imagination.
+The stories of the Lilliputians and Brobdingnags,
+purified from coarse allusions, are the delight of children;
+but the description of the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos excites
+disgust and indignation. He said that his object in
+writing the satire was to vex the world, and he has
+succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>'It cannot be denied,' says Sir Walter Scott, one of the
+sanest and healthiest of imaginative writers, 'that even a
+moral purpose will not justify the nakedness with which
+Swift has sketched this horrible outline of mankind degraded
+to a bestial state; since a moralist ought to hold with the
+Romans that crimes of atrocity should be exposed when
+punished, but those of flagitious impurity concealed. In
+point of probability, too&mdash;for there are degrees of probability,
+proper even to the wildest fiction&mdash;the fourth part<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>
+of <i>Gulliver</i> is inferior to the three others.... The mind
+rejects, as utterly impossible, the supposition of a nation
+of horses, placed in houses which they could not build, fed
+with corn which they could neither sow, reap, nor save,
+possessing cows which they could not milk, depositing that
+milk in vessels which they could not make, and, in short,
+performing a hundred purposes of rational and social life
+for which their external structure altogether unfits them.'<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a></p>
+
+<p>Neither morality, nor a regard for probability are so
+outraged in the story of the Lilliputians and Brobdingnags.</p>
+
+<p>Having once accepted Swift's assumption of the existence
+of little people not six inches high, and of a country in which
+the inhabitants 'appeared as tall as an ordinary spire-steeple,'
+the exactness and verisimilitude of the narrative,
+with its minute geographical details, make it appear so
+reasonable that a young reader may feel inclined to resent
+the criticism of an Irish bishop who said that 'the book
+was full of improbable lies, and for his part he hardly
+believed a word of it.' It is curious to note that Swift,
+who made a strange vow in early life 'not to be fond of
+children, or let them come near me hardly,' should have
+done more to delight them than any author of his century,
+with the exception, perhaps, of Defoe. Gay and Pope
+wrote a joint letter to Swift on the appearance of the
+<i>Travels</i>, pretending that they did not know the author,
+and advising him to get the book if it had not yet reached
+Ireland. 'From the highest to the lowest,' they declare, 'it
+is universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery....
+It has passed Lords and Commons <i>nemine contradicente</i>,
+and the whole town, men, women, and children,
+are quite full of it.' A book which attained in the author's
+lifetime a wellnigh unprecedented popularity should have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>
+yielded him a large profit. What it did yield we do not
+know, but in a letter dated 1735, in which, perhaps, he
+alludes to the <i>Travels</i>, Swift says, 'I never got a farthing
+for anything I writ, except once, about eight years ago,
+and that by Mr. Pope's prudent management for me.'</p>
+
+<p>The injustice done to Ireland in the last century, as
+short-sighted as it was cruel, is described at large in the
+second volume of Mr. Lecky's <i>History</i>. Swift, who hated
+Ireland, felt a righteous indignation at the misgovernment
+which threatened the country with ruin, and some of his
+most powerful phillipics were secretly written in her defence.</p>
+
+<p>In 1720 he issued a pamphlet urging the Irish to use
+only Irish manufactures: 'I heard the late Archbishop of
+Tuam,' he writes, 'mention a pleasant observation of somebody's,
+that Ireland would never be happy till a law were
+made for burning everything that came from England,
+except their people and their coals. I must confess, that
+as to the former, I should not be sorry if they would stay
+at home; and for the latter, I hope, in a little time we shall
+have no occasion for them</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Non tanti mitra est, non tanti judicis ostrum&mdash;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>but I should rejoice to see a staylace from England be
+thought scandalous, and become a topic for censure at
+visits and tea-tables.'</p>
+
+<p>The pamphlet is a forcible attack on the oppression
+under which Ireland laboured, and the Government
+answered it by prosecuting the printer. Nine times the
+jury were sent back by the Chief Justice before they consented
+to bring in a 'special verdict,' and ultimately the
+prosecution was dropped.</p>
+
+<p>Two years later the English Government granted a
+patent to a man of the name of Wood to issue a new<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
+copper coinage for Ireland to an extravagant amount, out
+of which, in return for bribes to the Duchess of Kendal, it
+was supposed that the speculator would make a considerable
+profit at Ireland's expense. The country was
+aroused, and Swift, by the issue of the <i>Drapier's Letters</i>,
+purporting to come from a Dublin draper, roused the
+passions of the people to a white heat. It was known
+perfectly well from whom the <i>Letters</i> came, but no one
+would betray Swift, and when the printer was thrown into
+prison the jury refused to convict. The battle was fought
+with vigour, Swift conquered, and the patent was withdrawn.
+A brief passage from the fourth and final letter
+'To the Whole People of Ireland' shall be quoted. It will
+be seen that the writer is not afraid of plain speaking.
+After saying that the king cannot compel the subject to
+take any money except it be sterling gold or silver, he
+adds:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Now here you may see that the vile accusation of
+Wood and his accomplices, charging us with disputing the
+King's prerogative by refusing his brass, can have no place&mdash;because
+compelling the subject to take any coin which is
+not sterling is no part of the King's prerogative, and I am
+very confident, if it were so, we should be the last of his
+people to dispute it, as well from that inviolable loyalty we
+have always paid to his Majesty, as from the treatment we
+might in such a case justly expect from some, who seem to
+think we have neither common sense nor common senses.
+But, God be thanked, the best of them are only our fellow-subjects,
+and not our masters. One great merit I am sure
+we have which those of English birth can have no pretence
+to&mdash;that our ancestors reduced this kingdom to the
+obedience of England; for which we have been rewarded
+with a worse climate&mdash;the privilege of being governed by
+laws to which we do not consent&mdash;a ruined trade&mdash;a House
+of Peers without jurisdiction&mdash;almost an incapacity for all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
+employments&mdash;and the dread of Wood's halfpence. But
+we are so far from disputing the king's prerogative in
+coining, that we own he has power to give a patent to any
+man for setting his royal image and superscription upon
+whatever materials he pleases, and liberty to the patentee
+to offer them in any country from England to Japan; only
+attended with one small limitation&mdash;that nobody alive is
+obliged to take them.'</p></div>
+
+<p>With much humour, in the last paragraph of the letter,
+Swift undertakes to show that Walpole is against Wood's
+project 'by this one invincible argument, that he has the
+universal opinion of being a wise man, an able minister,
+and in all his proceedings pursuing the true interest of the
+King his master; and that as his integrity is above all
+corruption, so is his fortune above all temptation.'</p>
+
+<p>Swift's arguments in the <i>Drapier's Letters</i> are sophistical,
+his statements grossly exaggerated, and his advice
+sometimes shameless, as, for instance, in recommending
+what is now but too well known as 'boycotting.'
+The end, however, was gained, and the Dean
+was treated with the honours of a conqueror. On his
+return from England in 1726, a guard of honour conducted
+him through the streets, and the city bells sounded
+a joyful peal. Wherever he went he was received with
+something like royal honours, and when Walpole talked
+of arresting him, he was told that 10,000 soldiers would
+be needed to make the attempt successful. The Dean's
+hatred of oppression and injustice had its limits. He
+defended the Test Act, and assailed all dissenters with
+ungovernable fury. It was his aim to exclude them from
+every kind of power.</p>
+
+<p>In 1729, with a passion outwardly calm and in a moderate
+style, which makes his amazing satire the more
+appalling, Swift published <i>A Modest Proposal for Prevent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>ing
+the Children of Poor People in Ireland from being a
+Burden to their Parents or Country and for making them
+Beneficial to the Public</i>. A more hideous piece of irony
+was never written; it is the fruit of an indignation that
+tore his heart. The <i>Proposal</i> is, that considering the great
+misery of Ireland, young children should be used for food.
+'I grant,' he says,'this food will be somewhat dear, and
+therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have
+already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the
+best title to the children. 'A very worthy person, he
+says, considers that young lads and maidens over twelve
+would supply the want of venison, but 'it is not improbable
+that some scrupulous people might be apt to censure
+such a practice (although, indeed, very unjustly), as a
+little bordering upon cruelty; which I confess has always
+been with me the strongest objection against any project,
+how well soever intended.' The business-like way in which
+the argument is conducted throughout, adds greatly to its
+force. Swift has written nothing so terrible as this satire,
+and nothing that surpasses it in power.</p>
+
+<p>The Dean was fretting away his life when he wrote this
+pamphlet. Two years before he had paid his last visit to
+the country where, as he said in a letter to Gay, he had
+made his friendships and left his desires. On the death
+of George I. he visited England, vainly hoping to
+gain some preferment there through the aid of Mrs.
+Howard, the mistress of George II., and returned to
+'wretched Dublin,' to lose the woman he had loved so well
+and treated so strangely, and to 'die in a rage like a
+poisoned rat in a hole.' After Stella's death, in 1728,
+Swift's burden of misanthropy was never destined to be
+lightened. His rage and gloom increased as the years
+moved on, and in penning his lines of savage invective
+against the Irish House of Commons, the Dean had a fit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
+and wrote no more verse. Here is a specimen of his <i>sæva
+indignatio</i>:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Could I from the building's top<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hear the rattling thunder drop,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While the devil upon the roof<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(If the devil be thunder-proof)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Should with poker fiery red<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Crack the stones and melt the lead;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Drive them down on every skull,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While the den of thieves is full;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Quite destroy that harpies' nest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How might then our isle be blest!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It should be observed at the same time that even in his
+declining days, when his heart was heavy with bitterness,
+Swift indulged in practical jokes and in the most trivial
+pursuits. <i>Vive la bagatelle</i> was his cry, but it was the cry
+of a man who had as deep a contempt for the wiser pursuits
+of life as for its frivolities. Of the mirth that is the
+natural outcome of a cheerful nature, the Dean knew
+nothing. His hilarity was but a vain attempt to escape
+from despair. In 1740 he writes of being very miserable,
+extremely deaf, and full of pain. Sometimes he gave way
+to furious bursts of temper, and for several years before
+the end came, he fell into a state resembling idiocy. Swift
+died on October 19th, 1745, leaving his money to a hospital
+for lunatics,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'And showed by one satiric touch<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No nation needed it so much.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A brilliant writer, who has undertaken to prove the
+'glaring injustice' of the popular estimate of Swift, and by
+his forcible epithets has strengthened the grounds on which
+that estimate is built, observes that Swift's 'philosophy of
+life is ignoble, base, and false,' that 'his impious mockery
+extends even to the Deity,' and that 'a large portion of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>
+works exhibit, and in intense activity, all the worst attributes
+of our nature&mdash;revenge, spite, malignity, uncleanness.'<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a></p>
+
+<p>This harsh judgment is essentially a true one; but Swift's
+was a many-sided character. He was a misanthrope, with
+deep, though very limited affections, a man frugal to
+eccentricity, with a benevolence at once active and extensive.
+His powerful intellect compels our admiration, if
+not our sympathy. His irony, his genius for satire and
+humour, his argumentative skill, his language, which is
+never wanting in strength, and is as clear as the most
+pellucid of mountain streams&mdash;these gifts are of so rare
+an order, that Swift's place in the literary history of his
+age must be always one of high eminence. Doubtless, as
+a master of style, he has been sometimes over-praised. If
+we regard the writer's end, it must be admitted that his
+language is admirably fitted for that end. What more
+then, it may be asked, can be needed? The reply is, that
+in composition, as in other things, there are different
+orders of excellence. The kind, although perfect, may be
+a low kind, and Swift's style wants the 'sweetness and
+light,' to quote a phrase of his own, which distinguish our
+greatest prose writers. It lacks also the elevation which
+inspires, and the persuasiveness that convinces while it
+charms. With infinitely more vigour than Addison, Swift,
+apart from his <i>Letters</i>, has none of Addison's attractiveness.
+No style, perhaps, is better fitted to exhibit scorn
+and contempt; but its author cannot express, because he
+does not possess, the sense of beauty.</p>
+
+<p>Unlike Pope, Swift was a man of affairs rather than of
+letters. He wrote neither for literary fame nor for
+money. His ambition was to be a ruler of men, and in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>
+imperious will he was strong enough to make a second
+Strafford. 'When people ask me,' said Lord Carteret,
+'how I governed Ireland, I say that I pleased Dr. Swift,
+"<i>quæsitam meritis sume superbiam</i>."' As a political
+pamphleteer he succeeded, because he was savagely in
+earnest, and had the special genius of a combatant.
+If argument was against him he used satire; if satire
+failed he tried invective; his armoury was full of
+weapons, and there was not one of them he could not
+wield. He loved power, and exercised it on the ministers
+who needed the services of his pen. And, as we have
+already said, he dispensed his favours like a king! Swift's
+commanding genius gives even to his most trivial productions
+a measure of vitality. The student of our eighteenth
+century literature is arrested by the man and his works,
+and to treat either him or them with indifference would
+be to neglect a significant chapter in the history of the
+time.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">John Arbuthnot
+(1667-1735).</div>
+
+<p>John Arbuthnot, one of the most prominent of the
+Queen Anne wits, and the warm friend of
+Swift and Pope, was born at Arbuthnot,
+near Montrose, in 1667. He studied medicine
+at Aberdeen, and having taken his doctor's degree at
+St. Andrews, came, after the wont of ambitious Scotchmen,
+to seek his fortune in London, where in 1700 he published
+an <i>Essay on the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning</i>,
+and having won high reputation as a man of science, was
+elected a fellow of the Royal Society. A few years later
+he was made Physician Extraordinary to Queen Anne;
+and it was not long before he had as high a repute among
+men of letters as with men of science. He suffered frequently
+from illness; but no pain, it has been said, could
+extinguish his gaiety of mind. In the last century Hampstead
+was a favourite resort of invalids. Arbuthnot had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
+sent Gay there on one occasion, and thither in 1734 he
+went himself, so ill that he 'could neither sleep, breathe,
+eat, nor move.' Contrary to his expectation he regained a
+little strength, and lived until the following spring.
+'Pope and I were with him,' Lord Chesterfield wrote, 'the
+evening before he died, when he suffered racking pains....
+He took leave of us with tenderness, without weakness,
+and told us that he died not only with the comfort,
+but even the devout assurance of a Christian.'</p>
+
+<p>There is not one of Pope's circle who holds a more
+enviable position than Arbuthnot. In strength of intellect
+and readiness of wit Swift only was his equal, and in
+classical learning he was Swift's superior. Like Othello,
+Arbuthnot was of a free and open nature, and his friends
+clung to him with an affection that was almost womanly.
+He had the fine impulses of Goldsmith combined with the
+manliness and practical sagacity of Dr. Johnson, and
+Johnson recognized in this celebrated physician a kindred
+spirit. 'I think Dr. Arbuthnot,' he said, 'the first man
+among the wits of the age. He was the most universal
+genius, being an excellent physician, a man of deep learning,
+and a man of much humour.' His genius and generous
+qualities were amply acknowledged by his contemporaries,
+Pope calls Arbuthnot 'as good a doctor as any man for one
+that is ill, and a better doctor for one that is well;' Swift
+said he had every virtue which could make a man amiable;
+Berkeley wrote of him as a great philosopher who was
+reckoned the first mathematician of the age and had the
+character 'of uncommon virtue and probity,' and Chesterfield,
+who declared that his knowledge and 'almost inexhaustible
+imagination' were at every one's service, added
+that 'charity, benevolence, and a love of mankind appeared
+unaffectedly in all he said and did.'</p>
+
+<p>Strange to say we know little of Arbuthnot but what is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
+to be gleaned from the correspondence of his friends, and
+it is only of late years that an attempt has been made
+to write the doctor's biography, and to collect his works.<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a>
+To edit these works satisfactorily is a difficult and a
+doubtful task&mdash;several of Arbuthnot's writings having
+been produced in connection with Swift, Pope, and Gay.
+So indifferent was he to literary fame, that his children are
+said to have made kites of papers in which he had jotted
+down hints that would have furnished good matter for folios.
+His most famous work is <i>The History of John Bull</i> (1713),
+which Macaulay considered the most humorous political
+satire in the language. It was designed to help the Tory
+party at the expense of the Duke of Marlborough, whose
+genius as a military leader was probably equal to that of
+Wellington, while he fell far below the 'Great Duke'
+in the virtues which form a noble character. The irony
+and dry humour of the satire remind one of Swift, and,
+like Arbuthnot's <i>Art of Political Lying</i>, is so much in
+Swift's vein throughout that M. Taine may be excused
+for attributing both of these pieces to the Dean of St.
+Patrick's.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>History of John Bull</i> is not fitted to attain lasting
+popularity. It will be read from curiosity and for information;
+but the keen excitement, the amusement, and the
+irritation caused by a brilliant satire of living men and
+passing events can be but vaguely imagined by readers
+whose interest in the statecraft of the age is historical
+and not personal. Arbuthnot, like Swift, belonged to
+the Tory camp, and both did their utmost to depreciate
+the great General who never knew defeat, and to promote
+the designs of Harley. When Arbuthnot produced
+his satire, all the town laughed at the representation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
+of Marlborough as an old smooth-tongued attorney who
+loved money, and was said by his neighbours to be hen-pecked,
+'which was impossible by such a mild-spirited
+woman as his wife was.' That an 'honest plain-dealing
+fellow' like John Bull the Clothier, should be deceived by
+such wily men of business as Lewis Baboon of France, and
+Lord Strutt of Spain, and also that other tradesmen should
+be willing to join John and Nic Frog, the linen-draper of
+Holland, in the lawsuit, provided that Bull and Frog, or
+Bull alone, would bear the law charges, is made to appear
+likely enough; and Scott says truly that 'it was
+scarce possible so effectually to dim the lustre of Marlborough's
+splendid achievements as by parodying them
+under the history of a suit conducted by a wily attorney
+who made every advantage gained over the defendant a
+reason for protracting law procedure, and enhancing the
+expense of his client.' In this long lawsuit everybody is
+represented as gaining something except <i>John Bull</i>, whose
+ready money, book debts, bonds, and mortgages go into
+the lawyer's pockets. Whether the nickname of <i>John Bull</i>
+originated with Arbuthnot or was merely adopted by him
+is not known.</p>
+
+<p>Arbuthnot was an active member of the Scriblerus Club,
+and wrote the larger portion of the <i>Memoirs of Martin Scriblerus</i>
+(1741), the design of which was, as Pope said, to ridicule
+false tastes in learning, in the character of a man 'that
+had dipped into every art and science, but injudiciously in
+each.' Dr. Johnson says of this work that no man can be
+wiser, better, or merrier for remembering it. Perhaps he
+is right; but the <i>Memoirs</i> contain some humorous points
+which, if they do not create merriment, may yield some
+slight amusement. The pedant's endeavours to make a
+philosopher of his child are sufficiently ludicrous. He
+is delighted to find that the infant has the wart of Cicero<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>
+and the very neck of Alexander, and hopes that he may
+come to stammer like Demosthenes, 'and in time arrive
+at many other defects of famous men.' As the boy grows
+up his father invents for him a geographical suit of clothes,
+and stamps his gingerbread with the letters of the Greek
+alphabet, which proved so successful a mode of teaching the
+language, that on the very first day the child 'ate as far as
+iota.' He also taught him as a diversion 'an odd and
+secret manner of stealing, according to the custom of the
+Lacedemonians, wherein he succeeded so well that he practised
+it till the day of his death.' Martin studies logic,
+philosophy, and medicine, and discovers that the seat of the
+soul is not confined to one place in all persons, but resides
+in the stomach of epicures, in the brain of philosophers, in
+the fingers of fiddlers, and in the toes of rope-dancers. His
+discoveries, it may be added, are made 'without the trivial
+help of experiments or observations.'</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> <i>Life of Jonathan Swift</i>, by John Forster, vol. i., pp. 164-174.
+Mr. Forster did not live to produce more than one volume
+of a work to which for many years he had given 'much labour and
+time.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> <i>English Men of Letters&mdash;Jonathan Swift</i>, by Leslie Stephen,
+p. 43.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> Mrs. Pendarves writes (1733) 'The day before we came out of
+town we dined at Doctor Delany's, and met the usual company.
+The Dean of St. Patrick's was there <i>in very good humour</i>, he calls
+himself "<i>my master</i>," and corrects me when I speak bad English
+or do not pronounce my words distinctly. I wish he lived in
+England, I should not only have a great deal of entertainment
+from him, but improvement.'&mdash;<i>Life and Correspondence of Mrs
+Delany</i>, vol. i., p. 407.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> <i>Life of Swift</i>, p. 299.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> <i>Jonathan Swift, a Biographical and Critical Study</i>, by J.
+Churton Collins, p. 267.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> See <i>The Life and Works of Dr. Arbuthnot</i>, by George A.
+Aitken. Oxford, Clarendon Press.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<h3>DANIEL DEFOE&mdash;JOHN DENNIS&mdash;COLLEY CIBBER&mdash;LADY
+MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU&mdash;EARL OF CHESTERFIELD&mdash;LORD
+LYTTELTON&mdash;JOSEPH SPENCE.</h3>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">Daniel Defoe
+(1661-1731).</div>
+
+<p>The most voluminous writer of his century is popularly
+remembered as the author of one book, published
+in old age. Everybody has read
+<i>Robinson Crusoe</i>, and knows the name of its
+author; but few readers outside the narrow circle of literary
+students are aware of Defoe's exhaustless labours as a
+politician, social reformer, projector, pamphleteer, and
+novelist.</p>
+
+<p>It would be well for the author's reputation if we knew
+less about him than we do. There was a time when he
+was regarded as a noble sufferer in the cause of civil and
+religious liberty. His faults were credited to his age while
+his virtues were supposed to place him on an eminence far
+above the time-servers who despised him. He has been
+praised as a man courageously living for great aims, who
+was maligned by the malice of party, and to whose memory
+scant justice has been done. 'No one,' says Henry Kingsley,
+'could come up to the standard of his absolute precision,'
+and his 'inexorable honesty alienated everyone.' These
+words were written in 1868. Four years previously, however,
+the discovery of six letters in the State Paper Office,
+in Defoe's own hand, had entirely destroyed his character<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
+for inexorable honesty, and the researches of his latest and
+most exhaustive biographer,<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> who regards his hero's vices as
+virtues, do but serve to give greater prominence to the
+baseness of his conduct. Defoe, by his own confession,
+was for many years in the pay of the Government for secret
+services, taking shares in Tory papers and supervising
+them as editor, in order to defeat the aims of the party to
+which he professed to be allied, and of the proprietors with
+whom he was in partnership. Thus in 1718, he writes as
+a plea that his labours should be remembered: 'I am, Sir,
+for this service, posted among Papists, Jacobites, and enraged
+High Tories&mdash;a generation who I profess my very
+soul abhors; I am obliged to hear traitorous expressions
+and outrageous words against his majesty's person and
+government, and his most faithful servants, and smile at
+it all as if I approved it; I am obliged to take all the
+scandalous and indeed villainous papers that come, and
+keep them by me as if I would gather materials from them
+to put them into the <i>News</i>; nay, I often venture to let
+things pass which are a little shocking that I may not
+render myself suspected. Thus I bow in the House of
+<i>Rimmon</i>, and must humbly recommend myself to his lordship's
+protection, or I may be undone the sooner, by how
+much the more faithfully I execute the commands I am
+under.' It would not be fair to judge Defoe altogether
+by the moral standard of our own day, but the part he
+played as a servant and spy of the government would have
+been an act of baseness in any age, and of this he seems to
+have been conscious.</p>
+
+<p>Daniel Foe, who about 1703 assumed the prefix of De,
+for no assignable reason, was the son of a butcher and
+Nonconformist in Cripplegate, who had the youth educated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>
+for the ministry. Daniel, however, preferred a more
+exciting occupation, and took part in the unfortunate expedition
+of the Duke of Monmouth. Escaping from that
+peril he began business as a hose factor in Cornhill, and
+carried it on until he failed about the year 1692. Already
+he had learnt to use the pen, and a loyal pamphlet
+secured for him a public appointment which lasted for
+some years. He was also connected with a brick manufactory
+at Tilbury. Meanwhile he wrote for the press, and
+showed himself the possessor of a clear and masculine style,
+which could be 'understanded of the people.'</p>
+
+<p>In 1698 Defoe published his <i>Essay on Projects</i>, 'which
+perhaps,' Benjamin Franklin says, 'gave me a turn of
+thinking that had an influence on some of the principal
+future events of my life.'</p>
+
+<p>One of the most interesting projects in the book is the
+proposal to form an Academy on the French model. In
+1712 Swift wrote a pamphlet (the only piece he published
+with his name) entitled <i>A proposal for correcting, improving,
+and ascertaining the English tongue</i>, in which he suggests
+the foundation of an Academy under the protection of the
+Queen and her ministers. The idea it will be seen had
+been anticipated fifteen years before.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The peculiar study of the Academy of France,' Defoe
+writes, 'has been to refine and correct their own language,
+which they have done to that happy degree that we see it
+now spoken in all the courts of Christendom as the language
+allowed to be most universal. I had the honour once
+to be a member of a small society who seemed to offer at
+this noble design in England; but the greatness of the work
+and the modesty of the gentlemen concerned prevailed with
+them to desist from an enterprise which appeared too great
+for private hands to undertake. We want indeed a Richelieu
+to commence such a work, for I am persuaded were there
+such a genius in our kingdom to lead the way, there would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>
+not want capacities who could carry on the work to a glory
+equal to all that has gone before them. The English
+tongue is a subject not at all less worthy the labours of
+such a society than the French, and capable of a much
+greater perfection. The learned among the French will
+own that the comprehensiveness of expression is a glory in
+which the English tongue not only equals, but excels its
+neighbours.... It is a great pity that a subject so noble
+should not have some as noble to attempt it; and for a
+method what greater can be set before us than the Academy
+of Paris, which, to give the French their due, stands foremost
+among all the great attempts in the learned part of
+the world.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Defoe also projected a Royal Military Academy, and an
+academy for women which should have only one entrance
+and a large moat round it. With these precautions, spies, he
+observes, would be unnecessary, since, in his opinion,
+'there needs no other care to prevent intriguing than to
+keep the men effectually away.' He had the Eastern
+notion of guarding women from danger by preventing the
+access to it, yet he could write:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'A woman of sense and manners is the finest and most
+delicate part of God's creation; the glory of her Maker,
+and the great instance of His singular regard to man, His
+darling creature, to whom He gave the best gift either God
+could bestow or man receive. And it is the sordidest piece
+of folly and ingratitude in the world to withhold from the
+sex the due lustre which the advantages of education gives
+to the natural beauty of their minds. A woman well bred
+and well taught, furnished with the additional accomplishments
+of knowledge and behaviour, is a creature without
+comparison; her society is the emblem of sublime enjoyments;
+her person is angelic and her conversation heavenly....
+She is every way suitable to the sublimest wish, and
+the man that has such a one to his portion has nothing to
+do but to rejoice in her and be thankful.'</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In verse Defoe published the <i>True Born Englishman</i>
+(1701), in defence of King William and his Dutch
+followers:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'William's the name that's spoke by every tongue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">William's the darling subject of my song;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Listen, ye virgins, to the charming sound,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in eternal dances hand it round.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your early offerings to this altar bring,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Make him at once a lover and a king.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The nonsense deepens as the rhyme goes on. For
+William every tender vow is to be made, he is to be the
+first thought in the morning, and his name will act as a
+charm, affrighting the infernal powers and guarding from
+the terror of the night.</p>
+
+<p>The poem proved very popular, and Defoe writes that
+had he been able to enjoy the profit of his own labour he
+would have gained above £1,000. He printed nine editions
+at the price of one shilling a copy, but meanwhile twelve
+surreptitious editions were published and sold for a few
+pence, a fraud for which he says he had no remedy but
+patience. Throughout his busy life of authorship he was
+indeed continually victimized by pirates.</p>
+
+<p>While in verse Defoe extolled the king as if he
+were a demi-god, he did William good service by his
+pamphlets, and was in some degree admitted into his
+confidence.</p>
+
+<p>Up to the king's death in 1702 his course appears to
+have been straightforward; after the accession of Anne he
+acted a less honourable part. No fault can be found with
+his design that year in writing <i>The Shortest Way with the
+Dissenters</i>, a piece of irony unsurpassed in that age until
+the publication of Swift's <i>Modest Proposal</i>, twenty-seven
+years later. The satire was at first accepted as a serious
+argument. The Dissenters were alarmed, and the most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>
+bigoted of High Churchmen delighted. Then, Defoe's
+aim being discovered, both parties joined in the cry for
+vengeance. He was condemned to stand for three days in
+the pillory, and was afterwards imprisoned in Newgate.
+To the 'hieroglyphic state machine, contrived to punish
+Fancy in,' the undaunted man addressed a hymn which was
+hawked about the streets, and the mob instead of pelting
+him with offensive missiles, covered him with flowers.
+'Earless on high stood unabashed Defoe,' says Pope. He
+was unabashed, but he was not earless.</p>
+
+<p>In Newgate he remained until 1704, when he was released
+by Harley. In prison he wrote a minutely circumstantial
+account of the great storm commemorated in Addison's
+<i>Campaign</i>. How much of Defoe's narrative is truth and
+how much invention it is impossible to say. The fact that
+he solemnly vouches for the accuracy of his statements inclines
+one to believe that they are not to be trusted, for this
+was always Defoe's <i>rôle</i> as a writer of fiction. His first
+and most deliberate effort is to impose upon his readers,
+and in this art he is without a rival.</p>
+
+<p>While in Newgate he began his <i>Review</i>, a political journal
+of great ability. The first number was published in
+February, 1704, and it existed, though not in its original
+form, for more than nine years.</p>
+
+<p>'When it is remembered that no other pen was ever
+employed than that of Defoe, upon a work appearing at
+such frequent intervals, extending over more than nine
+years, and embracing, in more than five thousand printed
+pages, essays on almost every branch of human knowledge,
+the achievement must be pronounced a great one, even if
+he had written nothing else. If we add that between the
+dates of the first and last numbers of the <i>Review</i> he wrote
+and published no less than eighty other distinct works,
+containing 4,727 pages, and perhaps more not now known,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
+the fertility of his genius must appear as astonishing as
+the greatness of his capacity for labour.'<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a></p>
+
+<p>Defoe was permitted to leave his prison upon condition
+that he should act in the secret service of the Government,
+and his work was that of an hireling writer unburdened
+by principle. When Harley was ejected he made himself
+useful to Godolphin; when Godolphin was dismissed he
+went back to Harley, and 'the spirit of the <i>Review</i> changed
+abruptly.' A more useful man for the work he had
+undertaken could not be found. His dexterity, his boldness,
+his knowledge of men and of affairs, his readiness as
+a writer, and it must be added his unscrupulousness,
+fitted him admirably for services which had to be done in
+secret.</p>
+
+<p>Much that he did openly was deserving of high praise.
+He was tolerant in an intolerant age, he did his best to forward
+the Union of England and Scotland, his patriotic
+spirit was not feigned, his words are often weighty with
+wisdom, and it has been truly said, that 'his powerful
+advocacy was enlisted in favour of almost every practicable
+scheme of social improvement that came to the front in his
+time.'<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a></p>
+
+<p>With equal truth the writer adds that Defoe was 'a
+wonderful mixture of knave and patriot.' The knavery is
+seen to some extent in his method of workmanship as a
+man of letters. In <i>A True Relation of the Apparition of
+one Mrs. Veal<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> the next day after her Death to one Mrs. Bar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>grave
+at Canterbury, 8th September, 1705</i> (1706) Defoe's
+art of mystification is skilfully practised.</p>
+
+<p>'This relation,' he says in the Preface, 'is matter of fact,
+and attended with such circumstances as may induce any
+reasonable man to believe it. It was sent by a gentleman,
+a Justice of Peace at Maidstone, in Kent, and a very intelligent
+person, to his friend in London as it is here worded;
+which discourse is here attested by a very sober and understanding
+gentleman, who had it from his kinswoman who
+lives in Canterbury, within a few doors of the house in
+which the within-named Mrs. Bargrave lives ... and
+who positively assured him that the whole matter as it is
+related and laid down is really true, and what she herself
+had in the same words, as near as may be, from Mrs.
+Bargrave's own mouth.'</p>
+
+<p>In addition to this circumstantial statement, the veritable
+appearance of the ghostly lady is confirmed by the fact
+that she wore a scoured silk gown, newly made up, which,
+as Mrs. Bargrave told a friend, she felt and commended.
+'Then Mrs. Watson cried out, "you have seen her indeed,
+for none knew but Mrs. Veal and myself that the gown
+was scoured."' The ghost came chiefly for the purpose of
+recommending Drelincourt's volume, <i>A Christian's Defence
+Against the Fear of Death</i>, then in its third edition. The
+fourth edition contained Mrs. Bargrave's story. 'I am
+unable to say,' Mr. Lee writes, 'when Defoe's "Apparition"
+became a necessary appendage to the book; but think,
+that since the eleventh edition, to the present time, Drelincourt
+has never been published without it.'</p>
+
+<p>When in 1719, at the age of fifty-nine, he produced his
+first and greatest work of fiction, <i>Robinson Crusoe</i>, he
+aimed by the constant reiteration of commonplace details
+to give a matter-of-fact aspect to the narrative, and in most
+of his later novels, with the exception of <i>Colonel Jack</i> (1722),<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
+which he allows to be in part a 'moral romance,' Defoe
+boldly maintains that his relations are in every respect
+true to biography and to history. To make this more
+probable he overloads his pages with a number of business-like
+statements, and with affairs so insignificant and sordid
+that only his genius can save the narrative from being
+wearisome. To inculcate morality he carries his readers
+into the worst dens of vice&mdash;his heroes being pickpockets,
+pirates, and convicts, and his heroines depraved women of
+the lowest order. The interest felt in <i>Captain Singleton</i>
+(1720), in <i>Moll Flanders</i> (1722), in <i>Colonel Jack</i> (1722),
+and in <i>Roxana</i> (1724), is to be found in the minute record
+of their shameless adventures, their miseries and vices.
+When the characters reform, Defoe's occupation is gone.
+The atmosphere the reader is forced to breathe in these
+tales is indeed so oppressive that he will be glad to
+escape from it into the pure and exhilarating air of a
+Shakespeare or a Scott.</p>
+
+<p>A critic has asserted that as models of fictitious narrative
+these tales are supreme, but it is impossible to agree with
+this judgment. The highest imaginative art is not deceptive
+art. The fact that Lord Chatham thought the
+<i>Memoirs of a Cavalier</i><a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> (1720) a true history, is not to
+the credit of the work as fiction. As well, it has been said,
+might you claim the highest genius for the painter, whose
+fruit and flowers were so deceptively painted as to tempt
+birds to peck at the canvas.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p>
+<p>Whatever interest the reader feels in Defoe's 'secondary
+novels,' of which <i>Roxana</i> is the most powerful, is due to
+scenes which disgust as much as they impress. The vividness
+with which they are depicted is undeniable, but one
+does not desire to inspect filth with a microscope. Happily
+<i>Robinson Crusoe</i>, on which the author's fame rests, is a
+thoroughly healthy book that still holds its place as the
+best, or one of the best, volumes ever written for boys.
+There is genius as well as extraordinary skill in the way
+this admirable story is told, but it is not among the fictions
+which are read with as much pleasure in old age as in
+youth. Defoe's amazing gift of invention does not compensate
+for the want of a creative and elevating imagination.</p>
+
+<p><i>The History of the Plague in London</i> (1722) stands next
+to <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> in literary merit. Had Defoe been a
+witness, as he pretends to have been, of the scenes which
+he describes, the record could not be more vivid. It professes
+to have been 'written by a citizen who continued
+all the while in London,' and 'lived without Aldgate
+Church and Whitechapel Bars, on the left hand or north
+side of the street.' In this case, as in others, the circumstantial
+character of the narrative led readers to regard it
+as a true history, and Dr. Mead, in his <i>Discourse on the
+Plague</i> (1744), quotes the book as an authority.</p>
+
+<p>Highly characteristic of Defoe's style, and of his art as a
+moralist is the <i>Religious Courtship</i>, also published in 1722.
+It is the fictitious history of a family told partly in
+dialogue, and so written as to attract the reader in spite
+of repetitions and of reflections as praiseworthy as they are
+commonplace. It appeals to a class whose attention would
+not be won by fine literature, and has not appealed in vain,
+for the book, after passing through a large number of
+editions, has not yet lost its popularity. Morally the work
+is unobjectionable, though not a little narrow, and it is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>
+strange that it should have appeared about the same time
+as a story so offensively coarse as <i>Moll Flanders</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The most veracious book written by Defoe is <i>A Tour
+through the Whole Island of Great Britain, By a Gentleman</i>,
+1724, in three volumes. The full title of the work is too
+long to quote, but it may be observed that the promises it
+holds out under five headings are satisfactorily fulfilled.
+The <i>Tour</i> bears the marks of having been written with great
+care and from personal observation throughout. Defoe
+states that before publishing the book he had made
+seventeen large circuits or separate journeys, and three
+general tours through the whole island. It contains
+curious information as to the state of England and Scotland
+one hundred and seventy years ago, and readers
+interested in our social progress and the industrial life
+of the country will find much to interest them in the
+traveller's shrewd observations and careful details. The
+love of mountain and lake scenery felt by Gray more than
+forty years later was a passion unknown to Defoe and
+to most of his contemporaries. In the <i>Tour</i> Westmoreland
+is described as the wildest, most barbarous and frightful
+country of any which the author had passed over. He
+observes that it is 'of no advantage to represent horror,'
+and the impassable hills with their snow-covered tops
+'seemed,' he says, 'to tell us all the pleasant part of
+England was at an end.' The <i>Tour</i> exhibits Defoe's
+literary gift of expressing what he has to say in the
+clearest language. A homely style which fulfils its purpose
+has a merit deserving of recognition. For steady work
+upon the road the sober hackney is of more service than
+the race-horse.</p>
+
+<p>Defoe was a husband and father and a man of affairs,
+yet, like his own Crusoe, he lived a lonely life, and in 1731,
+owing to some strange circumstance of which there is no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>
+record, died a lonely death at a lodging-house at Moorfields.
+He has been called the father of the English novel,
+and deserves the title, although on a slighter scale Steele
+and Addison preceded him as writers of fiction. As a
+novelist he is without refinement, without ideality, without
+passion; he looks at life from a low level, but in
+the narrow territory of which he is master&mdash;the art of
+realistic invention&mdash;his power of insight is incontestible.
+Defoe adopted a method dear in our day to some of the
+least worthy of French novelists, who while aiming to copy
+Nature debase her. For Nature must be interpreted by
+Art, since only thus can we obtain a likeness that shall be
+both beautiful and true. Defoe, nevertheless, has contributed
+one book of lasting value to the literature of his
+country, and such a gift, in the eyes of the literary
+chronicler, hides a multitude of faults.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">John Dennis
+(1657-1733-4).</div>
+
+<p>John Dennis was born in London and educated at
+Harrow and Caius College, Cambridge. His
+relations with Pope give him a more prominent
+position among men of letters than he
+would otherwise deserve, and mark with unpleasing distinctness
+the coarse methods of literary warfare adopted in
+Pope's day. The poet began the attack in his <i>Essay on
+Criticism</i>. Dennis had written a tragedy called <i>Appius
+and Virginia</i>, and Pope, who had a grudge against him
+for not admiring his <i>Pastorals</i>, showed his spite in the
+following lines:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'But Appius reddens at each word you speak,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And stares tremendous, with a threatening eye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It was perilous in Pope to allude to the personal defects
+of an antagonist, and Dennis attacked him coarsely in
+return as a 'young, squab, short gentleman, an eternal
+writer of amorous pastoral madrigals, and the very bow of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>
+the god of Love.' 'He has reason,' he adds, 'to thank the
+good gods that he was born a modern; for had he been
+born of Grecian parents, and his father by consequence
+had by law the absolute disposal of him, his life had been
+no longer than one of his poems&mdash;the life of half a day.'</p>
+
+<p>Dennis's pamphlet on the <i>Essay</i> caused Pope some pain
+when he heard of it, 'But it was quite over,' he told
+Spence, 'as soon as I came to look into his book and found
+he was in such a passion.'</p>
+
+<p>The critic, however, was a thorn in Pope's flesh for
+many a year, and the poet showed his irritation by assaulting
+him in prose and verse. Dennis was equally ready,
+although not equally capable of returning the poet's blows,
+and when free from the impotence of anger, made several
+shrewd critical thrusts which his antagonist felt keenly.</p>
+
+<p>Dennis aspired to be a poet and dramatist. He wrote a bombastic
+poem in blank verse called <i>The Monument</i>, sacred to
+the immortal memory of 'the good, the great, the god-like,
+William III.'; a poem, also in blank verse, and still more
+'tremendous,' to quote his favourite word, on the <i>Battle of
+Blenheim</i>, in which he frequently invokes his soul to say
+and sing a thousand things far beyond his soul's reach&mdash;and
+a poem equally laboured and grandiloquent, on the
+Battle of Ramillies, in which there are passages that read
+like a burlesque of Milton. Dennis observes in his
+<i>Grounds of Criticism in Poetry</i> (1704) that 'poetry unless
+it pleases, nay, and pleases to a height, is the most contemptible
+thing in the world.' This is just criticism, but
+the writer did not recognize that his own verse was
+contemptible. In this essay, which contains many sound
+critical remarks and an appreciation of Milton seldom felt
+at that time, he has the bad taste to quote as an illustration
+of the sublime, a passage from his own paraphrase of
+the Te Deum:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Where'er at utmost stretch we cast our eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the vast frightful spaces of the skies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ev'n there we find Thy glory, there we gaze<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On Thy bright Majesty's unbounded blaze;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ten thousand suns prodigious globes of light<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At once in broad dimensions strike our sight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Millions behind, in the remoter skies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Appear but spangles to our wearied eyes;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And when our wearied eyes want farther strength<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To pierce the void's immeasurable length<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our vigorous towering thoughts still further fly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And still remoter flaming worlds descry;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But even an Angel's comprehensive thought<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cannot extend so far as Thou hast wrought;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our vast conceptions are by swelling, brought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Swallowed and lost in Infinite, to nought.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is significant of Dennis's judgment of his own verse
+that these inflated lines follow one of the loveliest passages
+contained in <i>Paradise Lost</i>. Milton describes the moon
+unveiling her peerless light; and the poet-critic exhibits
+in juxtaposition his 'vigorous towering thoughts' about
+the stars. The comparison forced upon the reader is
+unfortunate.</p>
+
+<p>His tragedies, <i>Iphigenia</i> (1704), <i>Liberty Asserted</i> (1704),
+<i>Appius and Virginia</i> (1709), and a comedy called <i>A Plot
+and No Plot</i> (1697) were brought upon the stage. <i>Liberty
+Asserted</i>, which was received with applause due to the
+violence of its attacks upon the French, although called a
+tragedy, does not end tragically. The heroine's patriotism
+is so fervid that she professes herself willing, while loving
+one man, to marry another whom she does not love, if her
+country deems him the more worthy.</p>
+
+<p>Among other poetical attempts, Dennis addressed a
+Pindaric Ode to Dryden, and the great poet, with the
+flattery which he was always ready to lavish on his well-wishers,
+called him 'one of the greatest masters' in that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
+kind of verse. 'You have the sublimity of sense as well
+as sound,' he wrote, 'and know how far the boldness of a
+poet may lawfully extend.'</p>
+
+<p>It may be added that Dennis on one occasion successfully
+opposed one of the ablest controversialists of the age. In
+<i>The Absolute Unlawfulness of Stage Entertainments fully
+demonstrated</i>, William Law attacked dramatic representations,
+not on account of the evils at that time associated
+with them, but as 'in their own nature grossly sinful.'
+'To suppose an innocent play,' Law says, 'is like supposing
+innocent lust, sober rant, or harmless profaneness,' and
+throughout the pamphlet this strain of fierce hostility is
+maintained.</p>
+
+<p>'Law,' says his biographer,'measured his strength with
+some of the very ablest men of his day, with men like
+Hoadly and Warburton, and Tindal and Wesley; and it
+may safely be said that he never came forth from the
+contest defeated. But, absurd as it may sound, it is
+perfectly true that what neither Hoadly nor Warburton,
+nor Tindal, nor Wesley could do, was done by John Dennis....
+"Plays," wrote Law, "are contrary to Scripture as
+the devil is to God, as the worship of images is to the
+second commandment." To this Dennis gave the obvious
+and unanswerable retort that "when St. Paul was at
+Athens, the very source of dramatic poetry, he said a great
+deal publicly against the idolatry of the Athenians, but not
+one word against their stage. At Corinth he said as little
+against theirs. He quoted on one occasion an Athenian
+dramatic poet, and on others Aratus and Epimenides. He
+was educated in all the learning of the Grecians, and could
+not but have read their dramatic poems; and yet, so far
+from speaking a word against them, he makes use of them
+for the instruction and conversion of mankind."'</p>
+
+<p>Dennis's pamphlet, <i>The Stage defended from Scripture,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
+Reason, Experience, and the Common Sense of Mankind for
+Two Thousand Years</i>, was published in 1726. In his latter
+days he suffered from two grievous calamities, poverty and
+blindness. In 1733 Vanbrugh's play, <i>The Provoked Husband</i>,
+was acted for his benefit, and his old enemy Pope
+wrote the prologue, of which the sarcasm is more conspicuous
+than the kindness. There is a story, to which
+allusion is made in the <i>Dunciad</i>, that Dennis had invented
+some kind of theatrical thunder, and how, being once present
+at a tragedy, he fell into a great passion because his
+art had been appropriated, and cried out ''Sdeath! that is
+<i>my</i> thunder.' The critic was also known to have an intense
+hatred of the French and of the Pope, and these peculiarities
+are not forgotten in the prologue.</p>
+
+<p>After saying that Dennis lay pressed by want and
+weakness, his doubtful friend adds:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'How changed from him who made the boxes groan,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And shook the stage with thunders all his own!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stood up to dash each vain Pretender's hope,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Maul the French tyrant, or pull down the Pope!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If there's a Briton then, true bred and born,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who holds Dragoons and wooden shoes in scorn;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If there's a critic of distinguished rage;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If there's a senior who contemns this age;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let him to-night his just assistance lend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And be the Critic's, Briton's, Old Man's friend.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Dennis got £100 by this benefit, but had little time in
+which to spend it, for he died about a fortnight afterwards
+at the age of seventy-seven. Upon his death Aaron Hill
+wrote some memorial verses, in which he prophesies that,
+while the critic's frailties will be no longer remembered,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The rising ages shall redeem his name,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And nations read him into lasting fame.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It will be seen that the poets did not all treat Dennis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>
+unkindly. If praise were substantial food, he would have
+had enough to sustain him from 'glorious John' alone.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Colley Cibber
+(1671-1757).</div>
+
+<p>Colley Cibber holds a more prominent place than
+Dennis in the list of men whom Pope selected
+for attack. He could not have chosen one
+more impervious to assault. The poet's
+anger excited Cibber's mirth, his satire contributed to his
+content. The comedian's unbounded self-satisfaction and
+good humour, his vivacity and spirits, were proof against
+Pope's malice. Graceless he may have been, but a dullard
+the mercurial 'King Colley' was not.</p>
+
+<p>Born in 1671, he disappointed the hopes of his father,
+the famous sculptor, and at the age of eighteen made his
+first appearance on the stage. As actor and as dramatist,
+the theatre throughout his life was Cibber's all-absorbing
+interest. His first play, <i>Love's Last Shift</i> (1696), kept possession
+of the stage for forty years, and his best play, <i>The
+Careless Husband</i> (1704), received a like welcome. As an
+actor he was also successful, and played for £50 a night,
+the highest sum ever given at that time to any English
+player. His career was as long as it was prosperous. 'Old
+Cibber plays to-night,' Horace Walpole wrote in 1741, 'and
+all the world will be there.'</p>
+
+<p>It was only as Poet Laureate, for he could not write
+poetry, that Cibber displayed his inferiority. The honour
+was conferred in 1730, two years after Gay had produced
+the <i>Beggar's Opera</i>, when Pope was in the height of his
+fame, when Thomson had published his <i>Seasons</i> and Young
+<i>The Universal Passion</i>. Pope, as a Roman Catholic, was
+out of the running, but there were poets living who would
+have saved the office from the disgrace brought upon it by
+Cibber. 'As to Cibber,' Swift wrote to Pope, 'if I had any
+inclination to excuse the Court, I would allege that the
+Laureate's place is entirely in the Lord Chamberlain's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+gift; but who makes Lord Chamberlains is another question.'
+The sole result of the appointment that deserves
+to be recorded is an epigram by Johnson, as just as it is
+severe:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Augustus still survives in Maro's strain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Spenser's verse prolongs Eliza's reign;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Great George's acts let tuneful Cibber sing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For Nature formed the Poet for the King!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Of poetry there is no trace in the five volumes of his
+dramatic works; there are few touches of nature, and little
+genuine wit, but these defects are to some extent supplied
+by sparkling dialogue and lively badinage. Cibber is often
+sentimental, and when he is sentimental he is odious. His
+attempts to express strong emotion and honourable feeling
+excite laughter instead of sympathy, and on this account it
+is difficult to accept without some deduction Mr. Ward's
+favourable judgment of <i>The Careless Husband</i>,<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> which, if it
+be one of the cleverest of Cibber's dramas, is also one of
+the most conspicuous for this defect. Here, as elsewhere,
+Cibber should have left sentiment alone. Imagine a lover
+exclaiming to a relenting mistress, 'Oh, let my soul thus
+bending to your power, adore this soft descending goodness!'
+or a man conversing in the following strain with a
+wife who has discovered and forgiven his infidelities:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'<i>Sir Charles.</i> Come, I will not shock your softness by
+any untimely blush for what is past, but rather soothe you
+to a pleasure at my sense of joy for my recovered happiness
+to come. Give then to my new-born love what name you
+please, it cannot, shall not be too kind. Oh! it cannot be
+too soft for what my soul swells up with emulation to deserve.
+Receive me then entire at last, and take what yet
+no woman ever truly had, my conquered heart.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Lady Easy.</i> Oh, the soft treasure! Oh, the dear reward<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>
+of long-desiring love&mdash;thus, thus to have you mine is
+something more than happiness, 'tis double life and madness
+of abounding joy....</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Sir Charles.</i> Oh, thou engaging virtue! But I'm too
+slow in doing justice to thy love. I know thy softness will
+refuse me; but remember, I insist upon it&mdash;let thy woman
+be discharged this minute.'</p></div>
+
+<p>It has been said that Cibber wrote genteel comedy because
+he lived in the best society. If this assertion be true,
+the reader of his plays will decide that the best society of
+those days was unrefined and immoral, and that genteel
+comedy can be extremely vulgar. Cibber's dramas are
+coarse in incident, and often offensive in suggestion. The
+language is frequently gross, and even when he writes, or
+professes to write, with a moral purpose, his method may
+justly offend a rigid moralist. Moreover his comedy, like
+that of the dramatists of the Restoration, is of a wholly
+artificial type. Human nature has comparatively little
+place in it, and the fine ladies and gentlemen, the fops and
+fools who play their parts in his scenes, belong to a
+world which has no existence off the boards of the theatre.</p>
+
+<p>His one work which is still read by all students of the
+drama, and by many who are not students, is the <i>Apology
+for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber</i> (1740), which Dr. Johnson,
+who sneered at actors, allowed to be very entertaining.
+It is that, and something more, for it contains much just
+and generous criticism. Cibber was the author or adapter
+of about thirty plays, and in the latter vocation did not
+spare Shakespeare.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Lady Mary Wortley
+Montagu (1689-1762).</div>
+
+<p>Letter writing, a delightful branch of literature, attained
+its highest excellence in the eighteenth
+century. It is an art which gains
+most, if the paradox may be allowed,
+by being artless. The carefully studied epistle, written<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>
+with a view to publication, may have its value, but it cannot
+have the charm of a letter written in the familiar intercourse
+of friendship. It is the correspondence prompted
+by the heart which reaches the heart of the reader. The
+humour, the gaiety, the tenderness, and the chatty details
+that make a letter attractive, should be prompted by the
+feelings and events of the hour. Carefully constructed
+sentences and rhetorical flourishes ring hollow; to write for
+effect is to write badly, and to make a display of knowledge
+is to reveal an ignorance of the art.</p>
+
+<p>For letter writing, although the most natural of literary
+gifts, is not wholly due to nature. It is the outcome of many
+qualities which need cultivation; the soil that produces such
+fruit must have been carefully tilled. In our day epistolary
+correspondence has been in great measure destroyed by the
+penny post and by rapidity of communication. In the
+last century postage was costly: and although the burden
+was frequently and unjustly lightened by franks, the
+transmission of letters was slow and uncertain. Letters,
+therefore, were seldom written unless the writer had
+something definite to say, and had leisure in which to
+say it. Much time was spent in the occupation, letters
+were carefully preserved as family heirlooms, and thus
+it has come to pass that much of our knowledge of the
+age, and very much of the pleasure to be gained from
+a study of the period, is due to its letter writers. The list
+of them is a striking one, for it includes the names of Swift
+and Steele, of Pope and Gay, of Bolingbroke and Chesterfield,
+of Mrs. Delany and Mrs. Thrale, and of the three
+gifted rivals in the art, Gray, Horace Walpole, and Cowper.</p>
+
+<p>In the band of authors famous for their correspondence,
+Lady Mary Wortley Montagu holds a conspicuous place.
+Reference has been already made to the Pope correspondence,
+large in bulk and large too in interest. To this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>
+Lady Mary contributed slightly, and the greater portion of
+her letters were addressed to her husband, to her sister,
+Lady Mar, and to her daughter, the Countess of Bute.
+She was shrewd enough to know their value: 'Keep my
+letters,' she wrote, 'they will be as good as Madame de
+Sévigné's forty years hence;' and they are, perhaps, as good
+as letters can be which are written with a sense of their
+value, which Madame de Sévigné's were not. Lady Mary,
+who may be said to have belonged to the wits from
+her infancy, for in her eighth year she was made the toast
+of the Kit Kat Club, was not only a beauty, but a woman
+of some learning and of the keenest intelligence. At
+twenty she translated the <i>Encheiridion</i> of Epictetus. She
+was a great reader and a good critic, unless, which often
+happened, political prejudices warped her judgment. She
+had considerable facility in rhyming, and both with tongue
+and pen cultivated many enmities, the deadliest of her foes
+being the poet who was at one time her most ardent
+admirer. The story of Lady Mary's career, with its vicissitudes
+and singularities, may be read in Lord Wharncliffe's
+edition of her <i>Life and Letters</i>. She is a prominent figure
+in the literature of the period, and made several passing
+contributions to it, but apart from a few facile and far
+from decent verses her letters are the sole legacy she has
+left behind her for the literary student. Some of them,
+and especially those addressed to her sister the Countess
+of Mar, are often coarse; those to her daughter the Countess
+of Bute exhibit good sense, and all abound in lively sallies,
+interesting anecdotes, and the personal allusions which give
+a charm to correspondence. The section containing the
+letters written during her husband's embassy to Constantinople
+(1716-1718) is perhaps the best known.</p>
+
+<p>Among the strangest of Lady Mary's letters are those
+addressed to her future husband, whom she requests to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>
+settle an annuity upon her in order to propitiate her friends.
+In one of them she describes her father's purpose to marry
+her as he thought fit without regarding her inclinations, and
+observes that having declined to marry 'where it is impossible
+to love,' she is bidden to consult her relatives: 'I told
+my intention to all my nearest relations. I was surprised
+at their blaming it to the greatest degree. I was told they
+were sorry I would ruin myself; but if I was so unreasonable
+they could not blame my F. [father] whatever he
+inflicted on me. I objected I did not love him. They
+made answer they found no necessity of loving; if I lived
+well with him that was all was required of me; and that if
+I considered this town I should find very few women in
+love with their husbands and yet a many happy. It was
+in vain to dispute with such prudent people.'</p>
+
+<p>This incident is characteristic of the period, but Lady
+Mary's letters to Wortley Montagu are more characteristic
+of the woman who had her own views of female propriety,
+and of the right method of love-making. To escape from
+the man she hated, she eloped with Wortley, and if, in
+story-book phrase, the curiously-matched couple 'lived
+happily ever afterwards,' it was probably because for more
+than twenty years they lived apart.</p>
+
+<p>Of the following letter, written in her old age, it has
+been aptly said that 'the graceful cynicism of Horace and
+Pope has perhaps never been more successfully reproduced
+in prose.'<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Daughter, daughter! Don't call names; You are always
+abusing my pleasures, which is what no mortal will bear.
+Trash, lumber and stuff are the titles you give to my
+favourite amusement. If I called a white staff a stick of
+wood, a gold key gilded brass, and the ensigns of illus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>trious
+orders coloured strings, this may be philosophically
+true, but would be very ill received. We have all our
+playthings; happy are they that can be contented with
+those they can obtain; those hours are spent in the wisest
+manner that can easiest shade the ills of life, and are the
+least productive of ill-consequences.... The active
+scenes are over at my age. I indulge with all the art I
+can my taste for reading. If I would confine it to valuable
+books, they are almost as rare as valuable men. I must
+be content with what I can find. As I approach a second
+childhood, I endeavour to enter into the pleasures of it.
+Your youngest son is perhaps at this very moment riding
+on a poker with great delight, not at all regretting that it
+is not a gold one, and much less wishing it an Arabian
+horse which he would not know how to manage. I am
+reading an idle tale, not expecting wit or truth in it, and
+am very glad it is not metaphysics to puzzle my judgment,
+or history to mislead my opinion. He fortifies his health
+by exercise; I calm my cares by oblivion. The methods
+may appear low to busy people; but if he improves his
+strength, and I forget my infirmities, we both attain very
+desirable ends.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Lady Mary, it may be added, deserves to be remembered
+for her courage in trying inoculation on her own children,
+and then introducing it into this country. This was in
+1721, seventy-eight years before Jenner discovered a more
+excellent way of grappling with the small pox.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Philip Dormer Stanhope
+Earl of Chesterfield
+(1694-1773).</div>
+
+<p>Lord Chesterfield's position in the literature of the
+period is also among the letter
+writers. He was emphatically a
+man of affairs, and as Lord Lieutenant
+of Ireland in 1745, gained a
+high reputation. He entered upon his labours with the
+resolution to be independent of party, and during his brief
+administration did all that man could do for the benefit of
+the country. In his public career, Chesterfield has the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>
+reputation of an orator who spoke 'most exquisitely well;'
+he was an able diplomatist, and probably no man of the
+time took a wider interest in public affairs. In a corrupt
+age, too, he appears to have been politically incorruptible:
+'I call corruption,' he writes, 'the taking of a sixpence
+more than the just and known salary of your employment
+under any pretence whatsoever.' The reform of the
+Calendar, in which he was assisted by two great mathematicians,
+Bradley and the Earl of Macclesfield, is also one of
+his honourable claims to remembrance.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, Chesterfield, whom George II. called
+'a tea-table scoundrel,' was an inveterate gambler, he mistook
+vice for virtue, practised dissimulation as an art, and
+studied men's weaknesses in order that he might flatter
+them. One of the chief ends of man, in the Earl's opinion,
+was to shine in society; we need not therefore wonder that
+Johnson, with his sturdy honesty, revolted from Chesterfield's
+insincerity, and we have to thank the Earl's character
+for, perhaps, the noblest piece of invective in the
+language. If, however, he neglected Johnson at the time
+when his help would have been of service, he appreciated
+the society of men of letters, and took his part among the
+wits of the age. 'I used,' he tells his son, 'to think myself
+in company as much above me when I was with Mr.
+Addison and Mr. Pope as if I had been with all the princes
+in Europe.'</p>
+
+<p>As an essayist, although Chesterfield cannot compete
+with Addison or Steele, he is far from contemptible, and
+his twenty-three papers in the <i>World</i> (1753-1756) may still
+be read with pleasure. His literary reputation is based
+upon the <i>Letters</i> (1774)<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a> to his illegitimate son written for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
+the purpose of making him a fine gentleman, but the young
+man had no aptitude for the part. His father offered him
+'a present of the Graces,' and he despised the gift. The
+<i>Letters</i>, which Johnson denounced in language better fitted
+for his day than for ours, abound in worldly sagacity and
+wise counsels; the best that can be said of them from a
+moral point of view is that they show the extremely low
+standpoint of the writer. He is honestly desirous of benefiting
+his son and advancing his interest in life, and so far
+as morality will do this it is earnestly inculcated. 'A
+real man of fashion,' he says, 'observes decency; at least
+neither borrows nor affects vices; and, if he unfortunately
+has any, he gratifies them with choice, delicacy and
+secrecy.' He observes that an intrigue with a woman of
+fashion is an amusement which a man of sense and decency
+may pursue with a proper regard for his character; gallantry
+without debauchery being 'the elegant pleasure of
+a rational being.'</p>
+
+<p>Chesterfield's son, who was educated for a diplomatist, is
+told that the art of pleasing is more necessary in his profession
+than perhaps in any other. 'Make your court
+particularly, and show distinguished attentions to such
+men and women as are best at Court, highest in the fashion
+and in the opinion of the public; speak advantageously of
+them behind their backs, in companies who you have
+reason to believe will tell them again.'</p>
+
+<p>The necessity for dissimulation, constantly enjoined
+by his father was not forgotten by Philip Stanhope. So
+effectually did he conceal his marriage that the Earl was
+not aware of it until after his son's death.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">George Lyttelton
+(1708-1773).</div>
+
+<p>George Lyttelton, afterwards Lord Lyttelton, has a place
+among the poets in the collections of Anderson and
+Chalmers. Some of his best verses were written when a
+school-boy at Eton, and are worthy of a clever school-boy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
+The <i>Monody</i> on his wife's death has the merit of sincere
+feeling, expressed in one or two passages
+poetically. In 1747 he published his <i>Dissertation
+on the Conversion of St. Paul</i>, 'a
+treatise,' says Dr. Johnson, 'to which infidelity has never
+been able to fabricate a specious answer.' He made himself
+conspicuous in parliament as an opponent of Walpole,
+and after the fall of that minister was appointed one of the
+Lords of the Treasury. In 1760 Lyttelton published his
+<i>Dialogues of the Dead</i>, a volume for which he owes much to
+Fénelon. This was followed a few years later by a History
+of Henry II. in three volumes, upon which great labour
+was expended. He is said to have had the whole history
+printed twice over, and many sheets four or five times, an
+amusement which cost him £1,000. The work is praised
+by Mr. J. R. Green as 'a full and sober account of the
+time.'</p>
+
+<p>Lyttelton died at Hagley Park in his sixty-fourth year.
+Close to Hagley, Shenstone had his little estate of the
+Leasowes, and the poet is said to have cherished the
+absurd fancy that Lord Lyttelton was envious of its beauty.
+He is now chiefly remembered as the patron of Thomson,
+whom he called 'one of the best and most beloved' of his
+friends.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Joseph Spence
+(1698-1768).</div>
+
+<p>Joseph Spence, a warm friend and admirer of Pope
+in the poet's later life, had the happy
+peculiarity of keeping free from the party
+animosities of the time. His course throughout
+was that of a gentleman, and to him we owe the little
+volume of <i>Anecdotes</i> which every student of Pope has
+learnt to value. Spence had much of Boswell's curiosity
+and hero-worship, but there is neither insight into character
+in his pages, nor any trace of the dramatic skill
+which makes Boswell's narrative so delightful. At the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>
+same time there is every indication that he strove to give
+the sayings of the poet, as far as possible, in his own
+words. Johnson and Warton saw the <i>Anecdotes</i> in manuscript,
+but strange to say, the collection was not published
+until 1820, when two separate editions appeared simultaneously.
+The publication by Spence in 1727 of <i>An Essay
+on Pope's Translation of Homer's Odyssey</i> led to an acquaintance
+which soon became intimate between the poet
+and his critic. Apart from literature, they had more than
+one point of interest in common. Like Pope, Spence was
+devoted to his mother, and like Pope he had a passion for
+landscape gardening. His mild virtues and engaging disposition
+are said to be portrayed in the <i>Tales of the Genii</i>,
+under the character of Fincal the Dervise of the Groves.
+In 1747 he published his <i>Polymetis, an Enquiry into the
+agreement between the Works of the Roman Poets and the
+Remains of Ancient Artists</i>. Under the <i>nom de plume</i> of
+Sir Harry Beaumont, Spence produced a volume of <i>Moralities
+or Essays, Letters, Fables and Translations</i> (1753), and
+in the following year an account of the blind poet Blacklock.
+For a learned tailor, Thomas Hill by name, he also
+performed a similarly kind office, comparing him in <i>A
+Parallel in the Manner of Plutarch</i> with the famous linguist
+Magliabecchi. Spence was made Professor of Poetry at
+Oxford in 1728, and held the post for ten years. His end
+was a sad one. He was accidentally drowned in a canal in
+the garden which he had loved so well.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> <i>Daniel Defoe: his Life and recently discovered Writings,
+extending from 1716 to 1729.</i> By William Lee. 3 vols.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> Lee's <i>Defoe</i>, vol. i., p. 85. Of Defoe's fertility and capacity for
+work there cannot be a question; but the biographer's stupendous
+catalogue of his publications&mdash;254 in number&mdash;contains many
+which are ascribed to him solely on what Mr. Lee regards as
+internal evidence.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> <i>English Men of Letters&mdash;Daniel Defoe.</i> By William Minto.
+P. 170.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> See note on page 248.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> There can be no doubt, I think, despite Mr. Lee's arguments,
+that the work is as much a fiction as any other historical novel.
+That it may be based upon some authentic document is highly
+probable, although it is not necessary to agree with his biographer,
+that 'to claim for Defoe the authorship of the <i>Cavalier</i>, as a work
+of pure fiction, would be equivalent to a claim of almost superhuman
+genius.'</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> Ward's <i>History of English Dramatic Literature</i>, vol. ii., p. 597.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> <i>Four Centuries of English Letters</i>, edited and arranged by W.
+Baptiste Scoones, p. 214.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> These <i>Letters</i> were not published until after the earl's death,
+but many of them belong, chronologically, to our period. The
+first letter of the series was written in 1738.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+<h3>FRANCIS ATTERBURY&mdash;LORD SHAFTESBURY&mdash;BERNARD DE
+MANDEVILLE&mdash;LORD BOLINGBROKE&mdash;BISHOP BERKELEY&mdash;WILLIAM
+LAW&mdash;BISHOP BUTLER&mdash;BISHOP WARBURTON.</h3>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote">Francis Atterbury
+(1662-1732).</div>
+
+<p>During the first half of the eighteenth century the position
+held by Bishop Atterbury was one
+of high eminence. Addison ranked him
+with the most illustrious geniuses of his
+age; Pope said he was one of the greatest men in polite
+learning the nation ever possessed; Doddridge called him
+the glory of English orators; and Johnson said that for
+style his sermons are among the best.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately Atterbury's literary gifts, like his oratory,
+lack the merit of permanence, and his sermons, more conspicuous
+for eloquence than for weightiness of matter,
+although extremely popular at the time, have long ceased
+to be read. His prominence among the Queen Anne wits,&mdash;and
+he was admired by them all,&mdash;is a sufficient reason
+for saying a few words about him in these pages.</p>
+
+<p>He was born in 1662, and, like Prior, educated at Westminster
+under the famous Dr. Busby. Thence he went to
+Christ Church, Oxford, where he gained a good reputation.
+He undertook the tutorship of the Hon. C. Boyle, a young
+man of more spirit than judgment, who had the audacity
+to enter the lists with Bentley in a matter of scholarship.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
+For this rash deed Atterbury must be held responsible.
+Sir William Temple had published a foolish but eloquently
+written essay in defence of the ancient writers in comparison
+with the modern. In this essay he praises warmly
+the <i>Letters of Phalaris</i>. Of these letters Boyle, with the
+help of Atterbury and other members of Christ Church,
+published a new edition to satisfy the demand caused by
+Temple's essay. Bentley, roused to reply by a remark of
+Boyle in his preface, proved that the <i>Letters</i> were not only
+spurious but contemptible. Under his pupil's name Atterbury
+replied to Bentley's <i>Dissertations</i>, and to the discussion,
+as the reader will remember, Swift added wit if not
+argument.</p>
+
+<p>For the moment Boyle's, or rather Atterbury's success,
+was great, for wit and rhetoric are powerful persuasives.
+The authors, too, had the Christ Church men to back them,
+the arch-critic having treated them with contempt. Atterbury's
+share in the work, as he tells Boyle, "consisted in
+writing more than half the book, in reviewing a great part
+of the rest, and in transcribing the whole." His <i>Examination
+of Dr. Bentley's Dissertations</i> (1698) is a brilliant piece
+of work, and 'deserves the praise,' says Macaulay, 'whatever
+that praise may be worth, of being the best book ever
+written by any man on the wrong side of a question of
+which he was profoundly ignorant.' Having taken holy
+orders, Atterbury became a court preacher, and ample
+clerical honours fell to his share. In 1700 he published
+a book entitled, <i>The Rights, Powers, and Privileges of an
+English Convocation Stated and Vindicated</i>, which was
+warmly applauded by High Churchmen. In 1701 he was
+appointed Archdeacon of Totness, and afterwards Prebend
+of Exeter. He became the favourite chaplain of Queen
+Anne, and when Prince George died proved the power of
+his eloquence by representing 'his unassuming virtues in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>
+such high relief that his widow could not help feeling her
+irreparable loss.'</p>
+
+<p>Atterbury was made successively Dean of Carlisle and of
+Christ Church, and in 1713 succeeded Sprat as Dean of
+Westminster and Bishop of Rochester. Before making
+Swift's acquaintance he recommended his friend Trelawney,
+Bishop of Exeter, to read the <i>Tale of a Tub</i>, a book which
+is to be valued, 'in spite of its profaneness,' as 'an original
+in its kind, full of wit, humour, good sense, and learning.'
+Atterbury's taste for literature was not always so discriminative.
+He advised Pope, as has been already stated, to
+'polish' <i>Samson Agonistes</i>, declared that all verses should
+have instruction at the bottom of them, and told the poet,
+as though he had discovered a merit, that his poetry was
+'all over morality from the beginning to the end of it.'
+He ventured occasionally into the verse-making field himself,
+and wrote a song to Silvia, in which, after admitting
+that he had loved before as men worship strange deities, he
+adds:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'My heart, 'tis true, has often ranged,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Like bees on gaudy flowers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And many a thousand loves has changed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Till it was fixed on yours.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'But, Silvia, when I saw those eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">'Twas soon determined there;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stars might as well forsake the skies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And vanish into air.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'When I from this great rule do err,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">New beauties to adore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May I again turn wanderer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And never settle more.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The close friendship between Atterbury and Pope did
+honour to both men, and when Pope went to London he
+would 'lie at the deanery.' There, unknown to his friend,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>
+the bishop carried on his Jacobite intrigues, and there may
+still be seen, in a residence made famous by more than
+one great name, a secret room in which Atterbury concealed
+his treasonable correspondence. The poet did not
+believe that his friend was guilty, but it has been well
+known since the publication of the Stuart papers, more
+than forty years ago, that the splendid defence made by
+Atterbury at his trial in the House of Lords was based upon
+a falsehood. For years the bishop appears to have corresponded,
+under feigned names and by the help of ciphers,
+with 'the king over the water;' but the plot which led to
+his imprisonment and ultimate exile was not discovered
+until 1722, when he was arrested for high treason. At his
+trial he called God to witness his innocence; and when
+Pope took leave of him in the Tower he told the poet he
+would allow him to call his sentence a just one if he should
+ever find that he had dealings with the Pretender in his
+exile. Pope gave evidence at his trial, and, as he told
+Spence, lost his self-possession and made two or three
+blunders.</p>
+
+<p>Atterbury was exiled in June, 1723. On reaching Calais
+he heard that Bolingbroke had just arrived there on his
+way to England, having had a royal pardon. 'Then I am
+exchanged,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>The pathetic story of his banishment, and of his devoted
+daughter's illness and voyage to the south of France,
+where after a union of a few hours, she died in her father's
+arms, is full of the most touching details, and may be
+read in Atterbury's correspondence. 'She is gone,' the
+bishop wrote, 'and I must follow her. When I do, may
+my latter end be like hers! It was my business to have
+taught her to die; instead of it, she has taught me.' Like
+Fielding's account of his <i>Voyage to Lisbon</i>, the letters give
+a picture of the time, and of travelling discomforts and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>
+difficulties of which we, in these more fortunate days, know
+nothing. The bishop, who did not long survive his daughter,
+died in 1732, but before the end came he defended himself
+admirably from the accusation of Oldmixon, a libeller
+who stands in the pillory of the <i>Dunciad</i>, that he had
+helped to garble Clarendon's <i>History</i>. The body was
+carried to England and privately buried by the side of
+his daughter in Westminster Abbey. The eloquence of
+Atterbury's sermons&mdash;there are four volumes of them in
+print&mdash;has not secured to them a lasting place in literature,
+but they are distinguished by purity of style, and have
+enough of <i>unction</i> to make them highly effective as pulpit
+discourses. In book form, too, they were for a long time
+popular, and reached an eighth edition about thirty years
+after the bishop's death. The eloquent sermon on the
+death of Lady Cutts endows the lady with such an array
+of virtues, that one is inclined to wonder how so many rare
+qualities could have been exhibited in so brief a life:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'She excelled in all the characters that belonged to her,
+and was in a great measure equal to all the obligations that
+she lay under. She was devout without superstition; strict,
+without ill humour; good-natured, without weakness; cheerful,
+without levity; regular, without affectation. She was
+to her husband the best of wives, the most agreeable of
+companions, and most faithful of friends; to her servants
+the best of mistresses; to her relations extremely respectful;
+to her inferiors very obliging; and by all that
+knew her, either nearly or at a distance, she was reckoned
+and confessed to be one of the best of women. And yet all
+this goodness and all this excellence was bounded within
+the compass of eighteen years and as many days; for no
+longer was she allowed to live among us. She was snatched
+out of the world as soon almost as she had made her
+appearance in it, like a jewel of high price just shown a
+little, and then put up again, and we were deprived of her
+by that time we had learnt to value her. But circles may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>
+be complete though small; the perfection of life doth not
+consist in the length of it.'</p></div>
+
+<p>As a friend of literature and of men of letters, Atterbury
+claims the student's recognition, and the five volumes of
+his correspondence deserve to be consulted.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Anthony, third
+Lord Shaftesbury
+(1671-1713).</div>
+
+<p>'I will tell you,' writes the poet Gray, 'how Lord Shaftesbury
+came to be a philosopher in vogue:
+first, he was a lord; secondly, he was as
+vain as any of his readers; thirdly, men
+are very prone to believe what they do
+not understand; fourthly, they will believe anything at all
+provided they are under no obligation to believe it; fifthly,
+they love to take a new road, even when that road leads
+nowhere; sixthly, he was reckoned a fine writer, and seemed
+always to mean more than he said. Would you have any
+more reasons? An interval of above forty years has pretty
+well destroyed the charm.'</p>
+
+<p>One hundred and thirty-five years have gone by since
+Gray wrote his estimate of Lord Shaftesbury, whose
+<i>Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times</i> (1711)
+passed through several editions in the last century. The
+first volume consists of: <i>A Letter concerning Enthusiasm</i>,
+<i>An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour</i> and <i>Advice
+to an Author</i>; Vol. ii. contains <i>An Inquiry concerning
+Virtue and Merit</i> (1699), and <i>The Moralists, a Philosophical
+Rhapsody</i> (1709), and Vol. iii. contains <i>Miscellaneous Reflections</i>
+and the <i>Judgments of Hercules</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Shaftesbury was a Deist, and while professing to honour
+the Christian faith, which he terms 'our holy religion,'
+exercises his wit and casuistry and command of English to
+undermine it. Pope, who shows in the <i>Essay on Man</i> that
+he had read the <i>Characteristics</i>, said that to his knowledge
+'the work had done more harm to revealed religion in
+England than all the works of infidelity,' a judgment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
+which may seem extravagant, for Shaftesbury is too
+vague and rhetorical greatly to influence thoughtful
+readers, and too much of a 'virtuoso,' to use his own
+words, for readers of another class; yet the fact that the
+work passed, as we have said, through several editions,
+shows that the author had a considerable public to whom
+he could appeal. Moreover, it is clear that what Mr.
+Balfour calls 'the shallow optimism' of his creed was not
+deemed so inconsiderable then as it now appears, or
+Berkeley would not have deemed it necessary to controvert
+his arguments in the third Dialogue of his <i>Alciphron</i>.
+Like Berkeley, Shaftesbury occasionally makes use of the
+dialogue very effectively, but he has not the bishop's
+incisiveness. His style, though often faulty, and giving
+one the impression that the author is affected, and wishes
+to say fine things, is at its best fresh and lucid. The
+reader will observe that whatever be the topic Shaftesbury
+professes to discuss, his one aim is to assert his principles
+as a free-thinking and free-speaking philosopher.
+His inferences, his illustrations, his criticisms, and exaltation
+of the 'moral sense,' are all so many underhanded
+blows at the faith which he never openly opposes.</p>
+
+<p>Thus his essay on the <i>Freedom of Wit and Humour</i> is
+chiefly written in defence of raillery in the discussion of
+serious subjects, when managed 'with good breeding,' and
+for 'a liberty in decent language to question everything'
+amongst gentlemen and friends. He regards ridicule as
+the antidote to enthusiasm, believes in the harmony and
+perfection of nature, and considers that evil only exists in
+our ignorance. Mr. Leslie Stephen, whose impartiality in
+estimating an author like Shaftesbury will not be questioned,
+calls him a wearisome and perplexed writer, whose
+rhetoric is flimsy, but who has 'a true vigour and originality
+which redeems him from contempt.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Judged by his influence on the age Shaftesbury's place
+in the history of literature and of philosophy is an important
+one. Seed springs up quickly when the soil is prepared
+for it, and Shaftesbury by his belief in the perfectibility of
+human nature through the aid of culture, appealed, as
+Mandeville also did from a lower and opposite platform, to
+the views current in polite society. According to Shaftesbury
+men have a natural instinct for virtue, and the sense
+of what is beautiful enables the virtuoso to reject what is
+evil and to cleave to what is good. Let a man once see
+that to be wicked is to be miserable, and virtue will be
+dear for its own sake apart from the fear of punishment or
+the hope of reward. He found salvation for the world in
+a cultivated taste, but had no gospel for the men whose
+tastes were not cultivated.</p>
+
+<p>Voltaire sneered at the optimism of the <i>Essay on Man</i>
+and of the <i>Characteristics</i>. 'Shaftesbury,' he says, 'who
+made the fable fashionable, was a very unhappy man. I
+have seen Bolingbroke a prey to vexation and rage, and
+Pope, whom he induced to put this sorry jest into verse,
+was as much to be pitied as any man I have ever known;
+mis-shapen in body, dissatisfied in mind, always ill, always
+a burden to himself, and harassed by a hundred enemies to
+his very last moment.'</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Bernard de Mandeville
+(1670?-1733).</div>
+
+<p>Bernard de Mandeville gained much notoriety by his
+<i>Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices,
+Public Benefits</i> (1723). The book
+opens with a poem in doggrel verse
+called <i>The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves turned honest</i>, the
+purport of which is to show that as the bees became virtuous,
+they ceased to be successful. He closes with the
+moral that</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'To enjoy the world's conveniences,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be famed in war, yet live in ease,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Without great vices is a vain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Utopia, seated in the brain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fraud, Luxury, and Pride must live,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While we the benefits receive.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the prose which follows the fable, Mandeville may at
+least claim the credit of being outspoken, and he does not
+scruple to say that modesty is a sham and that what seems
+like virtue is nothing but self-love. 'I often,' he says,
+'compare the virtues of good men to your large china jars;
+they make a fine show, but look into a thousand of them,
+and you will find nothing in them but dust and cobwebs.'</p>
+
+<p>While declaring that he is far from encouraging vice, he
+regards it as essential to the well-being of society. The
+degradation of the race excites his amusement, and the
+fact that he cannot see a way of escape from it, causes no
+regret. Shaftesbury's arguments excited the mirth of
+a man who believed neither in present nor future good
+'Two systems,' he says, 'cannot be more opposite than his
+lordship's and mine. His notions, I confess, are generous
+and refined. They are a high compliment to human
+kind, and capable, by the help of a little enthusiasm, of
+inspiring us with the most noble sentiments concerning the
+dignity of our exalted nature. What pity it is that they
+are not true.'</p>
+
+<p>The author of the <i>Fable of the Bees</i> writes coarsely for
+coarse readers, and the arguments by which he supports
+his graceless theory merit the infamy generally awarded to
+them.<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> The book was attacked by Warburton and Law, and
+with much force and humour by Berkeley, in the second<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>
+Dialogue of <i>Alciphron</i>. But the bishop, to use a homely
+phrase, does not hit the right nail on the head. Instead of
+arguing that virtue and goodness are realities, while evil,
+being unreal and antagonistic to man's nature, is an enemy
+to be fought against and conquered, Berkeley takes a lower
+ground, and is content to show in his reply to Mandeville
+that virtue is more profitable to a state than vice. He
+annihilates many of Mandeville's arguments in a masterly
+style, but it was left to the author of the <i>Serious Call</i> to
+strike at the root of Mandeville's fallacy, and to show how
+the seat of virtue, if I may apply Hooker's noble words
+with regard to law, 'is the bosom of God, her voice the
+harmony of the world; all things in heaven and earth do
+her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the
+greatest as not exempted from her power.'</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Lord Bolingbroke
+(1678-1751).</div>
+
+<p>The life of Henry St. John was a mass of contradictions.
+He was a brilliant politician who affected
+to be a wise statesman, a traitor to his
+country while pretending to be a patriot,
+an orator whose lips distilled honied phrases which his
+actions belied, a man of insatiable ambition who masked as
+a philosopher, a profligate without shame, a faithless friend,
+and an unscrupulous opponent. Blessed with every charm
+of manner, features, and voice, with a taste for literature
+and a large faculty of acquisition, he was a slave to the
+meanest vices. A Secretary of State at thirty-two, no man
+probably ever entered upon public life with brighter prospects,
+and the secret of all his failures was due to the
+want of character. 'Few people,' says Lord Hervey, 'ever
+believed him without being deceived or trusted him without
+being betrayed; he was one to whom prosperity was no
+advantage, and adversity no instruction.'</p>
+
+<p>It is said that his genius as an orator was of a high order
+and this we can believe the more readily since the style of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>
+his works is distinctly oratorical. In speech so much
+depends upon voice and manner that it is possible for a
+shallow thinker to be an extremely attractive speaker;
+Bolingbroke's speeches have not been preserved, and we
+may therefore continue, if we please, to hold with Pitt, that
+they are the most desirable of all the lost fragments of
+literature; his writings, far more showy than solid, do not
+convey a lofty impression of intellectual power. Obvious
+truths and well-worn truisms are uttered in high-sounding
+words, but in no department of thought can it be said that
+Bolingbroke breaks new ground. Much that he wrote was
+for the day and died with it, and if his more ambitious
+efforts, written with an eye to posterity, cannot justly be
+described as unreadable, they contain comparatively little
+which makes them worthy to be read.</p>
+
+<p>His defence of his conduct in <i>A Letter to Sir William
+Windham</i>, written in 1717, but not published until after
+the author's death, though worthless as a defence, is a fine
+piece of special pleading in Bolingbroke's best style. It
+could deceive no one acquainted with the part played by
+the author before the death of Queen Anne, and afterwards
+in exile, but it afforded him an opportunity for
+attacking his former colleague, Oxford, with all the weapons
+available by an unscrupulous and powerful assailant. He
+declares in this letter that he preferred exile rather than to
+make common cause with the man whom he abhorred.
+Writing of Oxford as a colleague in the government of the
+country he observes in a skilfully turned passage:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The ocean which environs us is an emblem of our
+government; and the pilot and the minister are in similar
+circumstances. It seldom happens that either of them can
+steer a direct course, and they both arrive at their port by
+means which frequently seem to carry them from it. But
+as the work advances the conduct of him who leads it on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>
+with real abilities clears up, the appearing inconsistencies
+are reconciled, and when it is once consummated, the whole
+shows itself so uniform, so plain, and so natural, that every
+dabbler in politics will be apt to think he could have done
+the same. But on the other hand the man who proposes
+no such object, who substitutes artifice in the place of
+ability, who, instead of leading parties and governing
+accidents, is eternally agitated backwards and forwards by
+both, who begins every day something new, and carries
+nothing on to perfection, may impose awhile on the world:
+but a little sooner or a little later the mystery will be
+revealed, and nothing will be found to be couched under it
+but a thread of pitiful expedients, the ultimate end of
+which never extended farther than living from day to day.
+Which of these pictures resembles Oxford most you will
+determine.'</p></div>
+
+<p>It has been said with somewhat daring exaggeration,
+that Burke never produced anything nobler than this
+passage, and the writer regards the whole composition of
+the <i>Letter to Windham</i> as almost faultless.<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a></p>
+
+<p>That it is Bolingbroke's masterpiece may be readily
+admitted, but in this <i>Letter</i>, as elsewhere, the merits of
+Bolingbroke's style are those of the popular orator who
+conceals repetitions, contradictory statements, and emptiness
+of thought under a dazzling display of rhetoric.
+That he had splendid gifts and exhibited an extraordinary
+ingenuity of resource was acknowledged by friend and
+foe. At one time taking a distinguished part in European
+affairs, at another artfully intriguing, sometimes posing as
+a moralist and philosopher while a slave to debauchery, and
+at other times affecting a love of retirement while a slave
+to ambition&mdash;Bolingbroke acted a part which made him
+one of the most conspicuous figures of the time. He knew
+how to fascinate men of greater genius than he possessed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
+and how to guide men intellectually his superiors. The
+witchcraft of his wit and the charm of his manners no
+longer disturb the judgment. As a statesman Bolingbroke
+is now comparatively despised, as a man of letters he is
+generally regarded as a brilliant pretender, and if his name
+survives in the history of literature it is chiefly due to the
+friendship of Pope. Unfortunately the memory of this
+celebrated friendship is associated with one of the most
+ignoble acts of Bolingbroke's life. When Pope lay dying,
+Bolingbroke wept over his friend exclaiming, 'O great
+God, what is man!' and Spence relates that upon telling
+his lordship how Pope whenever he was sensible said something
+kindly of his friends as if his humanity outlasted
+his understanding, Bolingbroke replied, '"It has so! I
+never in my life knew a man that had so tender a heart
+for his particular friends or a more general friendship for
+mankind. I have known him these thirty years, and value
+myself more for that man's love than"&mdash;sinking his head
+and losing himself in tears.' His sorrow was speedily
+changed to anger. Pope, no doubt in admiration of his
+friend's genius, had privately printed 1,500 copies of his
+<i>Patriot King</i>, one of Bolingbroke's ablest but most sophistical
+works. The philosopher had only allowed a few copies
+to be printed for his friends, and the discovery of Pope's
+conduct roused his indignation. In 1749 he put a corrected
+copy of the work into Mallet's hands for publication with
+an advertisement in which Pope is treated with contempt.
+He had not the courage to assail the memory of his friend
+openly, and hired an unprincipled man to do it. The poet had
+acted trickily, after his wonted habit, though in all likelihood
+with the design of doing Bolingbroke a service. It
+was a fault to be forgiven by a friend, but Bolingbroke,
+after nursing his anger for five years, gave vent to it in
+this contemptible and underhand way. He died two years<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>
+afterwards, and in 1754 the posthumous publication of
+Bolingbroke's <i>Philosophical Writings</i> by Mallet, aroused a
+storm of indignation in the country, which his debauchery
+and political immorality had failed to excite. Johnson's
+saying on the occasion is well-known:</p>
+
+<p>'Sir, he was a scoundrel and a coward; a scoundrel for
+charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a
+coward because he had not resolution to fire it off himself,
+but left half-a-crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the
+trigger after his death.'</p>
+
+<p>The most noteworthy estimate of Bolingbroke's character
+made in our day comes from the pen of Mr. John Morley,<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a>
+who describes as follows his position as a man of letters.
+'He handled the great and difficult instrument of written
+language with such freedom and copiousness, such vivacity
+and ease, that in spite of much literary foppery and
+falsetto, he ranks in all that musicians call execution, only
+below the three or four highest masters of English prose.
+Yet of all the characters in our history Bolingbroke must
+be pronounced to be most of a charlatan; of all the writing
+in our literature, his is the hollowest, the flashiest, the
+most insincere.' This is true. By his 'execution,' consummate
+though it be, he is unable to conceal his insincerity
+and shallowness. 'Bolingbroke,' said Lord Shelburne, was
+'all surface,' and in that sentence his character is written.</p>
+
+<p>'People seem to think,' said Carlyle, 'that a style can
+be put off or put on, not like a skin, but like a coat. Is
+not a skin verily a product and close kinsfellow of all that
+lies under it,&mdash;exact type of the nature of the beast, not to
+be plucked off without flaying and death?'</p>
+
+<p>Two years after the publication of the <i>Philosophical
+Writings</i>, Edmund Burke, then a young man of twenty-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>four,
+published <i>A Vindication of Natural Society</i>, in a
+<i>Letter to Lord&mdash;&mdash;. By a late noble writer</i>, in which
+Lord Bolingbroke's style is imitated, and his arguments
+against revealed religion applied to exhibit 'the miseries
+and evils arising to mankind from every species of Artificial
+Society.' So close is the imitation of Bolingbroke's style
+and mode of argument in this piece of irony, that it was
+for a time believed to be a genuine production, and Mallet
+found it necessary to disavow it publicly.</p>
+
+<p>Of Bolingbroke's Works, the <i>Dissertation on Parties</i> appeared
+in 1735. <i>Letters on Patriotism</i>, and <i>Idea of a
+Patriot King</i>, in 1749; <i>Letters on the Study of History</i>, in
+1752; <i>Letter to Sir W. Windham</i>, 1753, and the <i>Philosophical
+Writings</i>, as already stated, in 1754. Chronologically,
+therefore, he would belong to the Handbook which deals
+with the latter half of the century, were it not that his
+most important works were posthumous, and that Bolingbroke's
+intimate relations with Pope place him among
+the most conspicuous figures belonging to Pope's age.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">George Berkeley
+(1685-1753).</div>
+
+<p>Among the men of high intellect who flourished in the
+age of Pope, George Berkeley is one of the
+most distinguished. Born in 1685 of
+poor parents, in a cottage near Dysert
+Castle, in Kilkenny, he went up to Trinity College, Dublin,
+in 1700, and there, first as student, and afterwards as
+tutor, he remained for thirteen years. In the course of
+them he was ordained, and gained a fellowship. In 1709
+he published his <i>Essay on Vision</i>, and in the following
+year the <i>Principles of Human Knowledge</i>, works which
+thus early made him famous as a philosopher, and a puzzle
+to many who failed to understand his 'new principle'
+with regard to the existence of matter.</p>
+
+<p>In 1712 Berkeley visited England, probably for the first
+time, and was introduced to the London wits. Already in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>
+these youthful days there was in him much of that magic
+power which some men exercise unconsciously and irresistibly.
+Swift felt the spell, called Berkeley a great philosopher,
+and spoke of him to all the Ministers; while Atterbury,
+upon being asked what he thought of him, exclaimed:
+'So much understanding, so much knowledge, so much
+innocence, and such humility, I did not think had been
+the portion of any but angels till I saw this gentleman.'
+An incident occurred, it is conjectured during the course
+of this visit, which led to memorable results. He dined
+once with Swift at Mrs. Vanhomrigh's, and met her
+daughter Hester. Many years later, <i>Vanessa</i> destroyed
+the will she had made in Swift's favour, and left half
+of her property to Berkeley. While in London the future
+bishop was warmly welcomed by Steele, and wrote
+several essays for him in the <i>Guardian</i> against the Freethinkers,
+and especially against Anthony Collins (1676-1729),
+whose arguments in his <i>Discourse on Freethinking</i>
+(1713) are ridiculed in the <i>Scriblerus Memoirs</i>. Collins,
+it may be observed here, wrote a treatise several years
+later on the <i>Grounds of the Christian Religion</i> (1724)
+which called forth thirty-five answers. During this visit
+Berkeley also published one of his most original works,
+<i>Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous</i>, a book marked by
+that consummate beauty of style for which he is distinguished.</p>
+
+<p>In November, 1713, the Earl of Peterborough was sent
+on an embassage to the King of Sicily, and on Swift's
+recommendation took Berkeley with him as his chaplain
+and secretary. Ten months were spent on this occasion
+in France and Italy. Another continental tour followed,
+in the course of which Berkeley wrote to Arbuthnot of his
+ascent of Vesuvius, and to Pope of his life at Naples. Five
+years were spent abroad, and he returned to England to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
+learn of the failure of the South Sea Scheme. In his <i>Essay
+towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain</i> (1721), the
+main argument is the obvious one, that national salvation
+is only to be secured by individual uprightness. He deplores
+'the trifling vanity of apparel' which we have learned
+from France, advocates the revival of sumptuary laws, considers
+that we are 'doomed to be undone' by luxury, and
+by the want of public spirit, and declares that 'neither
+Venice nor Paris, nor any other town in any part of the
+world ever knew such an expensive ruinous folly as our
+masquerade.'</p>
+
+<p>In the summer of this year he was again in London,
+and Pope asked him to spend a week in his 'Tusculum.'
+One promotion followed another until Berkeley became
+Dean of Derry, with an income of from £1,500 to £2,000
+a year. He did not hold this dignified position long, having
+conceived the magnificent but Utopian idea of founding
+a Missionary College in the Bermudas&mdash;the 'Summer Isles'
+celebrated in the verse of Waller and of Marvell&mdash;for the
+conversion of America.</p>
+
+<p>And now Berkeley exhibited his amazing power of influencing
+other men. The members of the Scriblerus
+Club laughed at the Dean's project, but so powerful was
+his eloquence, that 'those who came to scoff remained
+to subscribe.' Moreover, with Sir Robert Walpole as
+Prime Minister, he actually obtained a grant from the
+State of £20,000 in order to carry out the project, the
+king gave a charter, and to crown all, Sir Robert put
+his own name down for £200 on the list of subscribers.
+'The scheme,' says Mr. Balfour, 'seems now so impracticable
+that we may well wonder how any single person, let
+alone the representatives of a whole nation, could be found
+to support it. In order that religion and learning might
+flourish in America, the seeds of them were to be cast in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>
+some rocky islets severed from America by nearly six hundred
+miles of stormy ocean. In order that the inhabitants
+of the mainland and of the West Indian colonies might
+equally benefit by the new university, it was to be placed in
+such a position that neither could conveniently reach it.'<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a>
+Berkeley, who had recently married, left England for
+Rhode Island, where he stayed for about three years and
+wrote <i>Alciphron</i> (1732), in which he attacks the freethinkers
+under the title of <i>Minute Philosophers</i>. Then on
+learning from Walpole that the promised money 'would
+most undoubtedly be paid as soon as suits public convenience'
+which would be never, he returned to England, and
+through the Queen's influence was made Bishop of Cloyne.
+In that diocese eighteen years of his life were spent. In the
+course of them he published the <i>Querist</i> (1735-1737), an
+<i>Essay on the Social State of Ireland</i> (1744), and, in the
+same year, <i>Siris</i>, which contains the bishop's famous recipe
+for the use of tar water followed by much philosophical
+disquisition. The remedy, which was afterwards praised
+by the poet Dyer in <i>The Fleece</i>, became instantly popular.
+'We are now mad about the water,' Horace Walpole wrote;
+'the book contains every subject from tar water to the
+Trinity; however, all the women read it, and understand it
+no more than if it were intelligible.' Editions of <i>Siris</i>
+followed each other in rapid succession, and it was translated
+into French and German. The work is that of an
+enthusiast, and it should be read not for its argument, but
+for its wealth of suggestiveness, and for what Mr. Balfour
+calls 'a certain quality of moral elevation and speculative
+diffidence alien both to the literature and the life of the
+eighteenth century.' Berkeley had himself the profoundest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
+faith in the panacea which he advocated. 'From my
+representing tar water,' he writes, 'as good for so many
+things, some, perhaps, many conclude it is good for nothing.
+But charity obligeth me to say what I know, and what I
+think, howsoever it may be taken. Men may conjecture and
+object as they please, but I appeal to time and experience.'</p>
+
+<p>In his latter days Berkeley, feeling his health failing,
+desired to resign his bishopric and retire to Oxford, and
+there&mdash;while still bishop of Cloyne, for the king would not
+accept his resignation&mdash;the philosopher, who was blest, to
+use Shakespeare's fine epithet, with a 'tender-hefted
+nature,' passed away in 1753, leaving behind him one of
+the most fragrant of memories.</p>
+
+<p>That Berkeley was a philosophical thinker from his
+earliest manhood is evident from his <i>Commonplace Book</i>
+published for the first time in the Clarendon Press edition
+of his works (vol. iv., pp. 419-502).</p>
+
+<p>He delighted in recondite thought as much as most
+young men delight in action, and as a philosopher he is
+said to have commenced his studies with Locke, whose
+famous <i>Essay</i> appeared in 1690. Of Plato, too, Berkeley
+was an ardent admirer, and the spirit of Plato pervades his
+works. His <i>Essay towards a New Theory of Vision</i> contains
+some intimations of the famous metaphysical theory
+which was developed a little later in the <i>Treatise on Human
+Knowledge</i>.</p>
+
+<p>A good deal of foolish ridicule was excited by this book.
+Berkeley was supposed to maintain the absurd paradox
+that sensible things do not exist at all. The reader will
+remember how Dr. Johnson undertook to refute the postulate
+by striking his foot against a stone, while James
+Beattie (1735-1803), the poet and moral philosopher,
+in a volume for which he was rewarded with a pension
+of £200 a year, denounced Berkeley's philosophy as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>
+'scandalously absurd.' 'If,' he writes, 'I were permitted
+to propose one clownish question, I would fain ask ...
+Where is the harm of my believing that if I were to
+fall down yonder precipice and break my neck, I should
+be no more a man of this world? My neck, Sir, may be
+an idea to you, but to me it is a reality, and a very
+important one too. Where is the harm of my believing
+that if in this severe weather I were to neglect to throw
+(what you call) the idea of a coat over the ideas of my
+shoulders, the idea of cold would produce the idea of such
+pain and disorder as might possibly terminate in my real
+death? What great offence shall I commit against God or
+man, church or state, philosophy or common sense if I
+continue to believe that material food will nourish me,
+though the idea of it will not, that the real sun will warm
+and enlighten me, though the liveliest idea of him will do
+neither; and that if I would obtain here peace of mind
+and self-approbation, I must not only form ideas of compassion,
+justice and generosity, but also really exert those
+virtues in external performance?'<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a></p>
+
+<p>Beattie continues in this foolish strain to throw contempt
+upon a system which he had not taken the trouble
+to understand, and upon one of the sanest and noblest of
+English philosophers, and he does so without a thought
+that the absurdity is due to his own ignorance and not to
+the theory of Berkeley. The author of the <i>Minstrel</i> was
+an honest man and a respectable poet, but he prided himself
+too much on what he called common sense, and failed
+to see that in the search after truth other and even higher
+faculties may be also needed. Moreover, Berkeley, so far
+from being an enemy to common sense, endeavours, as he
+says, to vindicate it, although in so doing, he 'may per<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>haps
+be obliged to use some <i>ambages</i> and ways of speech not
+common.' A significant passage may be quoted from the
+<i>Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous</i> (1713) in
+illustration of his method and style so far indeed as a short
+extract can illustrate an argument sustained by a long
+course of reasoning.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'<i>Phil.</i> As I am no sceptic with regard to the nature of
+things, so neither am I as to their existence. That a thing
+should be really perceived by my senses, and at the same
+time not really exist is to me a plain contradiction; since I
+cannot prescind or abstract even in thought, the existence
+of a sensible thing from its being perceived. Wood, stones,
+fire, water, flesh, iron, and the like things, which I name
+and discourse of, are things that I know. And I should
+not have known them but that I perceived them by my
+senses; and things perceived by the senses are immediately
+perceived; and things immediately perceived are ideas;
+and ideas cannot exist without the mind; their existence
+therefore consists in being perceived; when therefore they
+are actually perceived there can be no doubt of their
+existence.... I might as well doubt of my own being, as
+of the being of those things I actually see and feel.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Hyl.</i> Not so fast, <i>Philonous</i>; you say you cannot conceive
+how sensible things should exist without the mind.
+Do you not?</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Phil.</i> I do.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Hyl.</i> Supposing you were annihilated, cannot you conceive
+it possible that things perceivable by sense may still
+exist?</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Phil.</i> I can; but then it must be in another mind.
+When I deny sensible things an existence out of the
+mind, I do not mean my mind in particular, but all minds.
+Now, it is plain they have an existence exterior to my
+mind; since I find them by experience to be independent
+of it. There is therefore some other mind wherein they
+exist, during the intervals between the times of my perceiving
+them; as likewise they did before my birth, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>
+would do after my supposed annihilation. And as the
+same is true with regard to all other finite created spirits,
+it necessarily follows there is an <i>omnipresent, eternal Mind</i>,
+which knows and comprehends all things, and exhibits
+them to our view in such a manner, and according to such
+rules, as He Himself hath ordained, and are by us termed
+the <i>Laws of Nature</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'Truth is the cry of all,' says Berkeley in the final paragraph
+of <i>Siris</i>, 'but the game of a few. Certainly, where
+it is the chief passion, it doth not give way to vulgar cares
+and views, nor is it contented with a little ardour, active
+perhaps to pursue, but not so fit to weigh and revise. He
+that would make a real progress in knowledge, must dedicate
+his age as well as youth, the latter growth as well as
+firstfruits at the altar of truth.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Elsewhere in this famous treatise he writes:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'It cannot be denied that with respect to the universe of
+things we in this mortal state are like men educated in
+Plato's cave, looking on shadows with our backs turned to
+the light. But though our light be dim and our situation
+bad, yet if the best use be made of both, perhaps something
+may be seen. Proclus, in his commentary on the
+theology of Plato, observes there are two sorts of philosophers.
+The one placed body first in the order of beings,
+and made the faculty of thinking depend thereupon, supposing
+that the principles of all things are corporeal; that
+body most really or principally exists, and all other things
+in a secondary sense and by virtue of that. Others making
+all corporeal things to be dependent upon soul or mind,
+think this to exist in the first place, and primary senses and
+the being of bodies to be altogether derived from, and presuppose
+that of the mind.'</p></div>
+
+<p>This was Berkeley's creed, and his great aim throughout
+is to prove the phenomenal nature of the things of sense,
+or in other words the non-existence of independent matter.
+He makes, he says, not the least question that the things
+we see and touch really exist, but what he does question is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>
+the existence of matter apart from its perception to the
+mind. Hobbes said that the body accounted for the mind,
+and that matter was the deepest thing in the universe,
+while to Berkeley the only true reality consists in what is
+spiritual and eternal.</p>
+
+<p>'The great idealist,' says an able writer, 'certainly never
+denied the existence of matter in the sense in which Johnson
+understood it. As the touched, the seen, the heard, the
+smelled, the tasted, he admitted and maintained its existence
+as readily and completely as the most illiterate
+and unsophisticated of mankind,' and he adds that the
+peculiar endowment for which Berkeley was distinguished
+'far beyond his predecessors and contemporaries, and far
+beyond almost every philosopher who has succeeded him,
+was the eye he had <i>for facts</i>, and the singular pertinacity
+with which he refused to be dislodged from his hold upon
+them.'<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a></p>
+
+<p>Pope's age produced a few great masters of style, and
+among them Berkeley holds an undisputed place. He
+succeeded, too, in the most difficult department of intellectual
+labour, since to express abstruse thought in
+language as beautiful as it is clear is the rarest of gifts.</p>
+
+<p>'His works are beyond dispute the finest models of
+philosophic style since Cicero. Perhaps they surpass those
+of the orator, in the wonderful art by which the fullest
+light is thrown on the most minute and evanescent parts
+of the most subtle of human conceptions.'<a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">William Law
+(1686-1761).</div>
+
+<p>William Law was born in 1686 at King's Cliffe in
+Northamptonshire, and entered Emmanuel
+College, Cambridge, as a Sizar in 1705. He
+obtained a Fellowship, and received holy
+orders in 1711, but having made a speech offensive to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>
+heads of houses, he was degraded. Law believed in the
+divine right of kings, and on the death of Queen Anne,
+declared his principles as a non-juror. In 1717 he published
+his first controversial work, <i>Three Letters to the
+Bishop of Bangor</i>; Hoadly, the famous bishop, having, in his
+opponent's judgment, uttered lax and latitudinarian views
+with regard to the Church of which he was one of the chief
+pastors. These <i>Letters</i> have been highly praised for wit as
+well as for argument, and Dean Hook, writing of the Bangorian
+Controversy in his <i>Church Dictionary</i>, states that
+'Law's <i>Letters</i> have never been answered and may, indeed,
+be regarded as unanswerable.' Law was also the most
+powerful assailant of Warburton's <i>Divine Legation</i>, which
+he opposed with a burning zeal that was not always wise.
+But as a controversialist he was an infinitely stronger
+man than his opponent, and unlike Warburton, he never
+debased controversy by scurrility, which the bishop generally
+found a more potent weapon than argument.</p>
+
+<p>On the publication, in 1723, of Dr. Mandeville's <i>Fable of
+the Bees</i>, it was vigorously attacked by Law. In this
+masterly pamphlet, instead of attempting to refute the
+physician by showing that virtue is more profitable to the
+State than vice, and that, therefore, private vices are not
+public benefits, Law takes a higher ground, and asserts
+that morality is not a question of profit and loss, but of
+conscience. Mandeville maintains that man is a mere
+animal governed by his passions; his opponent, on the
+other hand, argues that man is created in the image of
+God, that virtue 'is a law to which even the divine
+nature is subject,' and that human nature is fitted to rise
+to the angels, while Mandeville would lower it to the
+brutes.</p>
+
+<p>John Sterling, writing to F. D. Maurice of the first
+section of Law's remarks, says: 'I have never seen in our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>
+language the elementary grounds of a rational ideal
+philosophy, as opposed to empiricism, stated with nearly
+the same clearness, simplicity, and force,' and it was at
+Sterling's suggestion that Maurice published a new edition
+of Law's argument with an introductory essay (1844).</p>
+
+<p>The following passage from the <i>Remarks on the Fable of
+the Bees</i> will illustrate Law's method as a polemic:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Deists and freethinkers are generally considered as
+unbelievers; but upon examination they will appear to be
+men of the most resigned and implicit faith in the world;
+they would believe <i>transubstantiation</i>, but that it implies
+a believing in God; for they never resign their reason, but
+when it is to yield to something that opposes salvation.
+For the Deist's creed has as many articles as the Christian's,
+and requires a much greater suspension of our reason to
+believe them. So that if to believe things upon no authority,
+or without any reason, be an argument of credulity, the
+freethinker will appear to be the most easy, credulous
+creature alive. In the first place, he is to believe almost
+all the same articles to be false which the Christian believes
+to be true.</p>
+
+<p>'Now, it may easily be shown that it requires stronger
+acts of faith to believe these articles to be false, than to
+believe them to be true. For, taking faith to be an assent
+of the mind to some proposition, of which we have no
+certain knowledge, it will appear that the Deist's faith is
+much stronger, and has more of credulity in it, than the
+Christian's. For instance, the Christian believes the
+resurrection of the dead, because he finds it supported by
+such evidence and authority as cannot possibly be higher,
+supposing the thing was true; and he does no more
+violence to his reason in believing it, than in supposing
+that God may intend to do some things, which the reason
+of man cannot conceive how they will be effected.</p>
+
+<p>'On the contrary, the Deist believes there will be no
+resurrection. And how great is his faith, for he pretends
+to no evidence or authority to support it; it is a pure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
+naked assent of his mind to what he does not know to be
+true, and of which nobody has, or can give him, any full
+assurance. So that the difference between a Christian and
+a Deist does not consist in this, that the one assents to
+things unknown, and the other does not; but in this, that
+the Christian assents to things unknown on account of
+evidence; the other assents to things unknown without
+any evidence at all. Which shows that the Christian is
+the rational believer and the Deist the blind bigot.'</p></div>
+
+<p>It is probable that Law, like other writers on the
+orthodox side, did not sufficiently take into account the
+service rendered by the Deists in arousing a spirit of
+inquiry. Free-thinking is right thinking, and 'it was a
+result of the Deistic controversy, which went far to make
+up many evils in it, that in the end it widened and enlarged
+Christian thought.'<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a></p>
+
+<p>The author's next and weakest work, <i>On the Unlawfulness
+of Stage Entertainments</i> (1726), is mentioned elsewhere.<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a></p>
+
+<p>In the same year he published <i>Christian Perfection</i>,
+a profoundly earnest but puritanically narrow work, in
+which our earthly life is regarded simply as the road to
+another. 'There is nothing that deserves a serious thought,'
+he writes, 'but how to get out of the world and make it a
+right passage to our eternal state.' No man ever practised
+what he preached with more sincerity and persistency than
+William Law, but it can hardly be doubted that he narrowed
+the range of his influence by the views he expressed
+with regard to culture and to all human learning. He
+forgot that, without the logic, the wit, the irony, the
+singular force and lucidity of style displayed in his own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>
+writings, he would have lost the power as a religious
+teacher which he was so eager to exercise.</p>
+
+<p>Literature <i>quâ</i> literature Law regarded with contempt,
+and he is said to have looked upon the study even of
+Milton as waste of time. Yet his biographer states what
+seems likely enough, considering the fine qualities of Law's
+own writings, that 'no author was ever a favourite with
+him, unless he was a man of literary merit.'</p>
+
+<p>In 1727, and probably before that date, Law held the
+position of tutor to Edward Gibbon, whose famous son,
+the historian, in his <i>Autobiography</i>, gives to him the high
+praise of having left in the family 'the reputation of a
+worthy and pious man, who believed all that he professed,
+and practised all that he enjoined.'</p>
+
+<p>Law accompanied his pupil to Cambridge, and it is conjectured
+that during this residence at the university he
+wrote what Gibbon justly called his 'master work,' <i>A
+Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life</i> (1729), the most
+impressive book of its class produced in the eighteenth
+century. The historian's father was a man of feeble
+character. He left Cambridge without a degree, and went
+on his travels, the tutor meanwhile remaining in the family
+house at Putney, where he seems to have gathered round
+him a number of disciples.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Serious Call</i> had an immediate and strong influence
+on many thoughtful men, and Law's book stimulated in no
+common measure the religious life of the country. John
+Wesley spoke of it as a treatise hardly to be excelled in
+the English tongue 'either for beauty of expression, or for
+justness and depth of thought.' Whitefield, Venn, and
+Thomas Scott, the commentator, acknowledged their indebtedness
+to the work, and Dr. Johnson, speaking of his
+youthful days, said: 'I became a sort of lax <i>talker</i> against
+religion, for I did not much <i>think</i> against it; and this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
+lasted till I went to Oxford, when I took up Law's <i>Serious
+Call to a Holy Life</i>, expecting to find it a dull book (as
+such books generally are), but I found Law quite an over-match
+for me; and this was the first occasion of my
+thinking in earnest.' The first Lord Lyttelton, the historian
+and friend of Thomson, is said to have taken up the book
+one night at bed-time, and to have read it through before
+he went to bed; but, perhaps, the most unimpeachable
+evidence in its favour comes from the pen of Gibbon, who
+writes: 'Mr. Law's precepts are rigid, but they are founded
+on the Gospel. His satire is sharp, but it is drawn from
+the knowledge of human life, and many of his portraits are
+not unworthy of the pen of La Bruyère. If he finds a
+spark of piety in his reader's mind he will soon kindle it
+to a flame.'</p>
+
+<p>Law's art as a portrait painter will be seen in the following
+sketch of Flavia:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'<i>Flavia</i> would be a miracle of piety if she was but half
+so careful of her soul as she is of her body. The rising of
+a <i>pimple</i> on her face, the sting of a gnat, will make her keep
+her room two or three days, and she thinks they are very
+rash people that do not take care of things in time. This
+makes her so over careful of her health that she never
+thinks she is well enough, and so over indulgent that she
+never can be really well. So that it costs her a great deal
+in sleeping draughts and waking draughts, in spirits for
+the head, in drops for the nerves, in cordials for the stomach,
+and in saffron for her tea.</p>
+
+<p>'If you visit <i>Flavia</i> on the Sunday, you will always meet
+good company, you will know what is doing in the world,
+you will hear the last lampoon, be told who wrote it, and
+who is meant by every name that is in it. You will hear
+what plays were acted that week, which is the finest song
+in the opera, who was intolerable at the last assembly, and
+what games are most in fashion. <i>Flavia</i> thinks they are
+atheists who play at cards on the Sunday, but she will tell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>
+you the nicety of all the games, what cards she held, how
+she played them, and the history of all that happened at
+play, as soon as she comes from church. If you would
+know who is rude and ill-natured, who is vain and foppish,
+who lives too high and who is in debt; if you would know
+what is the quarrel at a certain house, or who and who are in
+love; if you would know how late Belinda comes home at
+night, what clothes she has bought, how she loves compliments,
+and what a long story she told at such a place; if
+you would know how cross Lucius is to his wife, what ill-natured
+things he says to her, when nobody hears him; if
+you would know how they hate one another in their hearts
+though they appear so kind in public; you must visit
+<i>Flavia</i> on the Sunday. But still she has so great a regard
+for the holiness of the Sunday, that she has turned a poor
+old widow out of her house as a <i>profane wretch</i>, for having
+been found once mending her clothes on the Sunday
+night.'</p></div>
+
+<p>Between the years 1733-37, owing to his acquaintance
+with the writings of the famous mystic, Jacob Boehme,
+Law became a mystic himself. The 'blessed Jacob' as he
+calls him exercised an influence which colours all his later
+writings and lasted till his death. In 1740 he retired
+to his native village and to solitude; but after a while two
+wealthy and devout ladies, one of them a widow, the other
+the historian's aunt, Miss Hester Gibbon, joined him in his
+retreat and devoted to charitable objects their labours and
+their fortunes. 'Out of a joint income of not less than
+three thousand pounds a year, only about three hundred
+pounds were spent upon the frugal expenses of the household
+and the simple personal wants of the three inhabitants.
+The whole of the remainder was spent upon the poor.'<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a>
+Report says, let us hope it may be scandal, that after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>
+the master's death the love of earthly vanities revived
+in two of his pupils. His favourite niece had a new dress
+every month, and Miss Gibbon 'appeared resplendent in
+yellow stockings.' This is not the place to follow Law's
+self-denying career, neither are we concerned with the
+volumes which contain his later views. Admirably written
+though they be, these works do not belong to the field of
+literature. Law lived in vigour both of mind and body to
+a good old age, and died in 1761.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">Joseph Butler
+(1692-1752).</div>
+
+<p>Joseph Butler, whose <i>Sermons</i> (1726), and <i>Analogy of
+Religion Natural and Revealed to the Constitution
+and Course of Nature</i> (1736), are among
+the highest contributions to theology produced
+in the last century, called the imagination 'a forward,
+delusive faculty,' and he could have boasted that it was a
+faculty of which no trace is to be found in his works.
+Moreover, he is generally regarded as wholly destitute
+of style, and in a sense this is true, for Butler is so intent
+upon what he has to say that he cares little how he says it.
+His sense of beauty if he possessed it, was absorbed in a
+supreme allegiance to truth, and his life was that of
+a Christian philosopher intent upon one object. His
+sermons, preached at the Rolls Chapel, which contain the
+germ of his philosophy, are too closely packed with argument
+and too recondite in thought to fit them for pulpit discourses.
+The <i>Analogy</i>, which occupied seven years of
+Butler's life, is better known and more generally interesting.
+'There is,' he says, 'a much more exact correspondence
+between the natural and the moral world than we are
+apt to take notice of.' His aim is to show that the difficulties
+which meet us in Revelation are to be found also in
+nature, that as our happiness or misery in this world largely
+depends upon conduct, so it is reasonable to suppose, apart
+from what Revelation teaches, that we are also in a state of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>
+probation with regard to a future life. As youth is an
+education for mature age, so may the whole of our earthly
+life be an education for a future existence.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'And if we were not able at all to discern how or in
+what way the present life could be our preparation for
+another, this would be no objection against the credibility
+of its being so. For we do not discern how food and sleep
+contribute to the growth of the body; nor could have any
+thought that they would before we had experience. Nor
+do children at all think on the one hand that the sports and
+exercises, to which they are so much addicted, contribute to
+their health and growth; nor, on the other, of the necessity
+which there is for their being restrained in them; nor are
+they capable of understanding the use of many parts of
+discipline, which, nevertheless, they must be made to go
+through in order to qualify them for the business of mature
+age. Were we not able, then, to discover in what respects
+the present life could form us for a future one, yet nothing
+would be more supposable than that it might, in some
+respects or other, from the general analogy of Providence.
+And this, for aught I see, might reasonably be said, even
+though we should not take in the consideration of God's
+moral government over the world. But, take in this consideration,
+and consequently, that the character of virtue
+and piety is a necessary qualification for the future state,
+and then we may distinctly see how and in what respects
+the present life may be a preparation for it.</p></div>
+
+<p>Butler's style is uniform throughout, and if it have no
+other merit, may be praised for honesty. It is wholly free
+from the artifices of the rhetorician; if it is wanting in
+charm, it is never weak; if it is sometimes obscure, it must
+be remembered that the author does not write for readers
+who find it a trouble to think. The bishop's obscurity was
+not due to negligence. 'Confusion and perplexity in writing,'
+he says, 'is indeed without excuse; because anyone
+may, if he pleases, know whether he understands and sees<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
+through what he is about; and it is unpardonable for a
+man to lay his thoughts before others when he is conscious
+that he himself does not know whereabouts he is, or how
+the matter before him stands. It is coming abroad in disorder,
+which he ought to be dissatisfied to find himself in at
+home.'</p>
+
+<p>Butler weighed his thoughts rather than his words in an
+age when many distinguished writers were tempted to regard
+form as of more consequence than substance. It must be
+admitted, however, that if the ideal of fine literature be the
+expression of beautiful and richly suggestive thoughts in a
+style elevated by the imagination, and by a sense of rhythmical
+harmony, Bishop Butler's place is not among men of
+letters. His profound sense of the seriousness of life
+limited his range; but as a thinker, what he lost in versatility
+he probably gained in depth. The <i>Analogy</i> is a
+striking instance of a great work wholly without imagination,
+while full of the intellectual life which sustains the
+student's attention. There is not a dull page in the book,
+or one in which the author's meaning cannot be grasped by
+thoughtful readers. The work is full of weighty sayings
+on the power of conscience, the rule of right which a man
+has within him, the force of habit, the necessity of action in
+relation to belief, and the uselessness of passive impressions.
+It has been said that the defect of the eighteenth century
+theology 'was not in having too much good sense, but in
+having nothing besides,' and the straining after good sense,
+so prominent in Pope's age, affected alike, men of letters,
+philosophers, and theologians. The virtue was carried to
+excess and is conspicuous in Butler. He has his weaknesses
+both as a philosopher and a theologian, but the
+reader of the <i>Analogy</i> and of the three sermons on Human
+Nature, will be conscious that he is in the presence of a
+great mind.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote">William Warburton
+(1698-1779).</div>
+
+<p>William Warburton, Pope's commentator, was born at
+Newark-upon-Trent in 1698, and died
+as Bishop of Gloucester in 1779. The
+main argument of his principal work,
+<i>The Divine Legation of Moses</i> (1738-41), is based upon the
+astounding paradox that the legation of Moses must have
+been divine because he never invoked the promises or
+threatenings of a future state. The book is remarkable
+for its arrogance and lack of 'sweet reasonableness.' It
+claims no attention from the student of English literature,
+neither would Warburton himself were it not for his association
+with Pope. Allusion has been already made to
+Crousaz's hostile criticism of the <i>Essay on Man</i> (1737)
+on the ground that it led to fatalism, and was destructive
+of the foundations of natural religion. Warburton, who
+had previously denounced the 'rank atheism' of the poem,
+now endeavoured to defend it, and how effectually he did
+so in Pope's judgment is seen in his grateful acknowledgment
+of the critic's labours. 'I know I meant just what
+you explain,' he wrote, 'but I did not explain my own
+meaning as well as you. You understand me as well as I
+do myself, but you express me better than I could express
+myself.'</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Conyers Middleton's estimate of what Warburton
+had done for Pope is more accurate: 'You have evinced
+the orthodoxy of Mr. Pope's principles,' he says, 'but,
+like the old commentators on his <i>Homer</i>, will be thought,
+perhaps, in some places to have provided a meaning for
+him that he himself never dreamt of.'<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a></p>
+
+<p>The poet and Warburton met for the first time in 1740,
+and the bookseller, Dodsley, who was present at the interview,
+was astonished at the compliments which Pope<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>
+lavished on his apologist. Henceforth, until the poet's
+death, Warburton, who, according to Bishop Hurd, 'found
+an image of himself in his new acquaintance,' became his
+counsellor and supporter, and among other achievements
+added, as Ricardus Aristarchus, to the confusion of the
+<i>Dunciad</i>. Ultimately, as Pope's annotator, he produced
+much laborious and comparatively worthless criticism, and
+contrived by his immense fighting qualities as a critic and
+polemic to make a considerable noise in the world. One
+incident in the friendship of the poet and of the divine is
+worth recording. In 1741 Pope and Warburton were at
+Oxford together, and while there the Vice-Chancellor
+offered to confer on the poet the degree of D.C.L., and on
+Warburton that of D.D. Some hesitation, however, on
+the part of the university having occurred with regard to
+the latter, Pope wrote to his friend saying, 'As for mine I
+will die before I receive one, in an art I am ignorant of, at
+a place where there remains any scruple of bestowing one
+on you, in a science of which you are so great a master.
+In short I will be doctored with you, or not at all.'</p>
+
+<p>Warburton's stupendous self-assertion concealed to some
+extent his heavy style and poverty of thought. His aim
+was to startle by paradoxes, since he could not convince
+by argument. No one could call an opponent names in
+the Billingsgate style more effectively, and every man who
+ventured to differ from him was either a knave or a fool.
+'Warburton's stock argument,' it has been said, 'is a
+threat to cudgel anyone who disputes his opinion.' He
+was a laborious student, and the mass of work he
+accomplished exhibits his robust energy, but he has left
+nothing which lives in literature or in theology. He was,
+however, a man of various acquisitions, and won, for that
+reason, the praise of Dr. Johnson. 'The table is always
+full, sir. He brings things from the north and the south<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>
+and from every quarter. In his <i>Divine Legation</i> you
+are always entertained. He carries you round and round
+without carrying you forward to the point, but then you
+have no wish to be carried forward.'</p>
+
+<p>Bentley's more concise description of Warburton's attainments
+deserves to be recorded. He was, he says, 'a man
+of monstrous appetite, but bad digestion.'</p>
+
+<p>Warburton's <i>Shakespeare</i> appeared in 1747, his <i>Pope</i> in
+1751. It cannot be said that either poet has cause to be
+grateful to his commentator. Of his <i>Shakespeare</i> a few
+words may be appropriately said here. In this pretentious
+and untrustworthy edition, Warburton accuses Theobald
+of plagiarism, treats him with contempt, and then uses his
+text to print from. In his Preface he declares that his
+own Notes 'take in the whole compass of Criticism,' and
+he professes to restore the poet's genuine Text. Yet, as
+the editors of the <i>Cambridge Shakespeare</i> observe, there is
+no trace, so far as they have discovered, 'of his having
+collated for himself either the earlier Folios or any of the
+Quartos.' Warburton professed to observe the severe
+canons of literal criticism, and this suggested the title to
+Thomas Edwards of a volume in which the critic's editorial
+pretensions are attacked with some humour and much
+justice.<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a></p>
+
+<p>We may add that Bishop Hurd, Warburton's most intimate
+friend, edited his works in seven volumes (1788),
+and six years later, by way of preface to a new edition,
+published an <i>Account of the Life, Writings, and Character
+of the Author</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> Readers who remember Mr. Browning's estimate of 'sage
+Mandeville' in his <i>Parleyings with Certain Persons</i> may deem this
+criticism unjust; but the De Mandeville who speaks in that poem
+is the creation of the poet's imagination, or rather he is Mr.
+Browning himself.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> <i>Bolingbroke: a Historical Study</i>, p. 133. By J. Churton Collins.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> <i>Walpole</i>, p. 79. By John Morley. Macmillan.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> <i>Works of George Berkeley.</i> Edited by George Sampson. With
+introduction by the Rt. Hon. Arthur J. Balfour, M.P. Vol. i.,
+p. xxxi (London, 1897).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> <i>An Essay on Truth</i>, 2nd edit., p. 298. 1771.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> <i>Blackwood's Magazine</i>, June, 1842.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> Sir James Macintosh, <i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> <i>The English Church and its Bishops.</i> By Charles J. Abbey.
+Vol. i., p. 236.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> See p. <a href="#Page_194">194.</a></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> <i>The Life and Opinions of the Rev. William Law, M.A.</i>
+By J. H. Overton, M.A. P. 243.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> Middleton's <i>Miscellaneous Works</i>, vol. i., p. 402.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> The first edition of Edwards's work was entitled <i>Supplement</i>
+to Mr. Warburton's edition of <i>Shakespeare</i>, 1747. The third edition
+(1750) was called <i>The Canons of Criticism and Glossary</i> by Thomas
+Edwards. Of this volume seven editions were published. Edwards,
+who was born in 1699, died in 1757.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="INDEX_OF_MINOR_POETS_AND_PROSE" id="INDEX_OF_MINOR_POETS_AND_PROSE"></a>INDEX OF MINOR POETS AND PROSE
+WRITERS.</h2>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">John Armstrong</span> (1709-1779), a Scotchman by birth,
+practised in London as a physician after some surgical
+experience in the navy. Believing any subject suitable for
+poetry, he wrote in blank verse, reminding one of Thomson,
+<i>The Art of Preserving Health</i> (1744), a poem containing
+some powerful passages, and many which are better fitted
+for a medical treatise than for poetry. An earlier and licentious
+poem <i>The Economy of Love</i>, which injured him in
+his profession, was 'revised and corrected by the author'
+in 1768.</p>
+
+<p>If bulk were a sign of merit <span class="smcap">Sir Richard Blackmore</span>
+(1650-1729) would not rank with the minor poets. He
+wrote several long and wearisome epics, his best work in
+Dr. Johnson's judgment being <i>The Creation</i> (1712), which
+was praised by Addison in the <i>Spectator</i> as 'one of the
+most useful and noble productions in our English verse,' a
+judgment the modern reader is not likely to endorse.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Henry Brooke</span> (1706-1783), an Irishman, was the
+author of a poem entitled <i>Universal Beauty</i> (1735). Four
+years later he published <i>Gustavus Vasa</i>, a tragedy, which
+was not allowed to be acted, the sentiments being too
+liberal for the government. His <i>Fool of Quality</i> (1766) a
+novel in five volumes, delighted John Wesley, and in our
+day, Charles Kingsley, who praises its 'broad and genial<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>
+humanity.' Brooke was a follower of William Law, whose
+mysticism is to be seen in the story.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">William Broome</span> (1689-1745) is chiefly known from
+his association with Pope in the translation of the <i>Odyssey</i>,
+of which enough has been said elsewhere (p. <a href="#Page_38">38</a>). His
+name suggested the following epigram to Henley:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Pope came off clean with Homer; but they say<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Broome</i> went before and kindly swept the way.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He entered holy orders, had two livings in Suffolk and one
+in Norfolk, and married a wealthy widow. His verses are
+mechanically correct, but are empty of poetry.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">John Byrom</span> (1691-1763), the friend and disciple of
+William Law, the author of the <i>Serious Call</i>, is best remembered
+for his system of shorthand. In a characteristic,
+copious, and not very attractive journal, he
+describes, for the consolation of his fellow mortals, how
+he makes resolutions and breaks them. Byrom wrote
+rhyme with ease and on subjects with which poetry has
+nothing to do. His most successful achievement was a
+pastoral, <i>Colin and Ph&oelig;be</i>, which appeared in the <i>Spectator</i>
+(Vol. viii., No. 603). It was written in honour of the
+daughter of Dr. Bentley, Master of Trinity, 'not,' it has
+been said, 'because he wished to win her affections, but
+because he desired to secure her father's interest for the
+Fellowship for which he was a candidate.' The plan was
+successful. The one verse of Byrom's that every one has
+read is the happy epigram:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'God bless the King!&mdash;I mean the faith's defender&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God bless (no harm in blessing!) the Pretender!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But who Pretender is, or who is King&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God bless us all!&mdash;that's quite another thing.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Samuel Clarke</span> (1675-1729), a man of large attainments
+in science and divinity, was the favourite theo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>logian
+of Queen Caroline, who admired his latitudinarian
+views, and delighted in his conversation. His works, edited
+by Bishop Hoadly, were published in 1738 in four folio
+volumes. In 1704 he delivered the Boyle lectures on <i>The
+Being and Attributes of God</i>, and in 1705 <i>On Natural and
+Revealed Religion</i>. His <i>Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity</i>
+(1712) was condemned by convocation. In defence of Sir
+Isaac Newton, Clarke had a controversy with Leibnitz,
+and having published the correspondence dedicated it to
+the Queen. His sermons, Mr. Leslie Stephen says, are
+'for the most part not sermons at all, but lectures upon
+metaphysics.' In Addison's judgment Clarke was one of
+the most accurate, learned, and judicious writers the age
+had produced.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Elijah Fenton</span> (1683-1730) wrote poems and <i>Mariamne</i>
+a tragedy, in which, according to his friend Broome, 'great
+Sophocles revives and reappears.' It was acted with applause,
+and brought nearly one thousand pounds to its
+author. His name is now chiefly known as having assisted
+Pope in his translation of the <i>Odyssey</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Richard Glover</span> (1712-1785), the son of a London
+merchant, was himself a merchant of high reputation in the
+city. He also 'cultivated the Muses,' and his <i>Leonidas</i>
+(1737), an elaborate poem in blank verse, preferred by
+some critics of the day to <i>Paradise Lost</i>, passed through
+several editions and was praised by Fielding and by Lord
+Chatham. Power is visible in this epic, which displays
+also a large amount of knowledge, but the salt of genius is
+wanting, and the poem, despite many estimable qualities,
+is now forgotten. <i>Leonidas</i> was followed by <i>Boadicea</i>
+(1758), and <i>The Atheniad</i>, published after his death in 1788.
+Glover was a politician as well as a verseman. His party
+feeling probably inspired <i>Admiral Hosier's Ghost</i> (1739),
+a ballad still remembered and preserved in anthologies.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Matthew Green</span> (1696-1737) is the author of <i>The Spleen</i>,
+an original and brightly written poem. <i>The Grotto</i>, printed
+but not published in 1732, is also marked by freshness
+of treatment. Green's poems, written in octosyllabic
+metre, were published after his death.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">James Hammond</span> (1710-1742) produced many forlorn
+elegies on a lady who appears to have scorned him, and
+who lived in 'maiden meditation' for nearly forty years
+after the poet's death. His love is said to have affected his
+mind for a time. 'Sure Hammond has no right,' says
+Shenstone, 'to the least inventive merit. I do not think
+that there is a single thought in his elegies of any eminence
+that is not literally translated.'</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Nathaniel Hooke</span> (1690-1763), the author of a <i>Roman
+History</i>, is better known as the editor of <i>An Account of the
+conduct of the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough, from her
+first coming to Court in the year 1710, in a letter from herself
+to Lord &mdash;&mdash; in 1742</i>. The duchess is said to have dictated
+this letter from her bed, and to have been so eager for its
+completion that she insisted on Hooke's not leaving the
+house till he had finished it. He was munificently rewarded
+for his labour by a present of £5,000. It was Hooke, a
+zealous Roman Catholic, who, when Pope was dying, asked
+him if he should not send for a priest, and received the
+poet's hearty thanks for putting him in mind of it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">John Hughes</span> (1677-1719) was the author of poems, an
+opera, a masque, several translations, and a tragedy, <i>The
+Siege of Damascus</i>, which was well received, and kept its
+place on the stage for some years. He died on the first
+night's performance of the play. Several articles in the
+<i>Tatler</i> and <i>Spectator</i> are from his pen. In 1715 he published
+an edition of Spenser in six volumes. Hughes
+received warm praise from Steele, and enjoyed also the
+friendship of Addison.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Conyers Middleton</span> (1683-1750) is now chiefly known
+for an extravagantly eulogistic life of <i>Cicero</i> (1741), in
+which, as Macaulay observes, he 'resorted to the most disingenuous
+shifts, to unpardonable distortions and suppressions
+of facts.' The book is written in a forcible and lively
+style. A man of considerable learning, Middleton was a
+violent controversialist, who liked better to attack and to
+defend than to dwell in the serene atmosphere of literature
+or of practical divinity. He assailed the famous
+Richard Bentley with such rancour that he had to apologize
+and was fined £50 by the Court of King's Bench.
+Middleton was a doctor of divinity, but his controversial
+works, while never directly attacking the chief tenets of the
+religion he professed, lean far more to the side of the Deists
+than to the orthodox creed, and, indeed, it would not be
+uncharitable to class him among them. He appears, like
+Swift, to have chiefly regarded the Christian religion as an
+institution of service to the stability of the State. Of the
+<i>Miscellaneous Works</i> which were published after his death
+in five volumes, the most elaborate and the most provocative
+of disputation is <i>A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers
+which are supposed to have subsisted in the Christian Church
+through several successive centuries</i> (1749). Middleton was
+educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1734 was
+elected librarian of the University.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Richard Savage</span> (1698-1743), whose fate is one of the
+most melancholy in the annals of versemen, lives in the
+admirable though neither impartial nor wholly accurate
+biography of Dr. Johnson. In 1719 he produced <i>Love in a
+Veil</i>, a comedy from the Spanish; and in 1723 his tragedy
+<i>Sir Thomas Overbury</i> was acted, but with little success.
+In the same year he published <i>The Bastard</i>, a poem which
+is said to have driven his mother out of society. <i>The
+Wanderer</i>, in five cantos, appeared in 1729, and was regarded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
+by the author as his masterpiece. It has some vigorous
+lines and several descriptive passages that are not conventional.
+Savage died in prison at Bristol, a city which
+recalls the equally painful story of Chatterton.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Lewis Theobald</span> (1688-1744), the original hero of the
+<i>Dunciad</i>, was a dramatist and translator, but is chiefly
+known as the author of <i>Shakespeare Restored; or specimens
+of blunders committed or unamended in Pope's edition of the
+poet</i> (1726). This was followed two years later by <i>Proposals
+for Publishing Emendations and Remarks on Shakespeare</i>,
+and in 1733 by his edition of the dramatist in seven
+volumes. 'Theobald as an editor,' say the editors of the
+<i>Cambridge Shakespeare</i>, 'is incomparably superior to his
+predecessors and to his immediate successor Warburton,
+although the latter had the advantage of working on his
+materials. He was the first to recall a multitude of readings
+of the first Folio unquestionably right, but unnoticed
+by previous editors. Many most brilliant emendations
+... are due to him.'</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">William Walsh</span> (1663-1708) has chronologically little
+claim to be noticed here, for his poems were published before
+the beginning of the century, but he is to be remembered
+as the early friend and wise counsellor of Pope, and also
+as the author, I believe, of the only English sonnet between
+Milton's in 1658, and Gray's, on Richard West, in
+1742.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Anne Finch</span>, Countess of Winchelsea (1660-1720), published
+a volume of verse in 1713 under the title of <i>Miscellany
+Poems on Several Occasions, Written by a Lady</i>.
+The book contains a <i>Nocturnal Reverie</i>, which has some
+lines showing a close and faithful observation of rural
+sounds and sights, as for example:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'When the loosed horse, now as his pasture leads,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Comes slowly grazing through the adjoining meads,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose stealing pace and lengthened shade we fear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till torn-up forage in his teeth we hear;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When nibbling sheep at large pursue their food,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And unmolested kine rechew the cud;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When curlews cry beneath the village walls,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And to her straggling brood the partridge calls.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The <i>Nocturnal Reverie</i>, however, is an exception to the
+general character of Lady Winchelsea's poems, which consist
+chiefly of odes (including the inevitable Pindaric),
+fables, songs, affectionate addresses to her husband,
+poetical epistles, and a tragedy, <i>Aristomenes; or the Royal
+Shepherd</i>. The <i>Petition for an Absolute Retreat</i> is one of
+the best pieces in the volume. It displays great facility in
+versification, and a love of country delights.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Thomas Yalden</span> (1670-1736), born in Exeter, and
+educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, entered into holy
+orders (1711), and was appointed lecturer of moral philosophy.
+'Of his poems,' writes Dr. Johnson, 'many are of
+that irregular kind which, when he formed his poetical
+character, was supposed to be Pindaric.' Pindarics were
+indeed the bane of the age. Every minor poet, no matter
+however feeble his poetical wings might be, endeavoured
+to fly with Pindar. Like Gay, Yalden tried his skill as a
+writer of fables.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot gap3"><p class="center"><span class="smcap">Note.</span></p>
+
+<p><i>Mrs. Veal's Ghost</i> (see pp. 186-187). A curious discovery,
+made by Mr. G. A. Aitken (see <i>Nineteenth Century</i>, January,
+1895), makes it certain, he thinks, that 'the whole narrative is
+literally true.' He even hopes that the receipt for scouring Mrs.
+Veal's gown may some day be found. Mr. Aitken seems to infer
+that Defoe's other tales will also turn out to be true histories, but
+Defoe avers, with all the seriousness he expends on Mrs. Veal,
+that he witnessed the great Plague of London, which it is needless
+to say he did not.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="CHRONOLOGICAL_TABLE" id="CHRONOLOGICAL_TABLE"></a>CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.</h2>
+
+<table summary="Chronology">
+<tr>
+<td><b>1667.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Swift born.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1672.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Steele born.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1672.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Addison born.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1674.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Milton died.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1688.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Gay born.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1688.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Pope born.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1688.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Bunyan died.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1690.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Locke's <i>Essay Concerning Human Understanding</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1694.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Voltaire born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1699.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Racine died.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1700.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Thomson born.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1700.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Dryden died.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1700.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Fénelon's <i>Télémaque</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1703.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>John Wesley born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1704.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Locke died.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1704.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Addison's</b> <i>Campaign</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1704.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Swift's</b> <i>Tale of a Tub</i> and <i>Battle of the Books</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1707.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Fielding born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1709.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Johnson born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1709.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Pope's</b> <i>Pastorals</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1709-1711.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><i>The Tatler.</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1710.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Berkeley's</b> <i>Principles of Human Knowledge</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1711.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Pope's</b> <i>Essay on Criticism</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1711-1712,</td>
+<td rowspan="2" style="font-size:200%">}</td>
+<td rowspan="2"><i>The Spectator.</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>and 1714.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1711.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Hume born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1712.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Pope's</b> <i>Rape of the Lock</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>1712.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Rousseau born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1713.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Addison's</b> <i>Cato</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1713.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Sterne born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1714.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Mandeville's</b> <i>Fable of the Bees</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1715.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Gay's</b> <i>Trivia</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1715-1720.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Pope's</b> <i>Translation of Homer's Iliad</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1715.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Wycherley died.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1718.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Prior's</b> <i>Poems on Several Occasions</i> <b>(folio)</b>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1719-1720.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Defoe's</b> <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> <b>(first part)</b>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1719.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Addison died.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1721.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Prior died.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1721.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Smollett born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1723-1725.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Pope's</b> <i>Translation of Homer's Odyssey</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1724.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Swift's</b> <i>Drapier's Letters</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1724.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Kant born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1724.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Klopstock born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1725-1730.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Thomson's</b> <i>Seasons</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1725.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Ramsay's</b> <i>Gentle Shepherd</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1725.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Young's</b> <i>Universal Passion</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1726.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Swift's</b> <i>Gulliver's Travels</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1727.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Gay's</b> <i>Fables</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1728.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Pope's</b> <i>Dunciad</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1728.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Gay's</b> <i>Beggar's Opera</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1728.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Goldsmith born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1729.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Law's</b> <i>Serious Call</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1729.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Burke born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1729.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Lessing born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1729.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Steele died.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1731.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Defoe died.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1731.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Cowper born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1732-1735.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Pope's</b> <i>Moral Essays</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1732-1734.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Pope's</b> <i>Essay on Man</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1732.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Gay died.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1733-1737.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Pope's</b> <i>Imitations of Horace</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1735.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Pope's</b> <i>Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1736.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Butler's</b> <i>Analogy of Religion</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1737.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Gibbon born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1738.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Hume's</b> <i>Treatise of Human Nature</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span><b>1740.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Cibber's</b> <i>Apology for his Life</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1740.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Richardson's <i>Pamela</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1742.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Fielding's <i>Joseph Andrews</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1742.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Pope's</b> <i>Dunciad</i> <b>(fourth book added)</b>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1742.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Young's</b> <i>Night Thoughts</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1743.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Blair's</b> <i>Grave</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1744.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Akenside's</b> <i>Pleasures of Imagination</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1744.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Pope died.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1745.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Swift died.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><b>1748.</b></td>
+<td></td>
+<td><b>Thomson died.</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1748.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Hume's <i>Inquiry concerning Human Understanding</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1748.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Richardson's <i>Clarissa Harlowe</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1748.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Smollett's <i>Roderick Random</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1749.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Goethe born.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>1749.</td>
+<td></td>
+<td>Fielding's <i>Tom Jones</i>.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h2 class="gap3">ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WRITERS</h2>
+
+<table summary="Writers">
+<tr>
+<td>ADDISON, JOSEPH</td>
+<td class="ralign">1672-1719</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>AKENSIDE, MARK</td>
+<td class="ralign">1721-1770</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>ARBUTHNOT, JOHN</td>
+<td class="ralign">1667-1735</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>ARMSTRONG, JOHN</td>
+<td class="ralign">1709-1779</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>ATTERBURY, FRANCIS</td>
+<td class="ralign">1662-1732</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>BENTLEY, RICHARD</td>
+<td class="ralign">1662-1742</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>BERKELEY, GEORGE</td>
+<td class="ralign">1685-1753</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>BINNING, LORD</td>
+<td class="ralign">1696-1732</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>BLACKMORE, SIR RICHARD</td>
+<td class="ralign">1650-1729</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>BLAIR, ROBERT</td>
+<td class="ralign">1699-1746</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>BOLINGBROKE, LORD</td>
+<td class="ralign">1678-1751</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>BOYLE, CHARLES</td>
+<td class="ralign">1676-1731</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>BROOKE, HENRY</td>
+<td class="ralign">1706-1783</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>BROOME, WILLIAM</td>
+<td class="ralign">1689-1745</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>BUTLER, JOSEPH</td>
+<td class="ralign">1692-1752</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>BYROM, JOHN</td>
+<td class="ralign">1691-1763</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>CHESTERFIELD, LORD</td>
+<td class="ralign">1694-1773</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>CIBBER, COLLEY</td>
+<td class="ralign">1671-1757</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>CLARKE, SAMUEL</td>
+<td class="ralign">1675-1729</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>COLLINS, ANTHONY</td>
+<td class="ralign">1676-1729</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>CRAWFORD, ROBERT</td>
+<td class="ralign">1695?-1732</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>DEFOE, DANIEL</td>
+<td class="ralign">1661-1731</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>DENNIS, JOHN</td>
+<td class="ralign">1657-1733-4</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>DORSET, EARL OF</td>
+<td class="ralign">1637-1705-6</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>DYER, JOHN</td>
+<td class="ralign">1698?-1758</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>EDWARDS, THOMAS</td>
+<td class="ralign">1699-1757</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>FENTON, ELIJAH</td>
+<td class="ralign">1683-1730</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>GARTH, SIR SAMUEL</td>
+<td class="ralign">1660-1717-18</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>GAY, JOHN</td>
+<td class="ralign">1685-1732</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>GLOVER, RICHARD</td>
+<td class="ralign">1712-1785</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>GREEN, MATTHEW</td>
+<td class="ralign">1696-1737</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>HALIFAX, CHARLES MONTAGUE, EARL OF</td>
+<td class="ralign">1661-1715</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>HAMILTON, WILLIAM (OF BANGOUR)</td>
+<td class="ralign">1704-1754</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>HAMMOND, JAMES</td>
+<td class="ralign">1710-1742</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>HILL, AARON</td>
+<td class="ralign">1684-1749</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>HOOKE, NATHANIEL</td>
+<td class="ralign">1690-1763</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>HUGHES, JOHN</td>
+<td class="ralign">1677-1719</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>KING, ARCHBISHOP</td>
+<td class="ralign">1650-1729</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>LAW, WILLIAM</td>
+<td class="ralign">1686-1761</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>LILLO, GEORGE</td>
+<td class="ralign">1693-1739</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>LYTTELTON, GEORGE, LORD</td>
+<td class="ralign">1708-1773</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>MALLET, DAVID</td>
+<td class="ralign">1700-1765</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>MANDEVILLE, BERNARD DE</td>
+<td class="ralign">1670?-1733</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>MIDDLETON, CONYERS</td>
+<td class="ralign">1683-1750</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>MONTAGU, LADY MARY WORTLEY</td>
+<td class="ralign">1689-1762</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>PARNELL, THOMAS</td>
+<td class="ralign">1679-1718</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>PHILIPS, AMBROSE</td>
+<td class="ralign">1671-1749</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>PHILIPS, JOHN</td>
+<td class="ralign">1676-1708</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>POPE, ALEXANDER</td>
+<td class="ralign">1688-1744</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>PRIOR, MATTHEW</td>
+<td class="ralign">1664-1721</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>RAMSAY, ALLAN</td>
+<td class="ralign">1686-1758</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>ROWE, NICHOLAS</td>
+<td class="ralign">1673-1718</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>SAVAGE, RICHARD</td>
+<td class="ralign">1698-1743</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>SHAFTESBURY, LORD</td>
+<td class="ralign">1671-1713</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>SHENSTONE, WILLIAM</td>
+<td class="ralign">1714-1764</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>SOMERVILLE, WILLIAM</td>
+<td class="ralign">1692-1742</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>SPENCE, JOSEPH</td>
+<td class="ralign">1698-1768</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>STEELE, SIR RICHARD</td>
+<td class="ralign">1672-1729</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>SWIFT, JONATHAN</td>
+<td class="ralign">1667-1745</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>THEOBALD, LEWIS</td>
+<td class="ralign">1688-1744</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>THOMSON, JAMES</td>
+<td class="ralign">1700-1748</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>TICKELL, THOMAS</td>
+<td class="ralign">1686-1740</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>WALSH, WILLIAM</td>
+<td class="ralign">1663-1708</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>WARBURTON, WILLIAM</td>
+<td class="ralign">1698-1779</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>WARDLAW, LADY</td>
+<td class="ralign">1677-1727</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>WATTS, ISAAC</td>
+<td class="ralign">1674-1748</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>WESLEY, CHARLES</td>
+<td class="ralign">1708-1788</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>WINCHELSEA, COUNTESS OF</td>
+<td class="ralign">1660-1720</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>YALDEN, THOMAS</td>
+<td class="ralign">1670-1736</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>YOUNG, EDWARD</td>
+<td class="ralign">1684-1765</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2 class="gap3"><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX.</h2>
+
+
+<p class="indfirst">Addison, Joseph, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>-<a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Addison, Address to Mr.</i>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Admiral Hosier's Ghost</i>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Agamemnon</i>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Akenside, Mark, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Alciphron</i>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Alfred, Masque of</i>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Alma</i>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Ambitious Step-mother, the</i>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Amyntor and Theodora</i>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Analogy of Religion</i>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Appius and Virginia</i>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Arbuthnot, John, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>-<a href="#Page_179">179</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Arbuthnot, Epistle to Dr.</i>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Armstrong, John, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Art of Political Lying, the</i>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Art of Preserving Health, the</i>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Atheniad, the</i>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Atterbury, Bishop, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>-<a href="#Page_212">212</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Atticus, character of, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Augustan Age, origin of the term, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Baucis and Philemon</i>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Bangor, three Letters to the Bishop of</i>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Bangorian Controversy, the, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Bathos, treatise on the</i>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Bathurst, Lord, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Battle of Blenheim, the</i>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Battle of the Books, the</i>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Beggar's Opera, the</i>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Bentley, Richard, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Bentley's Dissertations, Examination of</i>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Berkeley, Bishop, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>-<a href="#Page_229">229</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Bickerstaff, Isaac, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub"><i>Lucubrations of</i>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Binning, Lord, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Black-eyed Susan</i>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Blackmore, Sir Richard, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Blair, Robert, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Blenheim</i>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Blount, Martha and Teresa, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Boadicea</i>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Boehme, Jacob, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Boileau and Pope compared, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub">his <i>Art Poétique</i>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Bolingbroke, Lord, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>-<a href="#Page_221">221</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Boyle, Charles, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Braes of Yarrow, the</i>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Bribery, prevalence of, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Britannia</i> (Thomson's), <a href="#Page_87">87</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub">(Mallet's), <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Brooke, Henry, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>Broome, William, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Brothers, the</i>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Buckingham, Duke of, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Busiris</i>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Butler, Bishop, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Byrom, John, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Cadenus and Vanessa</i>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Campaign, the</i>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Captain Singleton</i>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Careless Husband, the</i>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Caroline, Queen, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Castle of Indolence, the</i>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Cato</i>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <i>et seq.</i></p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Chandos, Duke of, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Characteristics of Men, Manners, etc.</i>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Charke, Mrs., <i>Narrative of her Life</i>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Chase, the</i>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Chesterfield, Lord, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>-<a href="#Page_204">204</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Chit-Chat</i>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Christian Hero, the</i>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Christianity, argument against abolishing</i>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Christian Perfection</i>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Christian Religion, Grounds of the</i>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Cibber, Colley, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>-<a href="#Page_198">198</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub"><i>Apology for the Life of</i>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Cider</i>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Clarke, Dr. Samuel, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Colin and Lucy</i>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Colin and Ph&oelig;be</i>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Collier, Jeremy, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Collins, Anthony, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Colonel Jack</i>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Conscious Lovers, the</i>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Contentment, Hymn to</i>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Conversion of St. Paul, Dissertation on the</i>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Coriolanus</i>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Country Mouse and City Mouse, the</i>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Country Walk, the</i>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Craggs, James, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Crawford, Robert, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Creation, the</i>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Crisis, the</i>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Criticism, the Essay on</i>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Criticism in Poetry, grounds of</i>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Crousaz, M., <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Cruelty of the age, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Curll, Edmund, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst">Defoe, Daniel, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>-<a href="#Page_191">191</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Delany, Mrs., <i>Life and Correspondence of</i>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Dennis, John, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>-<a href="#Page_196">196</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Dialogues of the Dead</i>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Dispensary, the</i>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Distrest Mother, the</i>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Divine Legation of Moses, the</i>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Dorset, Earl of, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Drapier's Letters</i>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Drelincourt's <i>Christian's Defence, etc.</i>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Dryden, John, death of, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub">and Pope, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Dryden, Ode to</i>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Drummer, the</i>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Drunkenness, prevalence of, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Duelling, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Dunciad, the</i>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Dyer, John, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Edward and Eleanora</i>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Edwards, Thomas, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Edwin and Emma</i>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span><i>Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady</i>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Eloisa to Abelard</i>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Elvira</i>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>English Convocation, Rights, Powers and Privileges of</i>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Englishman, the</i>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>English Poets, Account of the greatest</i>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Epistle to a Friend in Town</i>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Epistles of Phalaris, Dissertations on the</i>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Essay on Man, the</i>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Eurydice</i>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Eusden, Lawrence, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Evergreen, the</i>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Examiner, the</i>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Excursion, the</i>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Fable of the Bees, the</i>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub"><i>Remarks on the</i>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Fables</i> (Gay's), <a href="#Page_73">73</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Fair Penitent, the</i>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Fatal Curiosity, the</i>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Fenton, Elijah, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Fleece, the</i>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Fool of Quality, the</i>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Force of Religion, the</i>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Freedom of Wit and Humour, the</i>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Freeholder, the</i>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Freethinking, Discourse on</i>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">French Literature, influence of, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">French Customs, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Funeral, the</i>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst">Gambling, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Garth, Sir Samuel, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Gay, John, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>-<a href="#Page_76">76</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Gentle Shepherd, the</i>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>George Barnwell</i>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Gideon</i>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Glover, Richard, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>God, the Being and Attributes of</i>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Granville, George, Lord Lansdowne, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Grave, the</i>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Green, Matthew, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Grongar Hill</i>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Grotto, the</i>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Grub Street Journal, the</i>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Grumbling Hive, the</i>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Guardian, the</i>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Gulliver's Travels</i>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Gustavus Vasa</i>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst">Halifax, Montague, Earl of, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Hamilton, William, of Bangour, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Hammond, James, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Health, an Eclogue</i>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Henry and Emma</i>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Hermit, the</i>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Hervey, Lord, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Hill, Aaron, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>-<a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Hoadly, Bishop, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Homer, Pope's Translation of, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <i>et seq.</i>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</p>
+<p class="indsub">Tickell's translation, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Hooke, Nathaniel, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Horace, <i>Ars Poetica</i>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Horace, Imitations from</i>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Hughes, John, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Human Knowledge, Treatise on</i>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Hylas and Philonous, Dialogue between</i>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Hymn to Contentment</i>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span><i>Hymn to the Naiads</i>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Imperium Pelagi</i>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Instalment, the</i>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Iphigenia</i>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Italy, Letter from</i>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Italy, Remarks on Several Parts of</i>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Jane Shore</i>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>John Bull, History of</i>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Johnson, Esther, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Judgment Day, the</i>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Judgment of Hercules, the</i>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Kensington Gardens</i>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">King, <i>on the Origin of Evil</i>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Lady Jane Grey</i>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Lansdowne, Epistle to Lord</i>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Last Day, the</i>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Law, William, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>-<a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Law, Elegy in Memory of William</i>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Leibnitz, <i>Essais de Théodicée</i>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Leonidas</i>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Liberty Asserted</i>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Lillo, George, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Love in a Veil</i>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Lover, the</i>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Love's Last Shift</i>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Lying Lover, the</i>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Lyttelton, George, Lord, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst">Mallet, David, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Man, Allegory on</i>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Mandeville, Bernard de, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Mariamne</i>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Marlborough, Duchess of, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Marlborough, Duchess of, Account of the Conduct of</i>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Marriages in the Fleet, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Mathematical Learning, Essay on the Usefulness of</i>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Memoirs of a Cavalier</i>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Merope</i>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Middleton, Conyers, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Modest Proposal, etc.</i>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Mohocks, the, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Moll Flanders</i>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Montagu, Lady M. W., <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>-<a href="#Page_202">202</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Montague, Charles, Earl of Halifax, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Monument, the</i>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Moral Essays, the</i>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <i>et seq.</i></p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Moralties or Essays, Letters, etc.</i>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Mrs. Veal, Apparition of</i>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Namur, Taking of</i>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Night Piece on Death</i>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Night Thoughts</i>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Northern Star, the</i>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Ocean</i>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Ode on St. Cecilia's day</i>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Opera, Italian, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Oxford, Harley, Earl of, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Parallel in the Manner of Plutarch</i>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Parnell, Thomas, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Parties, Dissertation on</i>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Partridge, John, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Party feeling, excess of, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Pastoral Ballad</i>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Pastorals</i> (Pope's), <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub">(Philips'), <a href="#Page_98">98</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Patriotism, Letters on</i>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Patriot King, the</i>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Patronage of Literature, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span><i>Peace of Ryswick, the</i>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Persian Tales, the</i>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Peterborough, Earl of, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Phalaris, Dissertation on the Epistle of</i>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Philips, Ambrose, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Philips, John, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Plague, History of the</i>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Pleasures of Imagination, the</i>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Plot and No Plot, a</i>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Poetry, Rhapsody on</i>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Polly</i>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Polymetis</i>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Pope, Alexander, a representative poet, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub">his life, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>-<a href="#Page_64">64</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub">and Dennis, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub">and Cibber, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub">and Lady M. W. Montagu, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub">and Spence, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub">and Arbuthnot, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Pope, Epistle to</i>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Pope's Translation of Homer</i>, Spence's Essay on, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Pope, Mrs., <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Prior, Matthew, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>-<a href="#Page_72">72</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Progress of Wit, the</i>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Projects, Essay on</i>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Prospect of Peace, the</i>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Public Spirit of the Whigs, the</i>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Querist, the</i>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst">Ramsay, Allan, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Rape of the Lock, the</i>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Reader, the</i>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Religion, Condition of, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Religion, Natural and Revealed</i>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Religious Courtship, the</i>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Remarks on Several Parts of Italy</i>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Revenge, the</i>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Review, the</i> (Defoe's), <a href="#Page_185">185</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Rise of Women, the</i>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Robinson Crusoe</i>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Rosamond</i>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Roscommon's <i>Essay on Translated Verse</i>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Rowe, Nicholas, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Roxana</i>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Royal Convert, the</i>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Ruin of Great Britain, Essay towards Preventing the</i>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Ruins of Rome, the</i>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Rule Britannia</i>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst">Savage, Richard, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Schoolmistress, the</i>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Scriblerus, Martin, Memoirs of</i>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, the</i>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Seasons, the</i>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>-<a href="#Page_92">92</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Sentiments of a Church of England Man</i>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Serious Call</i>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Shaftesbury, Lord, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>-<a href="#Page_215">215</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Shakespeare, Pope and Theobald's Editions of, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub">Rowe's Edition, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>;</p>
+<p class="indsub">Warburton's Edition, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Sheffield, John, Earl of, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Shenstone, William, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Shepherd's Week, the</i>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Shortest Way with Dissenters, the</i>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Siege of Damascus, the</i>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Siris</i>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Sir Thomas Overbury</i>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Social Condition of the time, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span><i>Social State of Ireland, Essay on the</i>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Solomon</i>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Somerville, William, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Sophonisba</i>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">South Sea Company, the, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Spectator, the</i>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Spence, Joseph, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Spleen, the</i>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Splendid Shilling, the</i>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Stage defended from Scripture, etc., the</i>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Stage Entertainments, Absolute Unlawfulness of</i>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Steele, Sir Richard, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>-<a href="#Page_150">150</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Stella, Journal to</i>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Study of History, Letters on the</i>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Swift, Jonathan, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>-<a href="#Page_175">175</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Swift, on the Death of Dr.</i>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Tale of a Tub, the</i>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Tales of the Genii</i>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Tamerlane</i>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Tancred and Sigismunda</i>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Tatler, the</i>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Tea Table, the</i>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Tea Table Miscellany, the</i>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Temple, Sir William, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Temple of Fame, the</i>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Tender Husband, the</i>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Theatre, the</i>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Theobald, Lewis, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Theory of Vision, Essay towards a new</i>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Thomson, James, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>-<a href="#Page_95">95</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Tickell, Thomas, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>-<a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Tour through Great Britain</i>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Town Talk</i>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Trivia</i>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>True Born Englishman, the</i>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Trumbull, Sir William, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Ulysses</i>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Ungrateful Nanny</i>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Universal Passion</i>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst">Vanhomrigh, Hester, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Verbal Criticism</i>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Vida's <i>Scacchia Ludus</i>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Vision of Mirza, the</i>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Voltaire</i>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst">Walpole, Sir Robert, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Walsh, William, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Wanderer, the</i>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Warburton, Bishop, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>-<a href="#Page_241">241</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Wardlaw, Lady, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Warton, Joseph, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Watts, Isaac, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Welcome from Greece, a</i>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Welsted, Leonard, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Wesley, Charles, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Wesley, John, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Whig Examiner, the</i>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>William and Margaret</i>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Winchelsea, Countess of, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Windham, Sir W., Letter to</i>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>Windsor Forest</i>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Women, position of, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Wood's Halfpence, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain"><i>World, the</i>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Wycherley, William, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst">Yalden, Thomas, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indmain">Young, Edward, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>-<a href="#Page_83">83</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="indfirst"><i>Zara</i>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.</p>
+
+
+
+<h2 class="gap3">HANDBOOKS OF
+ENGLISH LITERATURE</h2>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Edited by Professor Hales</span></h4>
+
+<p>"The admirable series of handbooks edited by Professor Hales is rapidly
+taking shape as one of the best histories of our literature that are at the disposal
+of the student.... [When complete] there is little doubt that we shall
+have a history of English literature which, holding a middle course between
+the rapid general survey and the minute examination of particular periods,
+will long remain a standard work."&mdash;<i>Manchester Guardian.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Crown 8vo, 5s. net each.</i></p>
+
+<div class="hangindent"><p>THE AGE OF ALFRED (664-1154). By <span class="smcap">F. J. Snell</span>, M.A.</p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF CHAUCER (1346-1400). By <span class="smcap">F. J. Snell</span>, M.A., with
+an Introduction by <span class="smcap">Professor Hales</span>. 3rd edition.</p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF TRANSITION (1400-1580). By <span class="smcap">F. J. Snell</span>, M.A. In
+2 vols. Vol. I.: The Poets. Vol. II.: The Dramatists and Prose
+Writers. With an Introduction by <span class="smcap">Professor Hales</span>. 3rd edition.</p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE (1579-1631). By <span class="smcap">Thomas Seccombe</span>
+and <span class="smcap">J. W. Allen</span>. In 2 vols. Vol. I.: Poetry and Prose, with an
+Introduction by <span class="smcap">Professor Hales</span>. Vol. II: Drama. 7th edition.</p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF MILTON (1632-1660). By the <span class="smcap">Rev. J. H. B. Masterman</span>,
+M.A., with an Introduction, etc., by <span class="smcap">J. Bass Mullinger</span>,
+M.A. 8th edition.</p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF DRYDEN (1660-1700). By <span class="smcap">Richard Garnett</span>, C.B.,
+LL.D. 8th edition.</p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF POPE (1700-1744). By <span class="smcap">John Dennis</span>. 11th edition.</p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF JOHNSON (1744-1798). By <span class="smcap">Thomas Seccombe</span>.
+7th edition.</p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH (1798-1832). By <span class="smcap">Professor C. H.
+Herford</span>, Litt.D. 12th edition.</p>
+
+<p>THE AGE OF TENNYSON (1830-1870). By <span class="smcap">Professor Hugh
+Walker</span>, M.A. 9th edition.</p></div>
+
+
+<h3>OPINIONS OF THE PRESS</h3>
+
+
+<h4>THE AGE OF CHAUCER</h4>
+
+<p>"This little monograph may lay fair claim to be regarded as complete, acute,
+stimulating, and scholarly."&mdash;<i>School World.</i></p>
+
+<p>"The book is thoroughly up-to-date, an important consideration in dealing
+with Middle English literature, and does not lose itself in too minute a consideration
+of those works which are only of philological and not of literary
+value. The accounts of the W. Midland alliterative poetry, of the development
+of prose, and the work of the poet Gower, are specially good. The treatment
+of Chaucer is thorough and scholarly."&mdash;<i>University Correspondent.</i></p>
+
+<p>"An admirable handbook, dealing in a lucid style and in a highly critical
+spirit with one of the most important periods in the history of English literature."&mdash;<i>Westminster
+Review.</i></p>
+
+
+<h4>THE AGE OF DRYDEN</h4>
+
+<p>"This scholarly little volume from the learned pen of Dr. Garnett....
+Within the limits of his space Dr. Garnett surveys the several departments
+of literature in this period with singular comprehensiveness, broad sympathy,
+and fine critical sagacity."&mdash;<i>Times.</i></p>
+
+<p>"The series which Professor Hales is editing aims at being that very difficult
+and important something between the text-book for schools and the
+gracefully allusive literary essay. Dr. Garnett has done his part of the work
+admirably. Most readable is his book, written with a fine sense of proportion,
+and containing many independent judgements, yet even, so far as minor
+names and dates and facts are concerned, complete enough for all save a
+searcher after minutiae."&mdash;<i>Bookman.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Though planned on the scale of the manual, this book is actually the first
+attempt worth naming to grasp in one separate review the literature of the last
+forty years of the seventeenth century, a time which, as Dr. Garnett well says,
+'with all its defects, had a faculty for producing masterpieces.' Dr. Garnett's
+name is a warrant for his acquaintance not only with the masterpieces but with
+much besides, and with more than all that need be named in the kind of survey
+he undertakes."&mdash;<i>Manchester Guardian.</i></p>
+
+
+<h4>THE AGE OF POPE</h4>
+
+<p>"A 'handbook' is scarcely a fair description of so readable and companionable
+a volume, which aims not only at giving accurate information, but at
+directing the reader's steps 'through a country exhaustless in variety and
+interest.'"&mdash;<i>Spectator.</i></p>
+
+<p>"The biographical portion of Mr. Dennis's book is really admirable. The
+accuracy of the details and the knowledge exhibited by the author of the
+social and political life of the period show how thoroughly he has mastered
+his subject."&mdash;<i>Westminster Review.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Dennis writes freely and simply, and with a thorough knowledge of
+the period with which he deals, and goes straight to the point without revelling
+in circumambient fancies. The result of this is that in 250 pages of good print
+we have as concise a history of Queen Anne literature as we could wish."&mdash;<i>Cambridge
+Review.</i></p>
+
+<p>"An excellent little volume."&mdash;<i>Athenæum.</i></p>
+
+
+<h4>THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE</h4>
+
+<p>"Both volumes are excellently done, with knowledge, judgement, and a
+pleasant touch of vivacity. It is no easy matter to make a text-book both informing
+and readable; but here the feat is accomplished. I have read 'The
+Age of Shakespeare' with unflagging interest and pleasure.... Everywhere
+one has the restful sensation of dealing with men of competent scholarship and
+sound critical instinct. Especially valuable, to my thinking, is the chronological
+table of the chief publications of each year from 1579 to 1630."&mdash;Mr. William
+Archer in the <i>Morning Leader</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"These two volumes are, in short, a notable accession to the useful series to
+which they belong, and they constitute a luminous aid to the interpretation
+alike of the scope and quality of the literary activity which has rendered the
+'Age of Shakespeare' classic in the annals of English literature."&mdash;<i>Standard.</i></p>
+
+<p>"The book is a well-informed and well-connected and intelligent exposition
+of its subject. It is more than a mere handbook. It is a <i>history</i>, though on a
+small scale."&mdash;<i>Journal of Education.</i></p>
+
+
+<h4>THE AGE OF MILTON</h4>
+
+<p>"A very readable and serviceable manual of English literature during the
+central years of the seventeenth century."&mdash;<i>Glasgow Herald.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Masterman has written a book which combines the preciseness of a
+text-book with the fullness of thought of a monograph. Indeed, this compact
+little work will be studied with as much earnestness by the student as it will be
+read with pleasure by the lover of <i>belles lettres</i>.... We lay down the book
+delighted with what we have read."&mdash;<i>Birmingham Daily Gazette.</i></p>
+
+<p>"A work which reflects the utmost credit on its author ... luminous and
+at the same time impartial."&mdash;<i>Westminster Review.</i></p>
+
+<p>"This excellent epitome ... very happily indicates the golden afterglow
+of the Elizabethan sun."&mdash;<i>Daily Chronicle.</i></p>
+
+
+<h4>THE AGE OF JOHNSON</h4>
+
+<p>"The uniform excellence of Mr. Seccombe's manual of English literary
+history from 1748 to 1798 affords scarcely any opening for detailed criticism.
+Little can be said, except that everything is just as it ought to be: the arrangement
+perfect, the length of the notices justly proportioned, the literary
+judgements sound and illuminating; while the main purpose of conveying information
+is kept so steadily in view that, while the book is worthy of a place
+in the library, the student could desire no better guide for an examination."&mdash;<i>Bookman.</i></p>
+
+<p>"He has knowledge, he is eminently careful, and, best of all in a handbook-maker
+of this kind, he is judicial. We like Mr. Seccombe's arrangement.
+There is a capital introduction, solid and grave rather than brilliant, on which
+the student may stand in confidence before he dives off into the stream of his
+tutor's survey. Briefly, we have here a thorough, almost encyclopaedic, review
+of a great literary period&mdash;stimulating to the younger student, and to his elder
+refreshing by its perception."&mdash;<i>Outlook.</i></p>
+
+<p>"This book is one of the best of its kind, and we heartily recommend it to
+our readers."&mdash;<i>Journal of Education.</i></p>
+
+<p>"The young student could not read a better book to get a comprehensive
+and yet detailed account of the literary history of the latter half of the
+eighteenth century."&mdash;<i>Morning Post.</i></p>
+
+
+<h4>THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH</h4>
+
+<p>"It is an admirable little work all the way through and one which the ripest
+students of the period may read with interest and profit."&mdash;<i>Guardian.</i></p>
+
+<p>"The desiderated text-book of the period 1798 to 1830 <span class="small">A.D.</span> is no longer to
+seek. More than that, it has been written by the one Englishman most competent
+to deal with it. Whatever Professor Herford does he does well; but he
+has given us nothing at once so good and so helpful as this book."&mdash;<i>University
+Correspondent.</i></p>
+
+<p>"The introductory essay on Romanticism in our literature is an admirable
+piece of work, full of suggestive thought, but Professor Herford is at his best&mdash;and
+a very fine best it is&mdash;in his brief summaries of the lives and works of
+individual writers. His Cobbett, his Lamb, and others that might be instanced,
+are veritable gems of biographical and critical compression presented
+with true literary finish."&mdash;<i>Literary World.</i></p>
+
+<p>"A book which is remarkable for freshness and distinction of style, philosophic
+grasp of first principles, and critical insight.... When we add that
+the book is also conspicuous for delicacy of literary appreciation and ripe
+judgement, both of men and movements, we have said enough to show that
+we consider its claims are unusual."&mdash;<i>Speaker.</i></p>
+
+
+<h4>THE AGE OF TENNYSON</h4>
+
+<p>"A capital little handbook of modern English literature."&mdash;<i>Times.</i></p>
+
+<p>"An instructive and readable manual ... an admirable first text-book on
+the subject."&mdash;<i>Scotsman.</i></p>
+
+<p>"Professor Walker has done his allotted task with singular skill, wonderful
+judiciousness, critical insight, adequate knowledge and mastery of facts, keen
+discernment of qualities and effectiveness of grouping.... We have read no
+review of the whole of the Tennysonian age so genuinely fresh in matter,
+method, style, critical canons, and selectedness of phrase. As a small book
+on a great subject, it is a special treasure."&mdash;<i>Educational News.</i></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Uniform with the Handbooks of English
+Literature.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Fourth Edition Enlarged. 725 pages. Small Crown 8vo. 6s. net.</i></p>
+
+<h2>INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH
+LITERATURE</h2>
+
+<h4>BY</h4>
+
+<h3>HENRY S. PANCOAST</h3>
+
+<p>"Seems to me to fulfil better, on the whole, than any other 'Introduction'
+known to me, the real requirements of such a book as distinguished from a
+'Sketch' or a 'Summary.' It rightly does not attempt to be cyclopaedic, but
+isolates a number of figures of first-rate importance, and deals with these in a
+very attractive way. The directions for reading are also excellent."&mdash;Professor
+<span class="smcap">C. H. Herford</span>, Litt.D.</p>
+
+<p class="center">LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.</p>
+<p class="smcap center">York House, Portugal Street, W.C.</p>
+
+
+<h2 class="gap3">LITERATURE OF THE AGE OF POPE.</h2>
+
+<h4>PUBLISHED BY</h4>
+
+<h3>G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.</h3>
+
+<p class="hangindent" style="margin-bottom:0em;"><b>ADDISON'S</b> WORKS. With the Notes of Bishop Hurd, a
+short Memoir, and a Portrait of Addison after G. Kneller, and
+8 Plates of Medals and Coins. Edited by H. G. Bohn. 6 vols.
+Small post 8vo. 3<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> each.</p>
+
+<p class="ralign" style="margin-top:0em;">[<i>Bohn's Standard Library.</i></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot" style="margin-right:0em;"><p>This is the most complete edition of Addison's Works ever
+issued. It contains much new matter, and upwards of 100
+Letters not before published. A very full Index (108 pages)
+is appended to the 6th vol.</p></div>
+
+<table summary="Addisons Works">
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;width:3em;">Vol. I.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;" colspan="2">&mdash;Plays&mdash;Poems&mdash;Poemata&mdash;Dialogues on Medals&mdash;Remarks on Italy.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">II.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;" colspan="2">&mdash;Tatler and Spectator.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">III.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;Spectator.</td>
+<td class="ralign">[<i>Out of print.</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">IV.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;" colspan="2">&mdash;Spectator&mdash;Guardian&mdash;Lover&mdash;State of the War&mdash;Trial of Count Tariff&mdash;Whig Examiner&mdash;Freeholder.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">V.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;" colspan="2">&mdash;Freeholder&mdash;Christian Religion&mdash;Drummer, or Haunted House&mdash;Various short Pieces hitherto unpublished&mdash;Letters.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">VI.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;" colspan="2">&mdash;Letters&mdash;Poems&mdash;Translations&mdash;Official Documents&mdash;Addisoniana.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class="hangindent"><p>THE MISCELLANEOUS WORKS OF ADDISON. Edited by
+the late A. Guthkelch, M.A. 2 vols. Vol. I, Poems and Plays.
+Vol. II, Prose. Large Post 8vo, 10<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> net each.</p>
+
+<p style="margin-bottom:0em;"><b>BERKELEY'S</b> WORKS. Edited by George Sampson. With
+a Biographical Introduction by the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour,
+M.P. 3 vols. Small post 8vo. 6<i>s.</i> each.</p>
+
+<p class="ralign" style="margin-top:0em;">[<i>Bohn's Philosophical Library.</i></p>
+
+<p style="margin-bottom:0em;"><b>BUTLER'S</b> ANALOGY OF RELIGION, Natural and
+Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature; together
+with Two Dissertations on Personal Identity and on the
+Nature of Virtue, and Fifteen Sermons. Edited, with
+Analytical Introductions, Explanatory Notes, a short Memoir,
+and a Portrait. Small post 8vo. 6<i>s.</i></p>
+
+<p class="ralign" style="margin-top:0em;">[<i>Bohn's Standard Library.</i></p>
+
+<p style="margin-bottom:0em;"><b>DEFOE'S</b> NOVELS and MISCELLANEOUS WORKS. With
+Prefaces and Notes, including those attributed to Sir W. Scott.
+7 vols. Small post 8vo. 6<i>s.</i> each.</p>
+
+<p class="ralign" style="margin-top:0em;">[<i>Bohn's Standard Library.</i></p></div>
+
+<table summary="Defoes Works">
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;width:3em;">Vol. I.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;Life, Adventures and Piracies of Capt. Singleton, and Life of Colonel Jack. With Portrait of Defoe.</td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom" style="width:6em;">[<i>Out of print.</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">II.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;" colspan="2">&mdash;Memoirs of a Cavalier, Memoirs of Captain Carleton, Dickory Cronke, &amp;c.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">III.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;Life of Moll Flanders, and the History of the Devil.</td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom">[<i>Out of print.</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">IV.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;Roxana, or the Fortunate Mistress; and Life of Mrs. Christian Davies.</td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom">[<i>Out of print.</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">V.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;History of the Great Plague of London, 1665 (to which is added the Fire of London, 1666, by an anonymous writer)&mdash;The Storm (1703)&mdash;and the True-born Englishman.</td>
+<td class="ralign vbottom">[<i>Out of print.</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">VI.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;" colspan="2">&mdash;Life and Adventures of Duncan Campbell&mdash;New Voyage round the World, and Tracts relating to the Hanoverian Accession.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">VII.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;" colspan="2">&mdash;Robinson Crusoe. With a Short Biographical Account of Defoe.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class="hangindent"><p style="margin-bottom:0em;"><b>MONTAGU</b>, THE LETTERS AND WORKS OF LADY
+MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. Edited by her great-grandson,
+Lord Wharncliffe, with Additions and Corrections
+derived from Original Manuscripts, Illustrative Notes, and a
+Memoir by W. Moy Thomas. New edition, revised, with 5
+Portraits. 2 vols. Small post 8vo. 6<i>s.</i> each.</p>
+
+<p class="ralign" style="margin-top:0em;margin-bottom:0em;">[<i>Vol. I out of print.</i></p>
+
+<p class="ralign" style="margin-top:0em;">[<i>Bohn's Standard Library.</i></p>
+
+<p style="margin-bottom:0em;"><b>PARNELL'S</b> POETICAL WORKS. Edited, with Memoir,
+by G. A. Aitken. Fcap. 8vo. 3<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> net.</p>
+
+<p class="ralign" style="margin-top:0em;">[<i>Aldine Edition.</i></p>
+
+<p style="margin-bottom:0em;"><b>POPE'S</b> POETICAL WORKS. Edited by G. R. Dennis, with
+Memoir by John Dennis. 3 vols. Fcap. 8vo. 3<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> net each.</p>
+
+<p class="ralign" style="margin-top:0em;">[<i>Aldine Edition.</i></p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; HOMER'S ILIAD. With Introduction and Notes by the
+Rev. J. S. Watson, M.A. Illustrated by the entire Series of
+Flaxman's Designs. Small post 8vo. 6<i>s.</i></p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; HOMER'S ODYSSEY. With Introduction and Notes by
+the Rev. J. S. Watson, M.A. With the entire Series of Flaxman's
+Designs. Small post 8vo. 6<i>s.</i></p>
+
+<p>&mdash;&mdash; LIFE OF POPE, including many of his Letters. By Robert
+Carruthers. With numerous Illustrations. Small post 8vo.
+6<i>s.</i></p>
+
+<p style="margin-bottom:0em;"><b>PRIOR'S</b> POETICAL WORKS. Edited, with Memoir, by
+Reginald Brimley Johnson. 2 vols. Fcap. 8vo. 3<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> net
+each.</p>
+
+<p class="ralign" style="margin-top:0em;">[<i>Aldine Edition.</i></p>
+
+<p style="margin-bottom:0em;"><b>SWIFT'S</b> PROSE WORKS. Edited by Temple Scott. With
+a Biographical Introduction by the Right Hon. W. E. H.
+Lecky, M.P., and a Bibliography by the Editor. With Portraits
+and other Illustrations. 12 vols. Small post 8vo. 6<i>s.</i>
+each.</p>
+
+<p class="ralign" style="margin-top:0em;">[<i>Bohn's Standard Library.</i></p></div>
+
+<table summary="Swifts Works">
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;width:5em;">Vol. I.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;Edited by Temple Scott. With a Biographical Introduction by the Right Hon. W. E. H. Lecky, M.P. Containing:&mdash;A Tale of a Tub, The Battle of the Books, and other early works. With <i>Portrait</i> and Facsimiles.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">II.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;The Journal to Stella. Edited by Frederick Ryland, M.A. With <i>2 Portraits of Stella</i>, and a Facsimile of one of the Letters.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">III. &amp; IV.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;Writings on Religion and the Church. Edited by Temple Scott. With Portraits and Facsimiles of title-pages.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">V.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;Historical and Political Tracts (English). Edited by Temple Scott. With Portrait and Facsimiles of title-pages.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">VI.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;The Drapier's Letters. Edited by Temple Scott. With Portrait, reproduction of Wood's Coinage, and Facsimiles of title-pages.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">VII.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;Historical and Political Tracts (Irish). Edited by Temple Scott. With Portrait and Facsimiles of title-pages.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">VIII.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;Gulliver's Travels. Edited by G. Ravenscroft Dennis. With the original Portrait and Maps.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">IX.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;Contributions to the 'Examiner,' 'Tatler,' 'Spectator,' etc. Edited by Temple Scott.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">X.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;Historical Writings. Edited by Temple Scott. With Portrait.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">XI.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;Literary Essays. Edited by Temple Scott. With Portrait.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="ralign vtop" style="padding-right:0em;">XII.</td>
+<td class="hangadvert" style="padding-right:0em;">&mdash;Index and Bibliography.</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class="hangindent"><p>POEMS. Edited by W. Ernst Browning. 2 vols. 6<i>s.</i></p>
+
+<p style="margin-bottom:0em;"><b>SWIFT'S</b> POETICAL WORKS. Edited, with Memoir, by the
+Rev. John Mitford, M.A. Fcap. 8vo. 3 vols. 3<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> net
+each.</p>
+
+<p class="ralign" style="margin-top:0em;">[<i>Aldine Edition. Vol. I out of print.</i></p></div>
+
+<p class="center gap3">LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.</p>
+<p class="center">YORK HOUSE, PORTUGAL STREET, KINGSWAY, W.C.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center gap3">PRINTED BY</p>
+
+<p class="center">THE LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS, LIMITED</p>
+
+<p class="center">LONDON AND NORWICH</p>
+
+<div class="bbox">
+<h3>TRANSCRIBERS' NOTES</h3>
+
+<p style="padding-left:1em;padding-right:1em;">General: Corrections to punctuation have not been individually noted.</p>
+
+<p style="padding-left:1em;padding-right:1em;">Pages 57, 159: Variable hyphenation of death(-)bed as in the original.</p>
+
+<p style="padding-left:1em;padding-right:1em;">Pages 222, 232, 257: Variable hyphenation of Free(-)thinking as in the
+original.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
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+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Age of Pope, by John Dennis
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Age of Pope, by John Dennis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Age of Pope
+       (1700-1744)
+
+Author: John Dennis
+
+Release Date: November 7, 2009 [EBook #30421]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AGE OF POPE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Brownfox and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HANDBOOKS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
+
+EDITED BY PROFESSOR HALES.
+
+_Crown 8vo, 5s. net each._
+
+
+THE AGE OF ALFRED (664-1154). By F. J. SNELL, M.A.
+
+THE AGE OF CHAUCER (1346-1400). By F. J. SNELL, M.A. With an
+    Introduction by Professor HALES. _3rd Edition, revised._
+
+THE AGE OF TRANSITION (1400-1580). By F. J. SNELL, M.A. 2 vols. Vol. I.
+    The Poets. Vol. II. The Dramatists and Prose Writers. With an
+    Introduction by Professor HALES. _3rd Edition._
+
+THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE (1579-1631). By THOMAS SECCOMBE and J. W. ALLEN.
+    With an Introduction by Professor HALES. 2 vols. Vol. I. Poetry and
+    Prose. Vol. II. The Drama. _8th Edition, revised._
+
+THE AGE OF MILTON (1632-1660). By the Rev. J. H. B. MASTERMAN, M.A. With
+    Introduction, etc., by J. BASS MULLINGER, M.A. _8th Edition,
+    revised._
+
+THE AGE OF DRYDEN (1660-1700). By R. GARNETT, C.B., LL.D. _8th Edition._
+
+THE AGE OF POPE (1700-1748). By JOHN DENNIS. _11th Edition._
+
+THE AGE OF JOHNSON (1748-1798). By THOMAS SECCOMBE. _7th Edition,
+    revised._
+
+THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH (1698-1832) By Professor C. H. HERFORD, Litt.D.
+    _12th Edition._
+
+THE AGE OF TENNYSON (1830-1870). By Professor HUGH WALKER. _9th
+    Edition._
+
+LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
+
+
+
+
+HANDBOOKS
+
+OF
+
+ENGLISH LITERATURE
+
+EDITED BY PROFESSOR HALES
+
+THE AGE OF POPE
+
+
+
+
+LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS LTD.
+
+PORTUGAL STREET, KINGSWAY, W.C.
+
+CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL & CO.
+
+NEW YORK: HARCOURT BRACE & CO.
+
+BOMBAY: A. H. WHEELER & CO.
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+AGE OF POPE
+
+(1700-1744)
+
+BY
+
+JOHN DENNIS
+
+AUTHOR OF "STUDIES IN ENGLISH LITERATURE" ETC.
+
+_ELEVENTH EDITION_
+
+[Illustration]
+
+LONDON
+G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
+1921
+
+
+
+
+First Published, 1894.
+
+Reprinted, 1896, 1899, 1901, 1906, 1908, 1909,
+           1913, 1917, 1918, 1921.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The _Age of Pope_ is designed to form one of a series of Handbooks,
+edited by Professor Hales, which it is hoped will be of service to
+students who love literature for its own sake, instead of regarding it
+merely as a branch of knowledge required by examiners. The period
+covered by this volume, which has had the great advantage of Professor
+Hales's personal care and revision, may be described roughly as lying
+between 1700, the year in which Dryden died, and 1744, the date of
+Pope's death.
+
+I believe that no work of the class will be of real value which gives
+what may be called literary statistics, and has nothing more to offer.
+Historical facts and figures have their uses, and are, indeed,
+indispensable; but it is possible to gain the most accurate knowledge of
+a literary period and to be totally unimpressed by the influences which
+a love of literature inspires. The first object of a guide is to give
+accurate information; his second and larger object is to direct the
+reader's steps through a country exhaustless in variety and interest. If
+once a passion be awakened for the study of our noble literature the
+student will learn to reject what is meretricious, and will turn
+instinctively to what is worthiest. In the pursuit he may leave his
+guide far behind him; but none the less will he be grateful to the
+pioneer who started him on his travels.
+
+If the _Age of Pope_ proves of help in this way the wishes of the writer
+will be satisfied. It has been my endeavour in all cases to acknowledge
+the debt I owe to the authors who have made this period their study; but
+it is possible that a familiar acquaintance with their writings may have
+led me occasionally to mistake the matter thus assimilated for original
+criticism. If, therefore--to quote the phrase of Pope's enemy and my
+namesake--I have sometimes borrowed another man's 'thunder,' the fault
+of having 'made a sinner of my memory' may prove the reader's gain, and
+will, I hope, be forgiven.
+
+J. D.
+
+HAMPSTEAD,
+_August, 1894_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+INTRODUCTION                                                          1
+
+
+                          PART I. THE POETS.
+
+CHAP.
+
+  I. ALEXANDER POPE                                                  27
+
+ II. MATTHEW PRIOR--JOHN GAY--EDWARD YOUNG--ROBERT BLAIR--JAMES
+     THOMSON                                                         65
+
+III. SIR SAMUEL GARTH--AMBROSE PHILIPS--JOHN PHILIPS--NICHOLAS
+     ROWE--AARON HILL--THOMAS PARNELL--THOMAS TICKELL--WILLIAM
+     SOMERVILLE--JOHN DYER--WILLIAM SHENSTONE--MARK AKENSIDE--DAVID
+     MALLET--SCOTTISH SONG-WRITERS                                   96
+
+
+                      PART II. THE PROSE WRITERS.
+
+ IV. JOSEPH ADDISON--SIR RICHARD STEELE                             125
+
+  V. JONATHAN SWIFT--JOHN ARBUTHNOT                                 151
+
+ VI. DANIEL DEFOE--JOHN DENNIS--COLLEY CIBBER--LADY MARY WORTLEY
+     MONTAGU--EARL OF CHESTERFIELD--LORD LYTTELTON--JOSEPH SPENCE   180
+
+VII. FRANCIS ATTERBURY--LORD SHAFTESBURY--BERNARD DE
+     MANDEVILLE--LORD BOLINGBROKE--GEORGE BERKELEY--WILLIAM
+     LAW--JOSEPH BUTLER--WILLIAM WARBURTON                          207
+
+INDEX OF MINOR POETS AND PROSE WRITERS                              242
+
+CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE                                                 249
+
+ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WRITERS                                        253
+
+INDEX                                                               255
+
+
+
+
+THE AGE OF POPE.
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+I.
+
+The death of John Dryden, on the first of May, 1700, closed a period of
+no small significance in the history of English literature. His faults
+were many, both as a man and as a poet, but he belongs to the race of
+the giants, and the impress of greatness is stamped upon his works. No
+student of Dryden can fail to mark the force and sweep of an intellect
+impatient of restraint. His 'long-resounding march' reminds us of a
+turbulent river that overflows its banks, and if order and perfection of
+art are sometimes wanting in his verse, there is never the lack of
+power. Unfortunately many of the best years of his life were devoted to
+a craft in which he was working against the grain. His dramas, with one
+or two noble exceptions, are comparative failures, and in them he too
+often
+
+    'Profaned the God-given strength, and marred the lofty line.'
+
+In two prominent respects his influence on his successors is of no
+slight significance. As a satirist Pope acknowledged the master he was
+unable to excel, and so did many of the eighteenth century versemen, who
+appear to have looked upon satire as the beginning and the end of
+poetry. Moreover Dryden may be regarded, without much exaggeration, as
+the father of modern prose. Nothing can be more lucid than his style,
+which is at once bright and strong, idiomatic and direct. He knows
+precisely what he has to say, and says it in the simplest words. It is
+the form and not the substance of Dryden's prose to which attention is
+drawn here. There is a splendour of imagery, a largeness of thought, and
+a grasp of language in the prose of Hooker, of Jeremy Taylor, and of
+Milton which is beyond the reach of Dryden, but he has the merit of
+using a simple form of English free from prolonged periods and classical
+constructions, and fitted therefore for common use. The wealthy baggage
+of the prose Elizabethans and their immediate successors was too
+cumbersome for ordinary travel; Dryden's riches are less massive, but
+they can be easily carried, and are always ready for service.
+
+In these respects he is the literary herald of a century which, in the
+earlier half at least, is remarkable in the use it makes of our mother
+tongue for the exercise of common sense. The Revolution of 1688 produced
+a change in English politics scarcely more remarkable than the change
+that took place a little later in English literature and is to be seen
+in the poets and wits who are known familiarly as the Queen Anne men. It
+will be obvious to the most superficial student that the gulf which
+separates the literary period, closing with the death of Milton in 1674,
+from the first half of the eighteenth century, is infinitely wider than
+that which divides us from the splendid band of poets and prose writers
+who made the first twenty years of the present century so famous. There
+is, for example, scarcely more than fifty years between the publication
+of Herrick's _Hesperides_ and of Addison's _Campaign_, between the _Holy
+Living_ of Taylor and the _Tatler_ of Steele, and less than fifty years
+between _Samson Agonistes_, which Bishop Atterbury asked Pope to polish,
+and the poems of Prior. Yet in that short space not only is the form of
+verse changed but also the spirit.
+
+Speaking broadly, and allowing for exceptions, the literary merits of
+the Queen Anne time are due to invention, fancy, and wit, to a genius
+for satire exhibited in verse and prose, to a regard for correctness of
+form and to the sensitive avoidance of extremes. The poets of the period
+are for the most part without enthusiasm, without passion, and without
+the 'fine madness' which, as Drayton says, should possess a poet's
+brain. Wit takes precedence of imagination, nature is concealed by
+artifice, and the delight afforded by these writers is not due to
+imaginative sensibility. Not even in the consummate genius of Pope is
+there aught of the magical charm which fascinates us in a Wordsworth and
+a Keats, in a Coleridge and a Shelley. The prose of the age, masterly
+though it be, stands also on a comparatively low level. There is much in
+it to attract, but little to inspire.
+
+The difference between the Elizabethan and Jacobean authors, and the
+authors of the Queen Anne period cannot be accounted for by any single
+cause. The student will observe that while the inspiration is less, the
+technical skill is greater. There are passages in Addison which no
+seventeenth century author could have written; there are couplets in
+Pope beyond the reach of Cowley, and that even Dryden could not rival.
+In these respects the eighteenth century was indebted to the growing
+influence of French literature, to which the taste of Charles II. had in
+some degree contributed. One notable expression of this taste may be
+seen in the tragedies in rhyme that were for a time in vogue, of which
+the plots were borrowed from French romances. These colossal fictions,
+stupendous in length and heroic in style, delighted the young English
+ladies of the seventeenth century, and were not out of favour in the
+eighteenth, for Pope gave a copy of the _Grand Cyrus_ to Martha Blount.
+
+The return, as in Addison's _Cato_, to the classical unities, so
+faithfully preserved in the French drama, was another indication of an
+influence from which our literature has never been wholly free. That
+importations so alien to the spirit of English poetry should tend to the
+degeneration of the national drama was inevitable. For a time, however,
+the study of French models, both in the drama and in other departments
+of literature, may have been productive of benefit. Frenchmen knew
+before we did, how to say what they wanted to say in a lucid style.
+Dryden, who was open to every kind of influence, bad as well as good,
+caught a little of their fine tact and consummate workmanship without
+lessening his own originality; so also did Pope, who, if he was
+considerably indebted to Boileau, infinitely excelled him. That, in M.
+Taine's judgment, would have been no great difficulty. 'In Boileau,' he
+writes, 'there are, as a rule, two kinds of verse, as was said by a man
+of wit (M. Guillaume Guizot); most of which seem to be those of a sharp
+school-boy in the third class; the rest those of a good school-boy in
+the upper division.' And Mr. Swinburne, who holds a similar opinion of
+the famous French critic's merit, observes, that while Pope is the
+finest, Boileau is 'the dullest craftsman of their age and school.'[1]
+
+With the author of the _Lutrin_ Addison, unlike Pope, was personally
+acquainted. Boileau praised his Latin verses, and although his range was
+limited, like that of all critics lacking imagination, Addison, then a
+comparatively youthful scholar, was no doubt flattered by his
+compliments and learnt some lessons in his school. Prior, who acquired a
+mastery of the language, was also sensitive to French influence, and
+shows how it affected him by irony and satire. It would be difficult to
+estimate with any measure of accuracy the effect of French literature on
+the Queen Anne authors. There is no question that they were considerably
+attracted by it, but its sway was, I think, never strong enough to
+produce mere imitative art. While the most illustrious of these men
+acknowledged some measure of fealty to our 'sweet enemy France,' they
+were not enslaved by her, and French literature was but one of several
+influences which affected the literary character of the age. If
+Englishmen owed a debt to France the obligation was reciprocal. Voltaire
+affords a prominent illustration of the power wielded by our literature.
+He imitated Addison, he imitated, or caught suggestions from Swift, he
+borrowed largely from Vanbrugh, and although, in his judgment of English
+authors, he made many critical blunders, they were due to a want of
+taste rather than to a want of knowledge.
+
+A striking contrast will be seen between the position of literary men in
+the reign of Queen Anne and under her Hanoverian successors. Literature
+was not thriving in the healthiest of ways in the earlier period, but
+from the commercial point of view it was singularly prosperous. Through
+its means men like Addison and Prior rose to some of the highest offices
+in the service of their country. Tickell became Under-Secretary of
+State. Steele held three or four official posts, and if he did not
+prosper like some men of less mark, had no one but himself to blame.
+Rowe, the author of the _Fair Penitent_, was for three years of Anne's
+reign Under-Secretary, and John Hughes, the friend of Addison, who is
+poet enough to have had his story told by Johnson, had 'a situation of
+great profit' as Secretary to the Commissions of the Peace. Prizes of
+greater or less value fell to some men whose abilities were not more
+than respectable, but under Walpole and the monarch whom he served
+literature was disregarded, and the Minister was content to make use of
+hireling writers for whatever dirty work he required; spending in this
+way, it is said, L50,000 in ten years.
+
+It was far better in the long run for men of letters to be free from the
+servility of patronage, but there was a wearisome time, as Johnson and
+Goldsmith knew to their cost, during which authors lost their freedom in
+another way, and became the slaves of the booksellers. It is pleasant to
+observe that the last noteworthy act of patronage in the century was one
+that did honour to the patron without lessening the dignity and
+independence of the recipient. Literature owes much to the noblest of
+political philosophers for discovering and fostering the genius of one
+of the most original of English poets, and every reader of Crabbe will
+do honour to the generous friendship of Edmund Burke.
+
+
+II.
+
+The lowest stage in our national history was reached in the Restoration
+period. The idealists, who had aimed at marks it was not given to man to
+reach, were superseded by men with no ideal, whether in politics or
+religion. The extreme rigidity in morals enjoined by State authority in
+Cromwell's days, when theological pedantry discovered sin in what had
+hitherto been regarded as innocent, led, among the unsaintly mass of
+the people, to a hypocrisy even more corrupting than open vice, and the
+advent of the most publicly dissolute of English kings opened the
+floodgates of iniquity. The unbridled vice of the time is displayed in
+the Restoration dramatists, in the Grammont memoirs, in the diary of
+Pepys, and also in that of the admirable John Evelyn, 'faithful among
+the faithless.' Charles II. was considered good-natured because his
+manners, unlike those of his father, were sociable, and unrestrained by
+Court etiquette. Londoners liked a monarch who fed ducks in St. James's
+Park before breakfast; but an easy temper did not prevent the king from
+sanctioning the most unjust and cruel laws, and it allowed him to sell
+Dunkirk and basely to accept a pension from France. The corruption of
+the age pervaded politics as well as society, and the self-sacrificing
+spirit which is the salt of a nation's life seemed for the time extinct
+among public men.
+
+When Dutch men-of-war appeared at the Nore the confusion was great, but
+there were few resources and few signs of energy in the men to whom the
+people looked for guidance. A man conversant with affairs expressed to
+Pepys his opinion that nothing could be done with 'a lazy Prince, no
+Council, no money, no reputation at home or abroad,' and Pepys also
+gives the damning statement which is in harmony with all we know of the
+king, that he 'took ten times more care and pains in making friends
+between my Lady Castlemaine and Mrs. Stewart, when they have fallen out,
+than ever he did to save his kingdom.'
+
+There was nothing in the brief reign of James, a reign for ever made
+infamous by the atrocious cruelty of Jeffreys, that calls for comment
+here, but the Revolution, despite the undoubted advantages it brought
+with it, among which must be mentioned the abolition of the censorship
+of the press, brought also an element of discord and of political
+degradation. The change was a good one for the country, but it caused a
+large number of influential men to renounce on oath opinions which they
+secretly held, and it led, as every reader of history knows, to an
+unparalleled amount of double-dealing on the part of statesmen, which
+began with the accession of William and Mary and did not end until the
+last hopes of the Jacobites were defeated in 1746. The loss of principle
+among statesmen, and the bitterness of faction, which seemed to increase
+in proportion as the patriotic spirit declined, had a baleful influence
+on the latter days of the seventeenth century and on the entire period
+covered by the age of Pope. The low tone of the age is to be seen in the
+almost universal corruption which prevailed, in the scandalous
+tergiversation of Bolingbroke, and in the contempt for political
+principle openly avowed by Walpole, who, as Mr. Lecky observes, 'was
+altogether incapable of appreciating as an element of political
+calculation the force which moral sentiments exercise upon mankind.'[2]
+
+The enthusiasm and strong passions of the first half of the seventeenth
+century, which had been crushed by the Restoration, were exchanged for a
+state of apathy that led to self-seeking in politics and to scepticism
+in religion. There was a strong profession of morality in words, but in
+conduct the most open immorality prevailed. Virtue was commended in the
+bulk of the churches, while Christianity, which gives a new life and aim
+to virtue, was practically ignored, and the principles of the Deists,
+whose opinions occupied much attention at the time, were scarcely more
+alien to the Christian revelation than the views often advocated in the
+national pulpits. The religion of Christ seems to have been regarded as
+little more than a useful kind of cement which held society together.
+The good sense advocated so constantly by Pope in poetry was also
+considered the principal requisite in the pulpit, and the careful
+avoidance of religious emotion in the earlier years of the century led
+to the fervid and too often ill-regulated enthusiasm that prevailed in
+the days of Whitefield and Wesley. At the same time there appears to
+have been no lack of religious controversy. 'The Church in danger' was a
+strong cry then, as it is still. The enormous excitement caused in 1709
+by Sacheverell's sermon in St. Paul's Cathedral advocating passive
+obedience, denouncing toleration, and aspersing the Revolution
+settlement, forms a striking chapter in the reign of Queen Anne.
+Extraordinary interest was also felt in the Bangorian controversy raised
+by Bishop Hoadly, who, in a sermon preached before the king (1717), took
+a latitudinarian view of episcopal authority, and objected to the entire
+system of the High Church party.
+
+Queen Caroline, whose keen intellect was allied to a coarseness which
+makes her a representative of the age, was considerably attracted by
+theological discussion. She obtained a bishopric for Berkeley,
+recommended Walpole to read Butler's _Analogy_, which was at one time
+her daily companion at the breakfast-table, and made the preferment of
+its author one of her last requests to the king. She liked well to
+reason with Dr. Samuel Clarke, 'of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and
+Fate,' and wished to make him Archbishop of Canterbury, but was told
+that he was not sufficiently orthodox. Theology was not disregarded
+under the first and second Georges; it was only religion that had fallen
+into disrepute. The law itself was calculated to excite contempt for the
+most solemn of religious services. 'I was early,' Swift writes to
+Stella, 'with the Secretary (Bolingbroke), but he was gone to his
+devotions and to receive the sacrament. Several rakes did the same. It
+was not for piety, but for employment, according to Act of Parliament.'
+
+A glance at some additional features in the social condition of the age
+will enable us to understand better the character of its literature.
+
+
+III.
+
+It is a platitude to say that authors are as much affected as other men
+by the atmosphere which they breathe. Now and then a consummate man of
+genius seems to stand so much above his age as for all high purposes of
+art to be untouched by it. Like Milton as a poet, though not as a prose
+writer, his 'soul is like a star and dwells apart;' but in general,
+imaginative writers, are intensely affected by the society from which
+they draw many of their intellectual resources. In the so-called
+'Augustan age'[3] this influence would have been felt more strongly than
+in ours, since the range of men of letters was generally restricted to
+what was called the Town. They wrote for the critics in the
+coffee-houses, for the noblemen from whom they expected patronage, and
+for the political party they were pledged to support.
+
+England during the first half of the eighteenth century was in many
+respects uncivilized. London was at that time separated from the country
+by roads that were often impassable and always dangerous. Travellers had
+to protect themselves as they best could from the attacks of highwaymen,
+who infested every thoroughfare leading from the metropolis, while the
+narrow area of the city was guarded by watchmen scarcely better fitted
+for its protection than Dogberry and Verges. Readers of the _Spectator_
+will remember how when Sir Roger de Coverley went to the play, his
+servants 'provided themselves with good oaken plants' to protect their
+master from the Mohocks, a set of dissolute young men, who, for sheer
+amusement, inflicted the most terrible punishments on their victims.
+Swift tells Stella how he came home early from his walk in the Park to
+avoid 'a race of rakes that play the devil about this town every night,
+and slit people's noses,' and he adds, as if party were at the root of
+every mischief in the country, that they were all Whigs. 'Who has not
+trembled at the Mohock's name?' is Gay's exclamation in his _Trivia_;
+and in that curious poem he also warns the citizens not to venture
+across Lincoln's Inn Fields in the evening. Colley Cibber's brazen-faced
+daughter, Mrs. Charke, in the _Narrative_ of her life, describes also
+with sufficient precision the dangers of London after dark.
+
+The infliction of personal injury was not confined to the desperadoes of
+the streets. Men of letters were in danger of chastisement from the
+poets or politicians whom they criticised or vilified. De Foe often
+mentions attempts upon his person. Pope, too, was threatened with a rod
+by Ambrose Philips, which was hung up for his chastisement in Button's
+Coffee-house; and at a later period, when his satires had stirred up a
+nest of hornets, the poet was in the habit of carrying pistols, and
+taking a large dog for his companion when walking out at Twickenham.
+
+Weddings within the liberties of the Fleet by sham clergymen, or
+clergymen confined for debt, were the source of numberless evils. Every
+kind of deception was practised, and the victims once in the clutches of
+their reverend captors had to pay heavily for the illegal ceremony.
+Ladies were trepanned into matrimony, and Smollett in his _History_
+observes, that the Fleet parsons encouraged every kind of villainy. It
+is astonishing that so great an evil in the heart of London should have
+been allowed to exist so long, and it was not until the Marriage Act of
+Lord Hardwicke in 1753, which required the publication of banns, that
+the Fleet marriages ceased. On the day before the Act came into
+operation three hundred marriages are said to have taken place.[4]
+
+Marriages of a more lawful kind were generally conducted on business
+principles. Young women were expected to accept the husband selected for
+them by their parents or guardians, and the main object considered was
+to gain a good settlement. It was for this that Mary Granville, who is
+better known as Mrs. Delany, was sacrificed at seventeen to a gouty old
+man of sixty, and when he died she was expected to marry again with the
+same object in view. Mrs. Delany detested, with good cause, the
+commercial estimate of matrimony. Writing, in 1739, to Lady
+Throckmorton, she says, 'Miss Campbell is to be married to-morrow to my
+Lord Bruce. Her father can give her no fortune; she is very pretty,
+modest, well-behaved, and just eighteen, has two thousand a year
+jointure, and four hundred pin-money; _they say_ he is cross, covetous,
+and threescore years old, and this unsuitable match is the _admiration
+of the old and the envy of the young_! For my part I _pity her_, for if
+she has any notion of social pleasures that arise from true esteem and
+sensible conversation, how miserable must she be.'[5]
+
+Girls dowered with beauty or with fortune were not always suffered to
+marry in this humdrum fashion. Abduction was by no means an imaginary
+peril. Mrs. Delany tells the story of a lady in Ireland, from whom she
+received the relation, who was entrapped in her uncle's house, carried
+off by four men in masks, and treated in the most brutal manner. And in
+1711 the Duke of Newcastle, having become acquainted with a design for
+carrying off his daughter by force, was compelled to ask for a guard of
+dragoons.
+
+Duelling, against which Steele, De Foe, and Fielding inveighed with
+courage and good sense, was a danger to which every gentleman was liable
+who wore a sword. Bullies were ready to provoke a quarrel, the slightest
+cause of offence was magnified into an affair of honour, and the lives
+of several of the most distinguished men of the century were imperilled
+in this way. 'A gentleman,' Lord Chesterfield writes, 'is every man who,
+with a tolerable suit of clothes, a sword by his side, and a watch and
+snuffbox in his pockets, asserts himself to be a gentleman, swears with
+energy that he will be treated as such, and that he will cut the throat
+of any man who presumes to say the contrary.'
+
+The foolish and evil custom died out slowly in this kingdom. Even a
+great moralist like Dr. Johnson had something to say in its defence, and
+Sir Walter Scott, who might well have laughed to scorn any imputation of
+cowardice, was prepared to accept a challenge in his old age for a
+statement he had made in his _Life of Napoleon_.
+
+Ladies had a different but equally doubtful mode of asserting their
+gentility. On one occasion the Duchess of Marlborough called on a lawyer
+without leaving her name. 'I could not make out who she was,' said the
+clerk afterwards, 'but she swore so dreadfully that she must be a lady
+of quality.'
+
+There was a fashion which our wits followed at this time that was not
+of English growth, namely, the tone of gallantry in which they addressed
+ladies, no matter whether single or married. Their compliments seemed
+like downright love-making, and that frequently of a coarse kind, but
+such expressions meant nothing, and were understood to be a mere
+exercise of skill. Pope used them in writing to Judith Cowper, whom he
+professes to worship as much as any female saint in heaven; and in much
+ampler measure when addressing Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, but neither
+lady would have taken this amatory politeness seriously. Thus he writes
+after an evening spent in Lady Mary's society: 'Books have lost their
+effect upon me; and I was convinced since I saw you, that there is
+something more powerful than philosophy, and since I heard you, that
+there is one alive wiser than all the sages.' He tells her that he hates
+all other women for her sake; that none but her guardian angels can have
+her more constantly in mind; and that the sun has more reason to be
+proud of raising her spirits 'than of raising all the plants and
+ripening all the minerals in the earth.' He will fly to her in Italy at
+the least notice and 'from thence,' he adds, 'how far you might draw me
+and I might run after you, I no more know than the spouse in the song of
+Solomon.'
+
+This was the foible of an age in which women were addressed as though
+they were totally devoid of understanding; and Pope, as might have been
+expected, carried the folly to excess.
+
+Against another French custom Addison protests in the _Spectator_,
+namely, that of women of rank receiving gentlemen visitors in their
+bedrooms. He objects also to other foreign habits introduced by
+'travelled ladies,' and fears that the peace, however much to be
+desired, may cause the importation of a number of French fopperies. But
+the proneness to follow the lead of France in matters of fashion is a
+folly not confined to the belles and beaux of the last century.
+
+If a chivalric regard for women be an indication of high civilization,
+that sign is but faintly visible in the reigns of Anne and of the first
+Georges. Sir Richard Steele paid a noble tribute to Lady Elizabeth
+Hastings when he said that to know her was a liberal education, but his
+contemporaries usually treat women as pretty triflers, better fitted to
+amuse men than to elevate them. Young takes this view in his _Satires_:
+
+    'Ladies supreme among amusements reign;
+    By nature born to soothe and entertain.
+    Their prudence in a share of folly lies;
+    Why will they be so weak as to be wise?'
+
+and Chesterfield, writing to his son, treats women with similar
+contempt.... 'A man of sense,' he says, 'only trifles with them, plays
+with them, humours and flatters them as he does with a sprightly,
+forward child; but he neither consults them about, nor trusts them with,
+serious matters, though he often makes them believe that he does both,
+which is the thing in the world that they are proud of.... No flattery
+is either too high or too low for them. They will greedily swallow the
+highest and gratefully accept of the lowest.'
+
+Nearly twenty years passed, and then Chesterfield wrote in the same
+contemptuous way of women in a letter to his godson, a 'dear little boy'
+of ten.
+
+'In company every woman is every man's superior, and must be addressed
+with respect, nay, more, with flattery, and you need not fear making it
+too strong ... it will be greedily swallowed.'
+
+Even Addison, while trying to instruct the 'Fair Sex' as he likes to
+call them, apparently regarded its members as an inferior order of
+beings. He delights to dwell upon their foibles, on their dress, and on
+the thousand little artifices practised by the flirt and the coquette.
+Here is the view the Queen Anne moralist takes of the 'female world' he
+was so eager to improve:
+
+'I have often thought there has not been sufficient pains in finding out
+proper employments and diversions for the fair ones. Their amusements
+seem contrived for them, rather as they are women, than as they are
+reasonable creatures; and are more adapted to the sex than to the
+species. The toilet is their great scene of business, and the right
+adjustment of their hair the principal employment of their lives. The
+sorting of a suit of ribands is considered a very good morning's work;
+and if they make an excursion to a mercer's or a toy-shop, so great a
+fatigue makes them unfit for anything else all the day after. Their more
+serious occupations are sewing and embroidery, and their greatest
+drudgery the preparations of jellies and sweetmeats. This I say is the
+state of ordinary women; though I know there are multitudes of those
+that move in an exalted sphere of knowledge and virtue, that join all
+the beauties of the mind to the ornaments of dress, and inspire a kind
+of awe and respect as well as of love into their male beholders.'
+
+The qualification made at the end of this description does not greatly
+lessen the significance of the earlier portion, which is Addison's
+picture, as he is careful to tell us of 'ordinary women.' Much must be
+allowed for the exaggeration of a humourist, but the frivolity of women
+is a theme upon which Addison harps continually. Indeed, were it not for
+this weakness in the 'feminine world' half his vocation as a moralist in
+the _Spectator_ would be gone, and if the general estimate in his Essays
+of the women with whom he was acquainted be to any extent a correct one,
+the derogatory language used by men of letters, and especially by
+Swift, Prior, Pope, and Chesterfield may be almost forgiven.
+
+It was the aim of Addison and Steele to represent, and in some degree to
+caricature, the follies of fashionable life in the Town. That life had
+also its vices, which, if less unblushingly displayed than under the
+'merry Monarch,' were visible enough. 'In the eighteenth century,' says
+Victor Hugo, in his epigrammatic way, 'the wife bolts out her husband.
+She shuts herself up in Eden with Satan. Adam is left outside.'
+
+Drunkenness was a habit familiar to the fine gentlemen of the town and
+to men occupying the highest position in the State. Harley went more
+than once into the queen's presence in a half-intoxicated condition;
+Carteret when Secretary of State, if Horace Walpole may be credited, was
+never sober; Bolingbroke, who practised every vice, is said to have been
+a 'four-bottle man;' and Swift found it perilous to dine with Ministers
+on account of the wine which circulated at their tables. 'Prince
+Eugene,' he writes, 'dines with the Secretary to-day with about seven or
+eight general officers or foreign Ministers. They will be all drunk I am
+sure.' Pope's frail body could not tolerate excess, and he is said to
+have hastened his end by good living. His friend Fenton 'died of a great
+chair and two bottles of port a day.' Parnell, who seems to have been in
+many respects a man of high character, is said to have shortened his
+life by intemperance; and Gay, who was cossetted like a favourite lapdog
+by the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, died from indolence and good
+living.
+
+It may be questioned whether there is a single Wit of the age who did
+not love port too well, like Addison and Fenton, or suffer from
+'carnivoracity' like Arbuthnot. Every section of English society was
+infected with the 'devil drunkenness,' and the passion for gin created
+by the encouragement of home distilleries produced a state of crime,
+misery, and disease in London and in the country which excited public
+attention. 'Small as is the place,' writes Mr. Lecky, 'which this fact
+occupies in English history, it was probably, if we consider all the
+consequences that have flowed from it, the most momentous in that of the
+eighteenth century--incomparably more so than any event in the purely
+political or military annals of the country.'[6]
+
+The cruelty of the age is seen in a contempt for the feelings of others,
+in the brutal punishments inflicted, in the amusements then popular, and
+in a general contempt for human suffering. Public executions were so
+frequent that they were disregarded; and criminals of any note, like Dr.
+Dodd, were exhibited in their cells for the gaolers' benefit prior to
+execution; mad people in Bedlam, chained in their cells, also formed one
+of the sights of London. As late as 1735 men were pressed to death who
+refused to plead on a capital charge; and women were publicly flogged,
+and were also burnt at the stake by a law that was not repealed until
+1794. Of the heads on Temple Bar, daily exposed to Johnson's eyes in his
+beloved Fleet Street, we are reminded by an apposite quotation of
+Goldsmith; and Samuel Rogers, the banker-poet, who died as recently as
+1855, remembered having seen one there in his childhood. The public
+exhibition of offenders in the pillory was not calculated to refine the
+manners of the people. It afforded a cruel entertainment to the mob, who
+may be said to have baited these poor victims as they were accustomed to
+bait bulls and bears. Every kind of offensive missile was thrown at
+them, and sometimes the strokes proved deadly.
+
+Men who could thus torture a human being were not likely to abstain
+from cruelty to the lower animals. The poets indeed protested then, as
+poets had done before, and always have done since, against the unmanly
+treatment of the dumb fellow-creatures committed to our care, but their
+voices were little heeded, and even the Prince of Wales visited
+Hockley-in-the-Hole, in disguise, to witness the torturing of bulls.
+'The gladiatorian and other sanguinary sports,' says the author of the
+_Characteristics_, 'which we allow our people, discover sufficiently our
+national taste. And the baitings and slaughters of so many sorts of
+creatures, tame as well as wild, for diversion merely, may witness the
+extraordinary inclination we have for amphitheatrical spectacles.'[7]
+
+The majesty of the law was maintained by disembowelling traitors, by
+cutting off the ears, or branding the cheeks of political offenders, and
+by the penalties inflicted on Roman Catholics, and on Protestant
+dissenters. Men who deemed themselves honourable gained power through
+bribery and intrigue. It was through a king's mistress and a heavy bribe
+that Bolingbroke was enabled to return from exile; Chesterfield
+intrigued against Newcastle with the Duchess of Yarmouth; and clergymen
+eager for promotion had no scruple in paying court to women who had lost
+their virtue.
+
+Never, unless perhaps during the Civil War, was the spirit of party more
+rampant in the country. Patriotism was a virtue more talked about than
+felt, and in the cause of faction private characters were assailed and
+libels circulated through the press. Addison, who did more than any
+other writer to humanize his age, saw the evil of the time and struck a
+blow at it with his inimitable humour. The _Spectator_ discovers, on his
+journey to Sir Roger de Coverley's house, that the knight's Toryism
+grew with the miles that separated him from London:
+
+'In all our journey from London to his house we did not so much as bait
+at a Whig inn; or if by chance the coachman stopped at a wrong place,
+one of Sir Roger's servants would ride up to his master full speed, and
+whisper to him that the master of the house was against such an one in
+the last election. This often betrayed us into hard beds and bad cheer;
+for we were not so inquisitive about the inn as the innkeeper; and
+provided our landlord's principles were sound did not take any notice of
+the staleness of his provisions. This I found still the more
+inconvenient, because the better the host was, the worse generally were
+his accommodations; the fellow knowing very well that those who were his
+friends would take up with coarse diet and hard lodging. For these
+reasons, all the while I was upon the road, I dreaded entering into an
+house of anyone that Sir Roger had applauded for an honest man.'[8]
+
+Against the party zeal of female politicians Addison indulges frequently
+in humorous sallies. He assures them that it gives an ill-natured cast
+to the eye, and flushes the cheeks worse than brandy. Party rage, he
+says, is a male vice, and is altogether repugnant 'to the softness, the
+modesty, and those other endearing qualities which are natural to the
+fair sex.'
+
+'When I have seen a pretty mouth uttering calumnies and invectives, what
+would I not have given to have stopt it? how have I been troubled to see
+some of the finest features in the world grow pale and tremble with
+party rage. Camilla is one of the greatest beauties in the British
+nation, and yet values herself more upon being the virago of one party
+than upon being the toast of both. The dear creature about a week ago
+encountered the fierce and beautiful Penthesilea across a tea-table; but
+in the height of her anger, as her hand chanced to shake with the
+earnestness of the dispute, she scalded her fingers, and spilt a dish of
+tea upon her petticoat. Had not this accident broke off the debate,
+nobody knows where it would have ended.'
+
+The coffee-houses in which men aired their wit and discussed the news of
+the day were wholly dominated by party. 'A Whig,' says De Foe, 'will no
+more go to the Cocoa Tree or Ozinda's than a Tory will be seen at the
+coffee-house of St. James's.' Swift declared that the Whig and Tory
+animosity infected even the dogs and cats. It was inevitable that it
+should also infect literature. Books were seldom judged on their merits,
+the praise or blame being generally awarded according to the political
+principles of their authors. An impartial literary journal did not exist
+in the days when Addison 'gave his little senate laws' at Button's, and
+perhaps it does not exist now, but if critical injustice be done in our
+day it is rarely owing to political causes.
+
+One of the most prominent vices of the time was gambling, which was
+largely encouraged by the public lotteries, and practised by all classes
+of the people. This evil was exhibited on a national scale by the
+establishment of the South Sea Company, which exploded in 1720, after
+creating a madness for speculation never known before or since. Even men
+who like Sir Robert Walpole kept their heads, and saw that the bubble
+would soon burst, invested in stock. Pope had his share in the
+speculation, and might, had he 'realized' in time, have been the 'lord
+of thousands;' in the end, however, he was a gainer, though not to a
+large extent. His friend Gay was less fortunate. He won L20,000, kept
+the stock too long and was reduced to beggary. The South Sea Bubble and
+the Mississippi scheme of Law which burst in the same year and ruined
+tens of thousands of French families, afford illustrations on a gigantic
+scale of the prevailing passion for speculation and for gambling.
+
+'The Duke of Devonshire lost an estate at a game of basset. The fine
+intellect of Chesterfield was thoroughly enslaved by the vice. At Bath,
+which was then the centre of English fashion, it reigned supreme; and
+the physicians even recommended it to their patients as a form of
+distraction. In the green-rooms of the theatres, as Mrs. Bellamy assures
+us, thousands were often lost and won in a single night. Among
+fashionable ladies the passion was quite as strong as among men, and the
+professor of whist and quadrille became a regular attendant at their
+levees. Miss Pelham, the daughter of the prime minister, was one of the
+most notorious gamblers of her time, and Lady Cowper speaks in her
+_Diary_ of sittings at Court, of which the lowest stake was 200 guineas.
+The public lotteries contributed very powerfully to diffuse the taste
+for gambling among all classes.'[9]
+
+One of the most powerful exponents of the dark side of the century is
+Hogarth, who makes some of its worst features live before our eyes. So
+also do the novels of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett. Differing as
+their works do in character, they have the common merit of presenting in
+indelible lines a picture of the time in its social aspects. It may have
+been, as Stuart Mill asserts, an age of strong men, but it was an age of
+coarse vices, an age wanting in the refinements and graces of life; an
+age of cruel punishments, cruel sports, and of a political corruption
+extending through all the departments of the State.
+
+But it would be a narrow view of the age to dwell wholly on its gloomier
+features, which are always the easiest to detect. If the period under
+consideration had prominent vices, it had also distinguished merits.
+Under Queen Anne and her immediate successors, home-keeping Englishmen
+had more space to breathe in than they have now, and trade was not
+demoralized by excessive competition. No attempt was made to separate
+class from class, and population was not large enough to make the battle
+of life almost hopeless in the lowest section of the community. If there
+was less refinement than among ourselves, there was far less of nervous
+susceptibility, and the country was free from the half-educated class of
+men and women who know enough to make them dissatisfied, without
+attaining to the larger knowledge which yields wisdom and content. To
+say that the age was better than our own would be to deny a thousand
+signs of material and intellectual progress, but it had fewer dangers to
+contend with, and if there was far less of wealth in the country the
+people were probably more satisfied with their lot.[10]
+
+To glance at the century as a whole does not fall within my province,
+but I may be permitted to observe that in the course of it science and
+invention made rapid strides; that under the inspiring sway of Handel
+the power of music was felt as it was never felt before; that in the
+latter half of the period the Novel, destined to be one of the noblest
+fruits of our imaginative literature, attained a robust life in the
+hands of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett; and that, with Reynolds and
+Gainsborough, with Romney and Wilson, a glorious school of landscape and
+portrait painters arose, which is still the pride of England. It will
+be remembered, too, that many of the great charitable institutions which
+make our own age illustrious, had their birth in the last. The military
+genius of England was displayed in Marlborough and in Clive, her mercy
+in John Howard, her spirit of enterprise in Cook, her self-sacrifice in
+Wesley and Whitefield, her statesmanship in Walpole, in Chatham, and in
+William Pitt. In oratory as everyone knows, the eighteenth century was
+surpassingly great, and never before or since has the country produced a
+political philosopher of the calibre of Burke. What England reaped in
+literature during the period of which Pope has been selected as the most
+striking figure, it will be my endeavour to show in the course of these
+pages.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] M. Sainte-Beuve, the greatest of French critics, frankly
+acknowledges his indebtedness to Boileau, whom he styles Louis the
+Fourteenth's 'Controleur General du Parnasse.' 'S'il m'est permis de
+parler pour moi-meme,' he writes, 'Boileau est un des hommes qui m'ont
+le plus occupe depuis que je fais de la critique, et avec qui j'ai le
+plus vecu en idee.'--_Causeries du Lundi_, tome sixieme, p. 495.
+
+[2] Lecky's _England_, vol. i. p. 373.
+
+[3] The epithet is used in the Preface to the First Edition of Waller's
+_Posthumous Poems_, which Mr. Gosse believes was written by Atterbury,
+and he considers that this is the original occurrence of the
+phrase.--_From Shakespeare to Pope_, p. 248.
+
+[4] Messrs. Besant and Rice's novel, _The Chaplain of the Fleet_, gives
+a vivid picture of the life led in the Fleet, and also of the period.
+
+[5] _Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Delany_, vol. ii. p. 55.
+
+[6] Lecky's _England_, vol. i. p. 479.
+
+[7] Shaftesbury's _Characteristics_, vol. i. p. 270.
+
+[8] _Spectator_, No. 126.
+
+[9] Lecky's _England_, vol. i. p. 522.
+
+[10] According to Hallam the thirty years which followed the Treaty of
+Utrecht 'was the most prosperous season that England had ever
+experienced.'--_Const. Hist._ ii. 464.
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+THE POETS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ALEXANDER POPE.
+
+
+It is not unreasonable to call the period we are considering 'the Age of
+Pope.' He is the representative poet of his century. Its literary merits
+and defects are alike conspicuous in his verse, and he stands
+immeasurably above the numerous versifiers who may be said to belong to
+his school. Savage Landor has observed that there is no such thing as a
+school of poetry, and this is true in the sense that the essence of this
+divine art cannot be transmitted, but the form of the art may be, and
+Pope's style of workmanship made it readily imitable by accomplished
+craftsmen. Although he affected to call poetry an idle trade he devoted
+his whole life to its pursuit, and there are few instances in literature
+in which genius and unwearied labour have been so successfully united.
+It is to Pope's credit, that, with everything against him in the race of
+life, he attained the goal for which he started in his youth. The means
+he employed to reach it were frequently perverse and discreditable, but
+the courage with which he overcame the obstacles in his path commands
+our admiration.
+
+[Sidenote: Alexander Pope (1688-1744).]
+
+Alexander Pope was born in London on May 21st, 1688. He was the only son
+of his father, a merchant or tradesman, and a Roman Catholic at a time
+when the members of that church were proscribed by law. The boy was a
+cripple from his birth, and suffered from great bodily weakness both in
+youth and manhood. Looking back upon his life in after years he called
+it a 'long disease.' The elder Pope seems to have retired from business
+soon after his son's birth, and at Binfield, nine miles from Windsor,
+twenty-seven years of the poet's life were spent. As a 'papist' Pope was
+excluded from the Universities and from every public career, but even
+under happier circumstances his health would have condemned him to a
+secluded life. He gained some instruction from the family priest, and
+also went for a short time to school, but for the most part he was
+self-educated, and studied so severely that at seventeen his life was
+probably saved by the sound advice of Dr. Radcliffe to read less and to
+ride on horseback every day. The rhyming faculty was very early
+developed, and to use his own phrase he 'lisped in numbers.' As a boy he
+felt the magic of Spenser, whose enchanting sweetness and boundless
+wealth of imagination have been now for three hundred years a joy to
+every lover of poetry. Something, too, he learned from Waller and from
+Sandys, both of whom, but especially the former, had been of service in
+giving smoothness to the iambic distich, in which all of Pope's best
+poems are written. Dryden, however, whom when a little boy he saw at
+Will's coffee-house--'_Virgilium tantum vidi_' records the memorable
+day--was the poet whose influence he felt most powerfully. Like Gray
+several years later, he declared that he learnt versification wholly
+from his works. From 'knowing Walsh,' the best critic in the nation in
+Dryden's opinion, the youthful Pope received much friendly counsel; and
+he had another wise friend in Sir William Trumbull, formerly Secretary
+of State, who recognized his genius, and gave him as warm a friendship
+as an old man can offer to a young one. The dissolute Restoration
+dramatist, Wycherley, was also his temporary companion. The old man, if
+Pope's story be true, asked him to correct his poems, which are indeed
+beyond correction, as the youthful critic appears to have hinted, and
+the two parted company.
+
+The _Pastorals_, written, according to Pope's assertion, at the age of
+sixteen, were published in 1709, and won an amount of praise
+incomprehensible in the present day. Mr. Leslie Stephen has happily
+appraised their value in calling them 'mere school-boy exercises.' Not
+thus, however, were they regarded by the poet, or by the critics of his
+age, yet neither he nor they could have divined the rapid progress of
+his fame, and that in about six years' time he would be regarded as the
+greatest of living poets. The _Essay on Criticism_, written, it appears,
+in 1709, was published two years later, and received the highest honour
+a poem could then have. It was praised by Addison in the _Spectator_ as
+'a very fine poem,' and 'a masterpiece in its kind.' The 'kind,'
+suggested by the _Ars Poetica_ of Horace, and the _Art Poetique_ of
+Boileau--translated with Dryden's help by Sir William Soame--suited the
+current taste for criticism and argument in rhyme, which had led
+Roscommon to write an _Essay on Translated Verse_, and Sheffield an
+_Essay on Poetry_. The _Essay on Criticism_ is a marvellous production
+for a young man who had scarcely passed his maturity when it was
+published. To have written lines and couplets that live still in the
+language and are on everyone's lips is an achievement of which any poet
+might be proud, and there are at least twenty such lines or couplets in
+the poem.
+
+In 1713 _Windsor Forest_ appeared. Through the most susceptible years of
+life the poet had lived in the country, but Nature and Pope were not
+destined to become friends; he looked at her 'through the spectacles of
+books' and his description of natural objects is invariably of the
+conventional type. Although never a resident in London he was unable in
+the exercise of his art to breathe any atmosphere save that of the town,
+and might have said, in the words of Lessing to his friend Kleist, 'When
+you go to the country I go to the coffee-house.'[11]
+
+The use, or as it would be more correct to say the abuse, of classical
+mythology in the description of rural scenes had the sanction of great
+names, and Pope was not likely to reject what Spenser and Milton had
+sanctioned. Gods and goddesses therefore play a conspicuous part in his
+description of the Forest. The following lines afford a fair
+illustration of the style throughout, and the sole merit of the poem is
+the smoothness of versification in which Pope excelled.
+
+    'Not proud Olympus yields a nobler sight,
+    Though gods assembled grace his towering height,
+    Than what more humble mountains offer here,
+    When in their blessings all those gods appear.
+    See Pan with flocks, with fruits Pomona crowned,
+    Here blushing Flora paints th' enamelled ground,
+    Here Ceres' gifts in waving prospect stand,
+    And nodding tempt the joyful reaper's hand;
+    Rich Industry sits smiling on the plains,
+    And peace and plenty tell a Stuart reigns.
+
+Pope, who was never known to laugh, was a great wit, but his sense of
+humour was small, and the descent from these deities to Queen Anne
+savours not a little of bathos.
+
+In 1712 Pope had published _The Rape of the Lock_, which Addison justly
+praised as 'a delicious little thing.' At the same time he advised the
+poet not to attempt improving it, which he proposed to do, and Pope most
+unreasonably attributed this advice to jealousy. In 1714 the delightful
+poem appeared in its present form with the machinery of sylphs and
+gnomes adopted from the mysteries of the Rosicrucians. Pope styles it an
+heroi-comical poem, and judged in the light of a burlesque it is
+conceived and executed with an art that is beyond praise. Lord Petre, a
+Roman Catholic peer, had cut off a lock of Miss Arabella Fermor's hair,
+much to the indignation of her family and possibly of the young lady
+also. Pope wrote the poem to remove the discord caused by the fatal
+shears, but its publication, and two or three offensive allusions it
+contained, only served to add to Miss Fermor's annoyance. 'The
+celebrated lady herself,' the poet wrote, 'is offended, and which is
+stranger, not at herself but me. Is not this enough to make a writer
+never be tender of another's character or fame?' But Pope, whose praise
+of women is too often a libel upon them, was not as tender as he ought
+to have been of the lady's reputation.
+
+The offence felt by the heroine of the poem is now unheeded; the dainty
+art exhibited is a permanent delight, and our language can boast no more
+perfect specimen of the poetical burlesque than the _Rape of the Lock_.
+The machinery of the sylphs is managed with perfect skill, and nothing
+can be more admirable than the charge delivered by Ariel to the sylphs
+to guard Belinda from an apprehended but unknown danger. The concluding
+lines shall be quoted:
+
+    'Whatever spirit, careless of his charge,
+    His post neglects, or leaves the fair at large,
+    Shall feel sharp vengeance soon o'ertake his sins,
+    Be stopped in vials, or transfixed with pins;
+    Or plunged in lakes of bitter washes lie,
+    Or wedged, whole ages, in a bodkin's eye;
+    Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain,
+    While clogged he beats his silken wings in vain;
+    Or alum styptics, with contracting power,
+    Shrink his thin essence like a rivelled flower;
+    Or, as Ixion fixed, the wretch shall feel
+    The giddy motion of the whirling mill,
+    In fumes of burning chocolate shall glow,
+    And tremble at the sea that froths below!'
+
+Another striking portion of the poem is the description of the Spanish
+game of Ombre, imitated from Vida's _Scacchia Ludus_. 'Vida's poem,'
+says Mr. Elwin, 'is a triumph of ingenuity, when the intricacy of chess
+is considered, and the difficulty of expressing the moves in a dead
+language. Yet the original is eclipsed by Pope's more consummate
+copy.'[12]
+
+Many famous passages illustrative of Pope's art might be extracted from
+this poem, but it will suffice to give the portrait of Belinda:
+
+    'On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,
+    Which Jews might kiss and infidels adore;
+    Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose,
+    Quick as her eyes and as unfixed as those;
+    Favours to none, to all she smiles extends,
+    Oft she rejects, but never once offends.
+    Bright as the sun her eyes the gazers strike,
+    And, like the sun, they shine on all alike.
+    Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride,
+    Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide:
+    If to her share some female errors fall,
+    Look on her face and you'll forget them all.'
+
+The _Temple of Fame_, a liberal paraphrase of Chaucer's _House of Fame_,
+followed in 1715, and despite the praise of Steele, who declared that it
+had a thousand beauties, and of Dr. Johnson, who observes that every
+part is splendid, must be pronounced one of Pope's least attractive
+pieces. Two poems of the emotional and sentimental class, _Eloisa to
+Abelard_ and the _Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady_ (1717),
+are more worthy of attention. Nowhere, probably, in the language are
+finer specimens to be met with of rhetorical pathos, but poets like
+Burns, Cowper, Wordsworth, and Tennyson can touch the heart more deeply
+by a phrase or couplet than Pope is able to do by his elaborate
+representations of passion. The reader is not likely to be affected by
+the following response of Eloisa to an invitation from the spirit world:
+
+    'I come, I come! prepare your roseate bowers,
+    Celestial palms and ever-blooming flowers.
+    Thither, where sinners may have rest, I go,
+    Where flames refined in breasts seraphic glow;
+    Thou, Abelard! the last sad office pay,
+    And smooth my passage to the realms of day;
+    See my lips tremble and my eye-balls roll,
+    Suck my last breath and catch my flying soul!
+    Ah no--in sacred vestments may'st thou stand,
+    The hallowed taper trembling in thy hand,
+    Present the Cross before my lifted eye,
+    Teach me at once and learn of me to die.'
+
+The music or the fervour of the poem delighted Porson, famous for his
+Greek and his potations, and whether drunk or sober he would recite, or
+rather sing it, from the beginning to the end. The felicity of the
+versification is incontestable, but at the same time artifice is more
+visible than nature throughout the Epistle, and this is true also of
+_The Elegy_, a composition in which Pope's method of treating mournful
+topics is excellently displayed. The opening lines are suggested by Ben
+Jonson's _Elegy on the Marchioness of Winchester_, a lady whose death
+was also lamented by Milton. These we shall not quote, but take in
+preference a passage which is perhaps as graceful an expression of
+poetical rhetoric as can be found in Pope's verse.
+
+    'By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,
+    By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed,
+    By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned,
+    By strangers honoured, and by strangers mourned!
+    What though no friends in sable weeds appear,
+    Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year,
+    And bear about the mockery of woe,
+    To midnight dances and the public show?
+    What though no weeping Loves thy ashes grace,
+    Nor polished marble emulate thy face?
+    What though no sacred earth allow thee room,
+    Nor hallowed dirge be muttered o'er thy tomb?
+    Yet shall thy grave with rising flowers be drest,
+    And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast;
+    There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow,
+    There the first roses of the year shall blow;
+    While angels with their silver wings o'ershade
+    The ground, now sacred by thy reliques made.'
+
+For some years Pope had been brooding over and slowly labouring at a
+task which was destined to add greatly to his fame and also to his
+fortune.
+
+In 1708 his early friend, Sir William Trumbull, had advised him to
+translate the _Iliad_, and five years later the poet, following the
+custom of the age, invited subscriptions to the work, which was to
+appear in six volumes at the price of six guineas. About this time
+Swift, who by the aid of his powerful pen was assisting Harley and St.
+John to rule the country, made Pope's acquaintance, and ultimately
+became perhaps the most faithful of his friends. Swift, who was able to
+help everybody but himself, zealously promoted the poet's scheme, and
+was heard to say at the coffee-houses that 'the best poet in England Mr.
+Pope a Papist' had begun a translation of Homer which he should not
+print till he had a thousand guineas for him.
+
+He was not satisfied with this service, but introduced the poet to St.
+John, Atterbury, and Harley. The first volume of Pope's _Homer_ appeared
+in 1715, and in the same year Addison's friend Tickell published his
+version of the first book of the _Iliad_. Pope affected to believe that
+this was done at Addison's instigation.
+
+Already, as we have said, there had been a misunderstanding between the
+two famous wits, and Pope, whose irritable temperament led him into many
+quarrels and created a host of enemies, ceased from this time to regard
+Addison as a friend. Probably neither of them can be exempted from
+blame, and we can well believe that Addison, whose supremacy had
+formerly been uncontested, could not without some jealousy 'bear a
+brother near the throne,' but the chief interest of the estrangement to
+the literary student is the famous satire written at a later date, in
+which Addison appears under the character of Atticus.[13] It is
+necessary to add here that the whole story of the quarrel comes to us
+from Pope, who is never to be trusted, either in prose or verse, when he
+wishes to excuse himself at the expense of a rival.
+
+Pope had no cause for discontent at his position; not even the strife of
+parties stood in the way of his _Homer_, which was praised alike by Whig
+and Tory, and brought the translator a fortune. It has been calculated
+that the entire version of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, the payments for
+which covered eleven years, yielded Pope a clear profit of about L9,000,
+and it is said to have made at the same time the fortune of his
+publisher. Pope, I believe, was the first poet who, without the aid of
+patronage or of the stage, was able to live in comfort from the sale of
+his works.
+
+He knew how to value money, but fame was dearer to him than wealth, and
+of both he had now enough to satisfy his ambition. Posterity has not
+endorsed the general verdict of his contemporaries on his famous
+translation. He had to encounter indeed some severe comments, and
+Richard Bentley, the greatest classical scholar then living, must have
+vexed the sensitive poet when he told him that his version was a pretty
+poem but he must not call it Homer. By this criticism, however, as
+Matthew Arnold has observed, the work is judged in spite of all its
+power and attractiveness. Pope wants Homer's simplicity and directness,
+and his artifices of style are utterly alien to the Homeric spirit. Dr.
+Johnson quotes the judgment of critics who say that Pope's _Homer_
+'exhibits no resemblance of the original and characteristic manner of
+the Father of Poetry, as it wants his awful simplicity, his artless
+grandeur, his unaffected majesty,' and observes that this cannot be
+totally denied. He argues, however, that even in Virgil's time the
+demand for elegance had been so much increased that mere nature could be
+endured no longer, that every age improves in elegance, that if some
+Ovidian graces are, alas! not to be found in the English _Iliad_ 'to
+have added can be no great crime if nothing be taken away.' Johnson was
+not aware that to add 'poetical elegances' to the words and thoughts of
+a great poet is to destroy much of the beauty of his verse and many of
+its most striking characteristics. As well might he say that the beauty
+of a lovely woman can be enhanced by a profusion of trinkets, or that a
+Greek statue would be more worthy of admiration if it were elegantly
+dressed. Dr. Johnson says, with perfect truth, that Pope wrote for his
+own age, and it may be added that he exhibits extraordinary art in
+ministering to the taste of the age; yet it is hardly too much to affirm
+that in the exercise of his craft as a translator he is continually
+false to nature and therefore false to Homer.
+
+On the other hand his _Iliad_ if read as a story runs so smoothly, that
+the reader, and especially the young reader, is carried through the
+narrative without any sense of fatigue. It is not a little praise to say
+that it is a poem which every school-boy will read with pleasure, and in
+which every critical reader who is content to surrender his judgment for
+awhile, will find pleasure also. Mr. Courthope in his elaborate and
+masterly _Life of Pope_, which gives the coping stone to an exhaustive
+edition of the poet's works, praises a fine passage from the _Iliad_,
+which in his judgment attains perhaps the highest level of which the
+heroic couplet is capable, and 'I do not believe,' he adds, 'that any
+Englishman of taste and imagination can read the lines without feeling
+that if Pope had produced nothing but his translation of Homer, he would
+be entitled to the praise of a great original poet.'
+
+Pope's editor could not perhaps have selected a better illustration of
+his best manner than this speech of Sarpedon to Glaucus, which is
+parodied in the _Rape of the Lock_. The concluding lines shall be
+quoted.
+
+    'Could all our care elude the gloomy grave,
+    Which claims no less the fearful than the brave,
+    For lust of fame I should not vainly dare
+    In fighting fields, nor urge the soul to war,
+    But since, alas! ignoble age must come,
+    Disease, and death's inexorable doom;
+    The life which others pay let us bestow,
+    And give to fame what we to nature owe;
+    Brave though we fall, and honoured if we live,
+    Or let us glory gain, or glory give.'
+
+We may add that neither its false glitter nor Pope's inability--shared
+in great measure with every translator--to catch the spirit of the
+original, can conceal the sustained power of this brilliant work. Its
+merit is the more wonderful since the poet's knowledge of Greek was
+extremely meagre, and he is said to have been constantly indebted to
+earlier translations. Gibbon said that his _Homer_ had every merit
+except that of faithfulness to the original; and Pope, could he have
+heard it, might well have been satisfied with the verdict of Gray, a
+great scholar as well as a great poet, that no other version would ever
+equal his.
+
+All that has been hitherto said with regard to Pope and Homer relates to
+his version of the _Iliad_. On that he expended his best powers, and on
+that it is evident he bestowed infinite pains. The _Odyssey_, one of the
+most beautiful stories in the world, appears to have been taken up with
+a weary pen, and in putting it into English he sought the assistance of
+Broome and Fenton, two minor poets and Cambridge scholars. They
+translated twelve books out of the twenty-four, and so skilfully did
+they catch Pope's style that it is almost impossible to discern any
+difference between his work and theirs. The literary partnership led to
+one of Pope's discreditable manoeuvres, in which, strange to say, he
+was assisted by Broome, whom he induced to set his name to a falsehood.
+Pope as we have said, translated twelve books, while eight were allotted
+to Broome and four to Fenton. Yet he led Broome, unknown to his
+colleague, to ascribe only three books to himself and two to Fenton, and
+at the same time the poet, who confessed that he could 'equivocate
+pretty genteely,' stated the amount he had paid for Broome's eight books
+as if it had been paid for three. The story is disgraceful both to Pope
+and Broome, and why the latter should have practised such a deception is
+unaccountable. He was a beneficed clergyman and a man of wealth, so that
+he could not have lied for money even if Pope had been willing to bribe
+him. Fenton was indignant, as he well might be, but he was too lazy or
+too good-natured to expose the fraud. Broome had his deserts later on,
+but Pope, who ridiculed him in the _Dunciad_, and in his _Treatise on
+the Bathos_, was the last man in the world entitled to render them.
+
+The partnership in poetry which produced the _Odyssey_ was not a great
+literary success, and most readers will prefer the version of Cowper,
+whose blank verse, though out of harmony with the rapid movement of the
+_Iliad_ is not unfitted for the quieter beauties of the _Odyssey_.
+
+In 1721, prior to the publication of his version, the poet had agreed to
+edit an edition of Shakespeare, a task as difficult as any which a man
+of letters can undertake. Pope was not qualified to achieve it. He was
+comparatively ignorant of Elizabethan literature, the dry labours of an
+editor were not to his taste, and he lacked true sympathy with the
+genius of the poet. Failure was therefore inevitable, and Theobald, who
+has some solid merits as a commentator, found it easy to discern and to
+expose the errors of Pope. For doing so he was afterwards 'hitched' into
+the _Dunciad_, and made in the first instance its hero. The
+"Shakespeare" was published in 1725 in six volumes quarto. 'Its chief
+claim,' Mr. Courthope writes, 'to interest at the present day, is that
+it forms the immediate starting-point for the long succession of Pope's
+satires.... The vexation caused to the poet by the undoubted justice of
+many of Theobald's strictures procured for the latter the unwelcome
+honour of being recognized as the King of the Dunces, and coupled with
+Bentley's disparaging mention of the Translation of the _Iliad_ provoked
+the many contemptuous allusions to verbal criticism in Pope's later
+satires.'[14]
+
+A striking peculiarity of Pope's art may be mentioned here. He was able
+only to play on one instrument, the heroic couplet. When he attempted
+any other form of verse the result, if not total failure, was
+mediocrity. It was a daring act of Pope to suggest by his _Ode on St.
+Cecilia's Day_, a comparison with the _Alexander's Feast_ of Dryden. The
+performance is perfunctory rather than spontaneous, and the few lyrical
+efforts he attempted in addition, show no ear for music. The voice of
+song with which even the minor poets of the Elizabethan age were gifted
+was silent in England, though not in Scotland, during the first half of
+the eighteenth century, or if a faint note is occasionally heard, as in
+the lyrics of Gay, it is without the grace and joyous freedom of the
+earlier singers. Not that the lyrical form was wanting; many minor
+versifiers, like Hughes, Sheffield, Granville, and Somerville, wrote
+what they called songs, but unfortunately without an ear for singing.
+
+In this short summary and criticism of a poet's literary life it would
+be out of place to insert many biographical details, were it not that,
+in the case of Pope, the student who knows little or nothing of the man
+will fail to understand his poetry. A distinguished critic has said that
+the more we know of Pope's age the better shall we understand Pope. With
+equal truth it may be said that a familiarity with the poet's personal
+character is essential to an adequate appreciation of his genius. His
+friendships, his enmities, his mode of life at Twickenham, the entangled
+tale of his correspondence, his intrigues in the pursuit of fame, his
+constitutional infirmities, the personal character of his satires, these
+are a few of the prominent topics with which a student of the poet must
+make himself conversant. It may be well, therefore, to give the history
+in brief outline, and we have now reached the crisis in his fortunes
+which will conveniently enable us to do so.
+
+In 1716 Pope's family had removed from Binfield to Chiswick. A year
+later he lost his father, to whose memory he has left a filial tribute,
+and shortly afterwards he bought the small estate of five acres at
+Twickenham with which his name is so intimately associated. Before
+reaching the age of thirty Pope was regarded as the first of living
+poets. His income more than sufficed for all his wants. At Twickenham
+the great in intellect, and the great by birth, met around his table; he
+was welcomed by the highest society in the land, and although proud of
+his intimacy with the nobility, 'unplaced, unpensioned,' he was 'no
+man's heir or slave,' and jealously preserved his independence. 'Pope,'
+says Johnson, 'never set genius to sale, he never flattered those whom
+he did not love, or praised those whom he did not esteem,' and he was,
+we may add, in this respect a striking contrast to Dryden, who lavished
+his flatteries wholesale.
+
+With a mother to whom he was tenderly attached, with troops of friends,
+with an undisputed supremacy in the world of letters, and with a
+vocation that was the joy of his heart,--if possessions like these can
+confer happiness, Pope should have been a happy man.
+
+But his 'crazy carcass,' as the painter Jervas called it, was united to
+the most suspicious and irritable of temperaments, and the fine wine of
+his poetry was rarely free from bitterness in the cup. Pope could be a
+warm friend, but was not always a faithful one, and even women whose
+friendship he had enjoyed suffered from the venom of his satire. He was
+not a man to rise above his age, and it would be charitable to ascribe a
+portion of his grossness to it. Voltaire is said by his loose talk to
+have driven Pope's good old mother from the table at Twickenham;
+Walpole's language not only in his home at Houghton, but at Court, was
+insufferably coarse; and Pope wrote to ladies in language that must
+have disgusted modest women even in his free-speaking day. His foul
+lines on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, to whom he had formerly written in a
+most ridiculous strain of gallantry, and to whom he is said to have made
+love,[15] cannot easily be characterized in moderate language. Lady Mary
+had little delicacy herself, but the poet, who thought himself a
+gentleman, had no excuse for abusing her. Excuses indeed are not easily
+to be offered for Pope's moral defalcations. His life was a series of
+petty intrigues, trickeries, and deceptions. He could not, it has been
+said,--the conceit is borrowed from Young's _Satires_--'take his tea
+without a stratagem,' and knew how to utter the loftiest sentiments
+while acting the most contemptible of parts.
+
+The long and intricate deceptions which he practised to secure the
+publication of his letters, while so manipulating them as to enhance his
+credit, were suspected to some extent in his own age, and have been
+painfully laid bare in ours. It is an amazing story, which may be read
+at large in Mr. Dilke's _Papers of a Critic_, or in the elaborate
+narrative of Mr. Elwin in the first volume of his edition of _Pope_. It
+will be there seen how the poet compiled fictitious letters, suppressed
+passages, altered dates, manufactured letters out of other letters, and
+secretly enabled the infamous bookseller Curll to publish his
+correspondence surreptitiously in order that he might have the excuse
+for printing it himself in a more carefully prepared form. The worst
+feature of the miserable story is the poet's conduct with regard to
+Swift, his oldest and most faithful friend. On this subject the writer
+may be allowed to quote what he has said elsewhere.
+
+'Years before, Swift, who cared little for literary reputation, and
+never resorted to any artifice to promote it, had suspected Pope of a
+desire to make literary capital out of their correspondence, and the
+poet had excused himself according to his wonted fashion. After the
+publication by Curll, he begged Swift to return him his letters lest
+they should fall into the bookseller's hands. The Dean replied, no doubt
+to Pope's infinite chagrin, that they were safe in his keeping, as he
+had given strict orders in his will that his executors should burn every
+letter he might leave behind him. Afterwards he promised that Pope
+should eventually have them but declined giving them up during his
+lifetime. Hereupon Pope changed his tactics and begged that he might
+have the letters to print. The publication by Curll of two letters
+(probably another _ruse_ of Pope's) formed an additional ground for
+urging his request. All his efforts were unavailing until he obtained
+the assistance of Lord Orrery, to whom Swift was at length induced to
+deliver up the letters. There was a hiatus in the correspondence and
+Pope took advantage of this and of a blunder made by Swift, whose memory
+at the time was not to be trusted, to hint, what he dared not directly
+assert, that the bulk of the collection remained with the Dean, and that
+Swift's own letters had been returned to him. We have now irresistible
+proof that the Dublin edition of the letters was taken from an
+impression sent from England and sent by Pope. Nor was this all. The
+poet acted with still greater meanness, for he had the audacity to
+deplore the sad vanity of Swift in permitting the publication of his
+correspondence, and to declare that "no decay of body is half so
+miserable."'[16]
+
+That he had many fine qualities in spite of the littlenesses which mar
+his character one would be loath to doubt. Among his nobler traits was
+an ardent passion for literature, a courage which enabled him to face
+innumerable obstacles--'Pope,' says Mr. Swinburne, 'was as bold as a
+lion'--and a constant devotion to his parents, especially to his mother,
+who lived to a great age. There are no sincerer words in his letters
+than those which relate to Mrs. Pope. 'It is my mother only,' he once
+wrote, regretting his inability to leave home, 'that robs me of half the
+pleasure of my life, and that gives me the greatest at the same time,'
+and the lines expressing his affection for her are familiar to most
+readers. Truly does Johnson say that 'life has among its soothing and
+quiet comforts few things better to give than such a son.'
+
+Among his lady friends the dearest was Martha Blount, the younger of two
+beautiful sisters, of whom Gay sang as 'the fair-haired Martha and
+Teresa brown.' They came of an old Roman Catholic family residing at
+Mapledurham, and were little more than girls when Pope first knew them.
+With the elder sister he quarrelled, but Martha was faithful to him for
+life, and when he was dying it is said that her coming in 'gave a new
+turn of spirits or a temporary strength to him.' Swift, as we have said,
+was one of the warmest of Pope's friends, and his letters to the poet
+are by far the most attractive portion of the published correspondence.
+He visited him at Twickenham more than once, and on one occasion spent
+some months under his roof. Bolingbroke, his 'guide, philosopher, and
+friend,' who for a time lived near to him at Dawley, was a frequent
+guest, so also, in the days of their intimacy, was Lady Mary, who had a
+house at Twickenham. Thomson the poet, too, lived not far off, and was
+visited by his brother bard, whom Thomson's barber describes as 'a
+strange, ill-formed, little figure of a man,' but he adds, 'I have
+heard him and Quin and Patterson[17] talk so together that I could have
+listened to them for ever.' Arbuthnot, one of the finest wits and best
+men of his time, who, as Swift said, could do everything but walk, was
+also a faithful friend of Pope; so was Gay, and so was Bishop Atterbury,
+who, as the poet said, first taught him to think "as becomes a
+reasonable creature."
+
+James Craggs, who had been formerly Secretary of State, and was on the
+warmest terms of intimacy with the poet, resided for some time near his
+friend in order to enjoy the pleasure of his society. When in office he
+proposed to pay him a pension of L300 a year out of the secret service
+money, but Pope declined the offer. Statesmen and men of active pursuits
+cultivated the society of the poetical recluse, and Pope, whose
+compliments are monuments more enduring than marble, has recorded their
+visits to Twickenham:
+
+    'There, my retreat the best companions grace,
+    Chiefs out of war, and statesmen out of place,
+    There St. John mingles with my friendly bowl,
+    The feast of reason and the flow of soul,
+    And he whose lightning pierced the Iberian lines[18]
+    Now forms my quincunx and now ranks my vines.'
+
+Among Pope's associates was the 'blameless Bethel,'
+
+           '---- who always speaks his thought,
+    And always thinks the very thing he ought,'
+
+and Berkeley who had 'every virtue under heaven,' and Lord Bathurst who
+was unspoiled by wealth and joined
+
+    'With splendour, charity; with plenty, health;'
+
+and 'humble Allen' who
+
+    'Did good by stealth and blushed to find it fame;'
+
+and many another friend who lives in his verse and is secure of the
+immortality a poet can confer.
+
+The five volumes which contain the letters between Pope and his friends
+exhibit an interesting picture of the times and of the writers. The
+poet's own letters, as may be supposed from the thought he bestowed on
+them, are full of artifice, and composed with the most elaborate care.
+Every sentence is elaborately turned, and the ease and naturalness which
+give a charm to the letters of Cowper and of Southey are not to be found
+in Pope. His epistles are weighted with compliments and with professions
+of the most exalted morality. 'He laboured them,' says Horace Walpole,
+'as much as the _Essay on Man_, and as they were written to everybody
+they do not look as if they had been written to anybody.' Pope said
+once, what he did not mean, that he could not write agreeable letters.
+This was true; his letters are, as Charles Fox said, 'very bad,' but
+some of Pope's friends write admirably, and if there is much that can be
+skipped without loss in the correspondence, there is much which no
+student of the period can afford to neglect. 'There has accumulated,'
+says Mark Pattison, 'round Pope's poems a mass of biographical anecdote
+such as surrounds the writings of no other English author,' and not a
+little knowledge of this kind is to be gleaned from his correspondence.
+
+In the years spent at Twickenham Pope produced his most characteristic
+work. It is as a satirist that he, with one exception, excels all
+English poets, and Pope's careful workmanship often makes his satirical
+touches more attractive than Dryden's.
+
+'To attack vices in the abstract,' he said to Arbuthnot, 'without
+touching persons, may be safe fighting indeed, but it is fighting with
+shadows;' and Pope, under the plea of a detestation of vice, generally
+betrayed his contempt or hatred of the men whom he assailed. No doubt
+the critics and Grub Street hacks of the day gave him provocation. Pope,
+however, was frequently the first to take the field, and so eager was he
+to meet his foes that it would seem as if he enjoyed the conflict. Yet
+there were times when he felt acutely the assaults made upon him. 'These
+things are my diversion,' he once said, with a ghastly smile, and it was
+observed that he writhed in agony like a man undergoing an operation.
+The attacks made with these paper bullets, not only on the side of Grub
+Street but on his own, show very vividly the coarseness of London
+society. Courtesy was disregarded by men who claimed to be wits and
+scholars. Pope held, perhaps, a higher place in literature in his own
+day than Lord Tennyson has held in ours, for the best beloved of
+Laureates had noble rivals and friends who came near to him in fame,
+while Pope, until the publication of Thomson's _Seasons_, in 1730, stood
+alone in poetical reputation. Yet he was reviled in the language of
+Billingsgate, and had no scruple in using that language himself. Late in
+life Pope collected the libels made upon him and bound them in four
+volumes, but he omitted to mention the provocation which gave rise to
+many of them. Eusden, Colley Cibber, Dennis, Theobald, Blackmore, Smyth,
+and Lord Hervey are among the prominent criminals placed in Pope's
+pillory, and the student of the age may find an idle entertainment in
+tracking the poet's thorny course, while he gives an unenviable
+notoriety to names of which the larger number were 'born to be forgot.'
+
+In 1725 Swift had written to Pope advising him not to immortalize the
+names of bad poets by putting them in his verse, and Pope replied to
+this advice by saying, 'I am much the happier for finding (a better
+thing than our wits) our judgments jump in the notion that all
+scribblers should be passed by in silence.' How entirely his inclination
+got the better of his judgment was seen three years later in the
+_Dunciad_. The first three books of this famous satire were published in
+1728. It is generally regarded as Pope's masterpiece, but the accuracy
+of such an estimate is doubtful. So heavily weighted is the poem with
+notes, prefaces, and introductions that the text appears to be smothered
+by them. It was Pope's aim to mystify his readers, and in this he has
+succeeded, for the mystifications of the poem even confound the
+commentators. The personalities of the satire excited a keen interest,
+and much amusement to readers who were not included in Pope's black list
+of dunces. At the same time it roused a number of authors to fury, as it
+well might. His satire is often unjust, and he includes among the dunces
+men wholly undeserving of the name, who had had the misfortune to offend
+him. To place a great scholar like Bentley, an eloquent and earnest
+preacher like Whitefield, and a man of genius like Defoe among the
+dunces was to stultify himself, and if Pope in his spite against
+Theobald found some justification for giving the commentator
+pre-eminence for dulness in three books of the _Dunciad_, his anger got
+the better of his wit when in Book IV. he dethroned Theobald to exalt
+Colley Cibber. For Cibber, with a thousand faults, so far from being
+dull had a buoyancy of heart and a sprightliness of intellect wholly out
+of harmony with the character he is made to assume.
+
+That he might have some excuse for his dashing assaults in the
+_Dunciad_, Pope had published in the third volume of the _Miscellanies_,
+of which he and Swift, Arbuthnot and Gay were the joint authors, an
+_Essay on Bathos_ in which several writers of the day were sneered at.
+The assault provoked the counter-attack for which Pope was looking, and
+he then produced the satire which was already prepared for the press. In
+its publication the poet, as usual, made use of trickery and deception.
+At first he issued an imperfect edition with initial letters instead of
+names, but on seeing his way to act more openly, the poem appeared in a
+large edition with names and notes.
+
+'In order to lessen the danger of prosecution for libel,' Mr. Courthope
+writes, 'he prevailed on three peers, with whom he was on the most
+intimate terms, the good-natured Lord Bathurst, the easy-going Earl of
+Oxford, and the magnificent Earl of Burlington, to act as his nominal
+publishers; and it was through them that copies of the enlarged edition
+were at first distributed, the booksellers not being allowed to sell any
+in their shops. The King and Queen were each presented with a copy by
+the hands of Sir R. Walpole. In this manner, as the report quickly
+spread that the poem was the property of rich and powerful noblemen,
+there was a natural disinclination on the part of the dunces to take
+legal proceedings, and the prestige of the _Dunciad_ being thus fairly
+established, the booksellers were allowed to proceed with the sale in
+regular course.'[19]
+
+The _Dunciad_ owes its merit to the literary felicities with which its
+pages abound. The theme is a mean one. Pope, from his social eminence at
+Twickenham, looks with scorn on the authors who write for bread, and
+with malignity on the authors whom he regarded as his enemies. There
+is, for the most part, little elevation in his method of treatment, and
+we can almost fancy that we see a cruel joy in the poet's face as he
+impales the victims of his wrath. Some portions of the _Dunciad_ are
+tainted with the imagery which, to quote the strong phrase of Mr.
+Churton Collins, often makes Swift as offensive as a polecat,[20] and
+there is no part of it which can be read with unmixed pleasure, if we
+except the noble lines which conclude the satire. Those lines may be
+almost said to redeem the faults of the poem, and they prove
+incontestably, if such proof be needed, Pope's claim to a place among
+the poets.
+
+    'In vain, in vain,--the all-composing Hour
+    Resistless falls; the Muse obeys the Power.
+    She comes! she comes! the sable Throne behold,
+    Of Night primaeval and of Chaos old!
+    Before her Fancy's gilded clouds decay,
+    And all its varying rainbows die away.
+    Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,
+    The meteor drops, and in a flash expires,
+    As one by one at dread Medea's strain,
+    The sickening stars fade off the etherial plain;
+    As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand opprest,
+    Closed one by one to everlasting rest;
+    Thus at her felt approach and secret might,
+    Art after Art goes out, and all is Night.
+    See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,
+    Mountains of Casuistry heaped o'er her head!
+    Philosophy that leaned on Heaven before,
+    Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more;
+    Physic of Metaphysic begs defence,
+    And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense!
+    See Mystery to Mathematics fly!
+    In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.
+    Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,
+    And unawares Morality expires.
+    Nor public Flame, nor private, dares to shine;
+    Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!
+    Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos! is restored;
+    Light dies before thy uncreating word;
+    Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
+    And universal Darkness buries All.'
+
+The publication of the _Dunciad_ showed Pope where his main strength as
+a poet lay. That the writers he had attacked, in many instances without
+provocation, should resent the ungrateful notoriety conferred upon them
+was inevitable. In self-defence, and to add to the provocation already
+given, he started a paper called the _Grub Street Journal_, which
+existed for eight years--Pope, who had no scruple in 'hazarding a lie,'
+denying all the time that he had any connection with it.
+
+His next work of significance, _The Essay on Man_, a professedly
+philosophical poem by an author who knew little of philosophy, was
+published in four epistles, in 1733-4. Bolingbroke's brilliant,
+versatile, and shallow intellect had strongly impressed Swift, and had
+also fascinated Pope. It has been commonly supposed that the _Essay_
+owes its existence to his suggestion and guidance. The poet believed in
+his philosophy, and had the loftiest estimate of his genius. In the last
+and perhaps finest passage of the poem he calls Bolingbroke the 'master
+of the poet and the song,' and draws a picture of the ambitious
+statesman as beautiful as it is false. In Mark Pattison's Introduction
+to _The Essay on Man_,[21] which every student of Pope will read, he
+objects to the notion that the poet took the scheme of his work from
+Bolingbroke, observing that both derived their views from a common
+source.
+
+'Everywhere, in the pulpit, in the coffee-houses, in every pamphlet,
+argument on the origin of evil, on the goodness of God, and the
+constitution of the world was rife. Into the prevailing topic of polite
+conversation Bolingbroke, who returned from exile in 1723, was drawn by
+the bent of his native genius. Pope followed the example and impulse of
+his friend's more powerful mind. Thus much there was of special
+suggestion. But the arguments or topics of the poem are to be traced to
+books in much vogue at the time; to Shaftesbury's _Characteristics_
+(1711), King on the _Origin of Evil_ (1702), and particularly to
+Leibnitz, _Essais de Theodicee_ (1710).'
+
+In admitting that Pope followed the impulse of a more powerful mind, Mr.
+Pattison asserts as much perhaps as can be known with certainty as to
+Bolingbroke's influence, but it is reasonable to believe that the close
+intercourse of the two men did immensely sway the more impressionable,
+and, so far as philosophy is concerned, the more ignorant of the two.
+Mr. Pattison also overlooks the fact that Pope confessed to Warburton
+that he had never read a line of Leibnitz in his life. That the poet
+acknowledges his large debt to Bolingbroke, and that Bolingbroke
+confesses it was due, is all that can be declared with certainty. That
+which makes the _Essay_ worthy the reading is the fruit, not of the
+argument but of the poetry, and for that Pope trusted to his own genius.
+
+His attempt to 'vindicate the ways of God to man' is confused and
+contradictory, and no modern reader, perplexed with the mystery of
+existence, is likely to gain aid from Pope. Nominally a Roman Catholic,
+and in reality a deist, apart from poetry he does not seem to have had
+strong convictions on any subject, and was content to be swayed by the
+opinions current in society. In undertaking to write an ethical work
+like the _Essay_ his ambition was greater than his strength, yet if
+Pope's philosophy does not 'find' us, to use Coleridge's phrase, it did
+appeal to a large number of minds in his own day, and had not lost its
+popularity at a later period. The poem has been frequently translated
+into French, into Italian, and into German; it was pronounced by
+Voltaire to be the most useful and sublime didactic poem ever written in
+any language; it was admired by Kant and quoted in his lectures; and it
+received high praise from the Scotch philosopher, Dugald Stewart. The
+charm of poetical expression is lost or nearly lost in translations, and
+while the sense may be retained the aroma of the verse is gone. The
+popularity of the _Essay_ abroad is therefore not easily to be accounted
+for, unless we accept the theory that the shallow creed on which it is
+based suited an age less earnest than our own.[22]
+
+Pope has no strong convictions in this poem, but he has many moods. On
+one page he is a pantheist, on another he says what he probably did not
+mean, that God inspires men to do evil, and on a third that 'all our
+knowledge is ourselves to know.' Nowhere in the argument does Pope seem
+to have a firm standing, and De Quincey is not far wrong in saying that
+it is 'the realization of anarchy.'
+
+Read the poem for its poetical merits and you will forget its defects.
+Pope was a superficial teacher, but direct teaching is not the end of
+poetry. _The Essay on Man_ is not a poem which can be read and re-read
+with ever-growing delight, but there are passages in it of as fine an
+order as any that he has composed on more familiar subjects. Pope was,
+as Sir William Hamilton said, a curious reader, and the ideas versified
+in the poem may be traced to a variety of sources. Students who wish to
+follow this track will find all the help they need in Mr. Pattison's
+instructive notes, and in the comments attached to the poem in Elwin and
+Courthope's edition. In his Introduction Mr. Pattison observes that 'the
+subject of the _Essay on Man_ is not, considered in itself, one unfit
+for poetry. Had Pope had a genius for philosophy there was no reason why
+he should not have selected a philosophical subject. Didactic poetry is
+a mistake if not a contradiction in terms. But poetry is not necessarily
+didactic because its subject is philosophical.'
+
+It is always difficult to define the themes suitable for poetry. Many
+theories have been formed as to the scope of the art, and poets have
+been amply instructed by critics as to what they ought to do, and what
+they should avoid doing. The theories may appear sound, the arguments
+convincing, until a great poet arises and knocks them on the head. In a
+sense every poet of the highest order is also a philosopher and a
+prophet who sees into 'the life of things.' Whether a philosophical
+subject can be fitly represented in the imaginative light of poetry is a
+matter for discussion rather than for decision. In the case of Pope,
+however, it will be evident to all studious readers that he was
+incapable of the continuous thought needed for the argument of the
+_Essay_.
+
+'Anything like sustained reasoning,' says Mr. Leslie Stephen,' was
+beyond his reach. Pope felt and thought by shocks and electric
+flashes.... The defect was aggravated or caused by the physical
+infirmities which put sustained intellectual labour out of the
+question.'[23]
+
+Crousaz, a Swiss pastor and professor, who appears to have competed with
+Berkeley for a prize and won it, attacked Pope's _Essay_ for its want of
+orthodoxy, and his work was translated into English. The poet became
+alarmed, but had the good fortune to find a champion in Warburton, who
+for the rest of his life did Pope much service, not always of a
+reputable kind. We shall have more to say of him later on, and it will
+suffice to observe here that Warburton, who through Pope's friendship
+obtained a good wife, a fortune, and a bishopric, was not a man of high
+character. His sole object was to advance in life, and he succeeded.
+
+The _Moral Essays_ as they are called, and the _Imitations from Horace_
+are the final and crowning efforts of the poet's genius. They contain
+his finest workmanship as a satirist, and will be read, I think, with
+more pleasure than the _Dunciad_, despite Mr. Ruskin's judgment of that
+poem as 'the most absolutely chiselled and monumental work "exacted" in
+our country.'[24] It is impossible to concur in this estimate. The
+imagery of the poem serves only to disgust, and the spiteful attacks
+made in it on forgotten men want the largeness of purpose that lifts
+satire above what is of temporary interest, making it a lesson for all
+time.
+
+Pope's venom, and the personal animosities which give the sharpest
+sting, and in some instances a zest, to his verse, are also amply
+displayed in the _Moral Essays_ and in the _Imitations_, but the scope
+is wider in these poems, and the subjects allow of more versatile
+treatment. They should be read with the help of notes, a help generally
+needed for satirical poetry, but it should be remembered always that
+editorial judgments are to be received with discretion and not servilely
+followed. There is perhaps no danger more carefully to be shunned by the
+student of literature than the habit of resting satisfied with opinions
+at second-hand. Better a wrong estimate formed after due reading and
+thought, than a right estimate gleaned from critics, without any thought
+at all.
+
+According to Warburton, who is as tricky as Pope himself when it suits
+his purpose to be so, the _Essay on Man_ was intended to form four
+books, in which, as part of the general design, the _Moral Essays_ would
+have been included, as well as Book IV. of the _Dunciad_, but to have
+welded these _Essays_, which were published separately, into one
+continuous poem would neither have suited Pope's genius nor the
+character of the poems; and how the last book of the _Dunciad_ could
+have been included in such an _olla podrida_ it is difficult to
+conceive. The poet was fond of projects, and this, happily for his
+readers, remained one. The dates of the four _Essays_, which are really
+Epistles, and appeared in folio pamphlets, run over several years, but
+were afterwards re-arranged by Pope. That to Lord Burlington, _Of the
+Use of Riches_ (Epistle IV.), was published in 1731, under the title,
+_Of False Taste_; that to Lord Bathurst, _Of the Use of Riches_ (Epistle
+III), in 1732; the epistle to Lord Cobham (Epistle I.), _Of the
+Knowledge and Characters of Men_, bears the date of 1733; and that To a
+Lady (Epistle II.), _Of the Characters of Women_, in 1735. Pope wrote
+other Epistles, some at a much earlier period of his career, which
+follow the _Moral Essays_ but are not connected with them. Of these one
+is addressed to Addison, two are to Martha Blount, for whom the second
+of the _Moral Essays_ was written; one to the painter Jervas, originally
+printed in 1717; while another, a few lines only in length, was
+addressed to Craggs when Secretary of State. Space will not allow of
+examining each of the _Essays_ minutely, but there are portions of them
+which call for comment.
+
+The first _Moral Essay_, _Of the Knowledge and Characters of Men_, in
+which Pope enlarges on his theory of a ruling passion, affords a
+significant example of his incapacity for sustaining an argument, since
+Warburton, to use his own words, entirely changed and reversed the order
+and disposition of the several parts to make the composition more
+coherent. That he has succeeded is doubtful, that he should have
+ventured upon such a task shows where Pope's weakness lay as a
+philosophical poet. It is the least interesting of the _Essays_, but is
+not without lines that none but Pope could have written. _The Characters
+of Women_, the subject of the second _Essay_, was not one which the
+satirist could treat with justice. He saw little in the sex save their
+foibles, and the lines with which it opens show the spirit that animates
+the poem:
+
+    'Nothing so true as what you once let fall;
+    "Most women have no character at all,"
+    Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,
+    And best distinguished by black, brown, or fair.'
+
+The satire contains one of Pope's offensive allusions to Lady Mary, and
+the celebrated portrait drawn from two notable women, the Duchess of
+Buckingham and Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, from the latter of whom
+the poet, at one time, despite his unquestionable love of independence,
+received L1,000. The story, like many another in the career of Pope, is
+wrapt in mystery.
+
+Pope took great pains with the Epistle _Of the Use of Riches_. It was
+altered from the original conception by the advice of Warburton, who
+cared more for the argument of a poem than for its poetry. The thought
+and purpose of the _Essay_ are defective, notwithstanding Warburton's
+effort to clear them, but these defects are of slight moment when
+compared with the brilliant passages with which the poem is studded.
+Among them is the famous description of the Duke of Buckingham's
+death-bed which should be compared with Dryden's equally famous lines
+on the same nobleman's character.
+
+    'In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung,
+    The floors of plaster, and the walls of dung,
+    On once a flock-heel, but repaired with straw,
+    With tape-tied curtains never meant to draw,
+    The George and Garter dangling from that bed
+    Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,
+    Great Villiers lies--alas! how changed from him,
+    That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim!
+    Gallant and gay, in Cliveden's proud alcove,
+    The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love;
+    Or just as gay at council, in a ring
+    Of mimic statesmen and their merry King.
+    No wit to flatter left of all his store!
+    No fool to laugh at, which he valued more.
+    There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends,
+    And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends.'
+
+There is also a covert attack in this Epistle upon the moneyed interest
+represented by Walpole, and on the political corruption which he
+sanctioned and promoted. Yet Pope knew how to praise the great Whig
+statesman for his social qualities:
+
+    'Seen him I have, but in his happier hour
+    Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power;
+    Seen him uncumbered with the venal tribe,
+    Smile without art and win without a bribe.'
+
+Epistle IV. pursues the same subject as the third, and deals mainly with
+false taste in the expenditure of wealth, and with the necessity of
+following 'sense, of every art the soul.' In this poem there is the
+far-famed description of Timon's Villa, and by Timon Pope was accused of
+representing the Duke of Chandos, whose estate at Canons he is supposed
+to have held in scorn after having been, as he acknowledges,
+'distinguished' by its master. That would not have deterred Pope from
+producing a brilliant picture, and his equivocations did but serve to
+increase suspicion. Probably he found it convenient to use some features
+of what he may have seen at Canons while composing a general sketch with
+no special application. The _Moral Essays_, it may be added, are not
+especially moral, but they are full of fine things, and form a portion
+of Pope's verse second only to the _Imitations from Horace_.
+
+These _Imitations_ are introduced by the Prologue addressed to Dr.
+Arbuthnot, a poem of more than common brilliancy, and also more than
+commonly venomous. Nowhere, perhaps, is there in Pope's works so
+powerful and bitter an attack as the twenty-five lines in the Prologue
+devoted to the vivisection of Lord Hervey, which we are forced to admire
+while feeling their malevolence; nowhere is there a more consummate
+piece of satire than the twenty-two lines that contain the poet's
+masterpiece, the character of Atticus; and nowhere, I may add, are there
+lines more personally interesting. Portions of the poem were written
+long before the date of publication, and this is Pope's excuse, a rather
+lame one perhaps, for printing the character of Atticus and the lines on
+his mother after the death of Addison and of Mrs. Pope.
+
+'When I had a fever one winter in town,' Pope said to his friend Spence,
+'that confined me to my room for some days, Lord Bolingbroke came to see
+me, happened to take up a Horace that lay on the table, and in turning
+it over dipt on the first satire of the second book. He observed how
+well that would hit my case if I were to imitate it in English. After he
+was gone I read it over, translated it in a morning or two, and sent it
+to press in a week or fortnight after. And this was the occasion of my
+imitating some other of the satires and epistles afterwards.'
+
+Bolingbroke did his friend a better service in giving this advice than
+he had done with regard to the _Essay on Man_; and the six _Imitations_,
+with the Prologue and Epilogue, which are among the latest fruits of
+Pope's genius as a satirist, are also the ripest.
+
+Warburton, writing of the _Imitations of Horace_, says: 'Whoever expects
+a paraphrase of Horace or a faithful copy of his genius or his manner of
+writing in these _Imitations_ will be much disappointed. Our author uses
+the Roman poet for little more than his canvas; and if the old design or
+colouring chance to suit his purpose, it is well; if not, he employs his
+own without scruple or ceremony.'
+
+This is true. Pope makes use of Horace when it suits his convenience,
+but never follows him servilely, and quits him altogether when his
+design carries him another way.
+
+It was inevitable that he should exercise this freedom, since, as
+Johnson has pointed out, there will always be an irreconcilable
+dissimilitude between Roman images and English manners. Moreover, the
+aim of the two poets was different, Pope's main object being to express
+personal enmities and to give an exalted notion of his own virtue.
+
+In the opening lines of his First Satire Pope follows Horace pretty
+closely. Both poets complain that some persons think them too severe,
+and others too complaisant; both take the advice of a lawyer, Horace of
+C. Trebatius Testa, who gives him the pithiest replies; and Pope of
+Fortescue. Both complain that they cannot sleep, the prescription of a
+wife and cowslip wine being given by the English adviser, while Testa
+advises Horace to swim thrice across the Tiber and moisten his lips with
+wine. Throughout the rest of the satire Pope takes only casual glances
+at the Roman original, and if in the Second Satire the English poet
+follows Horace in the first few verses in recommending frugality, and in
+the advice to keep the middle state, and neither to lean on this side or
+on that, the resemblance between the poets is seldom striking, and the
+spirit which animates them is different,--Horace being classical, and
+therefore open to the apprehension of all educated readers, while Pope
+is in a sense provincial, and, as I have already said with reference to
+the _Dunciad_, cannot be fully enjoyed or even understood without some
+knowledge of the time and of the men whom he lashes in his satire. The
+Sixth Epistle of the First Book of Horace, which Pope attempts to
+imitate, is, as Mr. Courthope observes, 'incapable of imitation. Its
+humour, no less than its philosophy, belongs entirely to the Pagan
+World.' In a general sense it is also true that Horace's style, whether
+of language or of thought, will not bear transplanting. Indeed, whatever
+is most characteristic and most exquisite in a poet's work is precisely
+the portion which cannot be clothed in a foreign dress.
+
+'Life,' said Pope, 'when the first heats are over is all down hill,' and
+with him the downward progress began at a time when most men are still
+standing on the summit. Never was there a more fiery spirit in so weak a
+body. He suffered frequently from headaches, which he relieved by
+inhaling the steam of coffee. Unfortunately he pampered his appetite and
+paid a heavy penalty for doing so. Every change of weather affected him;
+and at the time when most people indulge in company, he tells Swift that
+he hid himself in bed. Although he sneers at Lord Hervey for taking
+asses' milk he tried that remedy himself, and he frequently needed
+medical aid. In his early days he was strong enough to ride on
+horseback, but in later life his weakness was so great that he was in
+constant need of help. M. Taine, whose criticism of Pope needs to be
+read with caution, indulges in an exaggerated description of his bodily
+condition, observing that when arrived at maturity he appeared no longer
+capable of existing, and styling him 'a nervous abortion.' The poet's
+condition was sad enough as told by Dr. Johnson, without amplifying it
+as M. Taine has done. 'One side was contracted. His legs were so slender
+that he enlarged their bulk with three pairs of stockings, which were
+drawn on and off by the maid; for he was not able to dress or undress
+himself, and neither went to bed nor rose without help. His weakness
+made it very difficult for him to be clean.' After this forlorn
+description of the poet's state it is a little grotesque to read that
+his dress of ceremony was black, with a tie-wig and a little sword. A
+distorted body often holds a generous and untainted soul. This was not
+the case with Pope, and the sympathy he stood in so large a need of
+himself, was seldom given to others.
+
+In the spring of 1744 it became evident that the end was approaching.
+Three weeks before his death he distributed the _Moral Epistles_ among
+his friends, saying: 'Here I am, like Socrates, dispensing my morality
+amongst my friends just as I am dying.' He died peacefully on May 30th,
+1744, and was buried in Twickenham Church near the monument erected to
+his parents.
+
+Pope's standing among his country's poets has been the source of much
+controversy. There have been critics who deny to him the name of a poet,
+while others place him in the first rank. In his own century there was
+comparatively little difference of opinion with regard to his merits.
+Chesterfield gave him the warmest praise; Swift, Addison, and Warburton
+ranked him with the peers of song; Johnson, whose discriminative
+criticism reaches perhaps its highest level in his _Life of Pope_, in
+reply to the question which had been asked, even in his day, whether
+Pope was a poet? asks in return, 'If Pope be not a poet, where is poetry
+to be found?' and adds that 'to circumscribe poetry by a definition will
+only show the narrowness of the definer, though a definition which shall
+exclude Pope will not readily be made.' Joseph Warton, too, Johnson's
+contemporary and friend, while preferring the Romantic School to the
+Classical, allows that in that species of poetry wherein Pope excelled
+he is superior to all mankind.
+
+In our century Bowles, whose edition of his works provoked prolonged
+discussion, in which Campbell, Byron, and the _Quarterly Review_ took
+part, places Pope above Dryden. Byron, with more enthusiasm than
+judgment, regarded him as the greatest name in our poetry; Scott, with
+generous appreciation of a genius so alien to his own, called him a
+'true Deacon of the craft,' and at one time proposed editing his works,
+a task projected also by Mr. Ruskin, who, putting Shakespeare aside as
+rather the world's than ours, holds Pope 'to be the most perfect
+representative we have since Chaucer of the true English mind.' 'Matched
+on his own ground,' says Mr. Swinburne, 'he never has been nor can be.'
+And Mr. Lowell in the same strain observes that 'in his own province he
+still stands unapproachably alone.'
+
+What then is Pope's ground? What is this province of which he is the
+sole ruler? To a considerable extent the question has been answered in
+these pages, but it may be well to sum up with more definiteness what
+has been already stated.
+
+In poetry Pope takes a first place in the second order of poets. The
+deficiencies which forbid his entrance into the first rank are obvious.
+He cannot sing, he has no ear for the subtlest melodies of verse, he is
+not a creative poet, and has few of the spirit-stirring thoughts which
+the noblest poets scatter through their pages with apparent
+unconsciousness. There are no depths in Pope and there are no heights;
+he has neither eye for the beauties of Nature, nor ear for her
+harmonies, and a primrose was no more to him than it was to Peter Bell.
+
+These are defects indeed, but nothing is more unfair says a great French
+critic than to judge notable minds solely by their defects, and in spite
+of them Pope's position is so unassailable that the critic must take a
+contracted view of the poet's art who questions his right to the title.
+
+His merits are of a kind not likely to be affected by time; a lively
+fancy, a power of satire almost unrivalled, and a skill in using words
+so consummate that there is no poet, excepting Shakespeare, who has left
+his mark upon the language so strongly. The loss to us if Pope's verse
+were to become extinct cannot readily be measured. He has said in the
+best words what we all know and feel, but cannot express, and has made
+that classical which in weaker hands would be commonplace. His
+sensibility to the claims of his art is exquisite, the adaptation of his
+style to his subject shows the hand of a master, and if these are not
+the highest gifts of a poet, they are gifts to which none but a poet can
+lay claim.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[11] Some qualification may be made to these statements. Pope took
+pleasure in landscape gardening on the English plan, as opposed to the
+formality of the French and Dutch systems, and the design of the Prince
+of Wales's garden is said to have been copied from the poet's at
+Twickenham.
+
+[12] Elwin and Courthope's _Pope_, vol. ii. p. 160.
+
+[13] See the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.
+
+[14] Elwin and Courthope's _Pope_, vol. v., p. 195.
+
+[15] 'Lady Mary,' says Byron, 'was greatly to blame in that quarrel for
+having encouraged Pope.... She should have remembered her own line,
+
+    '"He comes too near who comes to be denied."'
+
+
+[16] _Studies in English Literature_, p. 47.--_Stanford._
+
+[17] Quin (1693-1766) was the famous actor, and Patterson was Thomson's
+deputy in the surveyor-generalship of the Leeward Isles, and ultimately
+his successor.
+
+[18] The Earl of Peterborough, the meteor-like brilliancy of whose
+actions forms one of the most striking chapters in the history of his
+time.
+
+[19] _Life of Pope_, p. 216.
+
+[20] 'Pope and Swift,' says Dr. Johnson, 'had an unnatural delight in
+ideas physically impure, such as every other tongue utters with
+unwillingness, and of which every ear shrinks from the mention.'
+
+[21] Clarendon Press, Oxford.
+
+[22] No doubt many distinguished foreigners who appreciated the beauty
+of the poem had read it in the original.
+
+[23] Stephen's _Pope_, p. 163.
+
+[24] _Lectures on Art_, p. 70, Oxford.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+PRIOR, GAY, YOUNG, BLAIR, THOMSON.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Matthew Prior (1664-1721).]
+
+The ease with which the Queen Anne wits obtained office and rose to
+posts of high trust through the pleasant art of verse-making, is
+conspicuous in the career of Prior. His parents are unknown, the place
+of his birth is somewhat doubtful, although he is claimed by
+Wimborne-Minster, in Dorsetshire, and the first trustworthy facts
+recorded of his early career are that he was a Westminster scholar when
+the famous Dr. Busby, whose discipline was physical as well as mental,
+presided over the school. His father died, and his mother being no
+longer able to pay the school fees, Prior was placed with an uncle who
+kept the Rhenish Wine Tavern in Westminster. His seat was in the bar,
+and there the Earl of Dorset (1637-1705-6), a small poet, but a generous
+patron of poets, found the youth reading Horace, and, pleased with his
+'parts,' sent him back to Westminster, whence he went up to Cambridge as
+a scholar at St. John's, the college destined a century later to receive
+one of the greatest of English poets.
+
+Charles Montague, afterwards Earl of Halifax (1661-1715), the son of a
+younger son of a nobleman, was also a Westminster scholar. He entered
+Trinity College in 1679, and like Prior appears to have owed his good
+fortune to the rhymer's craft. 'At thirty,' writes Lord Macaulay, 'he
+would gladly have given all his chances in life for a comfortable
+vicarage and a chaplain's scarf. At thirty-seven he was First Lord of
+the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a Regent of the Kingdom.'
+The literary history of the Queen Anne age has many associations with
+his name. He proved a liberal patron of the wits, and of Pope among
+them, by subscribing largely to his _Homer_; but the poet's memory was
+stronger for imaginary injuries than for real benefits, and because
+Halifax had patronized Tickell, he figures in the Prologue to the
+Satires as 'full-blown Bufo, puffed by every quill.'
+
+Prior and Montague began their rhyming career early, and a partnership
+production, entitled the _Hind and Panther, transversed to the story of
+the Country Mouse and the City Mouse_ (1687), a parody of Dryden's
+famous poem published in the same year, brought both authors into
+notice. At the age of twenty-six Prior, who had previously obtained a
+fellowship, was appointed Secretary to the Embassy at the Hague. After
+that he rose steadily to eminence, became Secretary of State in Ireland,
+and was finally appointed Ambassador at the French Court. High office
+brings its troubles, and in those days was not without its perils. In
+1711 Prior was sent secretly to Paris to negotiate a peace, for which,
+when the Whigs came again into power, he was imprisoned and expected to
+lose his head. While in prison, where he remained for two years
+(1715-1717), the poet wrote _Alma_, a humorous and speculative poem on
+the relations of the soul and body, and when released published his
+_Poems_ by subscription in a noble folio, said to be the largest-sized
+volume in the whole range of English poetry. He gained 4,000 guineas by
+the publication, and with that sum and an estate purchased for him by
+Lord Harley, Prior was able to live in comfort. He died in September,
+1721, in his fifty-eighth year, and was buried in Westminster Abbey,
+under a monument for which he had had the vanity to pay five hundred
+pounds.
+
+The peculiar merit of Prior is better understood in our day than it was
+in his own. We read his poems solely for the sake of the 'lighter
+pieces,' which Johnson despised. The poet thought _Solomon_ his best
+work, but no one who toils through the three books which form that poem
+is likely to agree with this estimate. Dulness pervades the work like an
+atmosphere, but it had its admirers in the last century, and among them
+was John Wesley, who, in reply to Johnson's complaint of its
+tediousness, said he should as soon think of calling the Second or Sixth
+AEneid tedious. In the preface to the poem Prior declares that he "had
+rather be thought a good Englishman than the best poet or greatest
+scholar that ever wrote," a passage which does more honour to the poet
+than any in the text. A far more popular piece was _Henry and Emma_,
+which even so fine a judge of poetry as Cowper called 'inimitable.'
+Tastes change, let us hope for the better, and possibly none but the
+greatest poets remain unaffected by time. Assuredly Prior does not, and
+_Henry and Emma_ affords a striking illustration of the contrast between
+the poetical spirit of Prior's age and that which influences ours. The
+poem is founded on the fine ballad of the _Nut-Browne Maide_. The story,
+as originally told, is homely and quaint, written without apparent
+effort and told in 360 lines. Prior requires considerably more than
+twice that number, and his maid and her lover, instead of using the
+simple language befitting the theme, employ the conventional machinery
+of the age, and bring Jove and Mars, Cupid and Venus upon the scene,
+with allusions to Marlborough's victories and to 'Anna's wondrous
+reign.'
+
+_Alma_, a poem written in Hudibrastic verse, which shows that Prior had
+in a measure caught the vein of Butler, has some couplets familiar in
+quotations. He won, too, not a little contemporary reputation for his
+tales in verse, which are singularly coarse; but an age that tolerated
+Mrs. Manley and read the plays and novels of Aphra Behn was not likely
+to object to the grossness of Prior. Dr. Johnson would not admit that
+his poems were unfit for a lady's table, and Wesley, who appears to have
+been strangely oblivious to Prior's moral delinquencies, observes that
+his tales are the best told of any in the English tongue. Cowper praised
+him for his 'charming ease,' and this gift enabled him to write some of
+the most delightful occasional verses produced in the century. There is
+nothing more exquisite of its kind than his address, _To a Child of
+Quality_, written when the child was five years old and the poet forty,
+and one is not surprised to learn that Prior was admired by Thomas
+Moore, who more than once caught his note. A reader familiar with Moore
+and ignorant of Prior would without hesitation attribute the following
+stanzas, from the _Answer to Chloe Jealous_, to the Irish poet:
+
+    'The god of us versemen (you know, Child), the sun,
+      How after his journeys he sets up his rest;
+    If at morning o'er earth 'tis his fancy to run,
+      At night he declines on his Thetis's breast.
+
+    'So when I am wearied with wandering all day,
+      To thee, my delight, in the evening I come;
+    No matter what beauties I saw in my way;
+      They were but my visits, but thou art my home.
+
+    'Then finish, dear Cloe, this pastoral war,
+      And let us, like Horace and Lydia, agree;
+    For thou art a girl as much brighter than her
+      As he was a poet sublimer than me.'
+
+"The grammatical lapse in these last two lines," says Mr. Austin Dobson,
+"perhaps calls for correction, but many readers will probably agree with
+Moore (_Diary_, November, 1818), 'that it is far prettier as it is.'
+'Nothing,' he says truly, 'can be more gracefully light and gallant than
+this little poem.'"
+
+It was fancy and not imagination which conceived the following lines,
+but how charming is the fancy! The poem, which is given in a slightly
+abridged form, is addressed
+
+'TO A LADY: SHE REFUSING TO CONTINUE A DISPUTE WITH ME, AND LEAVING ME
+IN THE ARGUMENT.
+
+    'In the dispute whate'er I said,
+      My heart was by my tongue belied;
+    And in my looks you might have read
+      How much I argued on your side.
+
+    'You, far from danger as from fear,
+      Might have sustained an open fight;
+    For seldom your opinions err;
+      Your eyes are always in the right.
+
+    'Alas! not hoping to subdue,
+      I only to the fight aspired;
+    To keep the beauteous foe in view
+      Was all the glory I desired.
+
+    'But she, howe'er of victory sure,
+      Contemns the wreath too long delayed;
+    And, armed with more immediate power,
+      Calls cruel silence to her aid.
+
+    'Deeper to wound, she shuns the fight:
+      She drops her arms, to gain the field;
+    Secures her conquest by her flight;
+      And triumphs, when she seems to yield.
+
+    'So when the Parthian turned his steed,
+      And from the hostile camp withdrew;
+    With cruel skill the backward reed
+      He sent; and as he fled, he slew.'
+
+Wit and a ready command of verse are the characteristics of Prior's
+poetry. Both of these gifts are to be seen in his lively _English
+ballad on the Taking of Namur by the King of Great Britain_, in which he
+travesties Boileau's _Ode sur la prise de Namur_. As an epigrammatist he
+reaped his advantage from a study of Martial, and in this department of
+verse Prior is often successful. If brevity be a prominent merit in an
+epigram, he sometimes excels his master, as, for example, in this
+stanza:
+
+    'To John I owed great obligation;
+      But John unhappily thought fit
+    To publish it to all the nation;
+      Sure John and I are more than quit.'[25]
+
+This is half the length of the original Latin, and what it loses in
+elegance it gains in point.
+
+It may be hoped that the next quotation is a libel on Bishop Atterbury;
+if so, the lines have every merit but truth. The epigram is on the
+funeral of the Duke of Buckingham, who died in 1721.
+
+    'I have no hopes,' the duke he says, and dies;
+    'In sure and certain hopes,' the prelate cries:
+    Of these two learned peers, I prithee say, man,
+    Who is the lying knave, the priest or layman?
+    The duke he stands an infidel confest;
+    'He's our dear brother,' quoth the lordly priest.
+    The duke, though knave, still 'brother dear,' he cries;
+    And who can say the reverend prelate lies?
+
+Prior, it may be observed here, could say pointed things in prose as
+well as in verse, and nothing can be happier than his reply to the
+Frenchman's inquiry whether the King of England had anything to show in
+his palace equal to the paintings at Versailles illustrating the
+victories of Louis XIV: 'The monuments of my master's actions,' said the
+poet, 'are to be seen everywhere except in his own house.'
+
+It is always interesting to link poet with poet, and in relation to
+Prior many readers will recall the pathetic incident related of Sir
+Walter Scott when the wonderful intellect which had entranced the world
+was giving indications of decay. Lockhart relates how, as they were
+travelling together, a quotation from Prior led Scott to make another,
+slightly altered for the occasion, and he adds:
+
+'This seemed to put him into the train of Prior, and he repeated several
+striking passages both of the _Alma_ and the _Solomon_. He was still at
+this when we reached a longish hill, and he got out to walk a little. As
+we climbed the ascent, he leaning heavily on my shoulder, we were met by
+a couple of beggars, who were, or professed to be, old soldiers both of
+Egypt and the Peninsula. One of them wanted a leg, which circumstance
+alone would have opened Scott's purse-strings, though, _ex facie_, a sad
+old blackguard; but the fellow had recognized his person as it happened,
+and in asking an alms bade God bless him fervently by his name. The
+mendicants went on their way, and we stood breathing on the knoll. Sir
+Walter followed them with his eye, and planting his stick firmly on the
+sod, repeated, without break or hesitation Prior's verses to the
+historian Mezeray. That he applied them to himself was touchingly
+obvious, and therefore I must quote them.
+
+    '"Whate'er thy countrymen have done,
+    By law and wit, by sword and gun,
+      In thee is faithfully recited;
+    And all the living world that view
+    Thy work, give thee the praises due,
+      At once instructed and delighted.
+
+    '"Yet for the fame of all these deeds,
+    What beggar in the _Invalides_,
+      With lameness broke, with blindness smitten,
+    Wished ever decently to die,
+    To have been either Mezeray,
+      Or any monarch he has written?
+
+    '"It strange, dear author, yet it true is,
+    That down from Pharamond to Louis
+      All covet life, yet call it pain:
+    All feel the ill, yet shun the cure;
+    Can sense this paradox endure?
+      Resolve me Cambray[26] or Fontaine.
+
+    '"The man in graver tragic known
+    (Though his best part long since was done),
+      Still on the stage desires to tarry;
+    And he who played the Harlequin,
+    After the jest still loads the scene,
+      Unwilling to retire, though weary."'
+
+[Sidenote: John Gay (1685-1732).]
+
+Gay, who enjoyed an unbroken friendship with the brotherhood of wits,
+and was treated by them like a spoilt child, was born at Barnstaple in
+1685, and left an orphan at the age of ten. He was educated at the free
+grammar school in the town, and was afterwards, to his discontent,
+apprenticed to a mercer in London. He escaped from this uncongenial
+employment to be dependent on an uncle, and thus early exhibited his
+life-long disposition to rely upon others for support. 'Providence,'
+Swift writes, 'never designed Gay to be above two-and-twenty by his
+thoughtlessness and gullibility. He has as little foresight of age,
+sickness, poverty, or loss of admirers as a girl of fifteen.' His
+weakness, it has been said, appealed to Swift's strength, and Swift,
+Pope, and Arbuthnot were Gay's most faithful friends. They found
+something in him to laugh at and to love. Ladies, too, treated him with
+the kind of friendliness which has a touch of commiseration. In 1714 Gay
+was appointed secretary to Lord Clarendon, a post which he owed to
+Swift, but the death of Queen Anne in that year brought the Whigs into
+office, and destroyed the poet's prospects. Prior to this he had been
+secretary to the imperious Duchess of Monmouth. He was now left without
+money or employment, and owed much to the generosity of Pope. It was
+Gay's lot 'in suing long to bide,' to be always hoping, and nearly
+always disappointed. 'He seems,' says his latest biographer, 'to have
+begun his career under the impression that it was somebody's duty to
+provide for him in the world, and this impression clung to him through
+nearly the whole of a lifetime.'[27] Ten years before his death he was
+eagerly looking to others for support. Writing to Swift, he says: 'I
+lodge at present in Burlington House, and have received many civilities
+from many great men, but very few real benefits. They wonder at each
+other for not providing for me, and I wonder at them all.'
+
+Gay's first poem of any mark was _The Shepherd's Week_ (1714), six
+burlesque pastorals, a subject proposed to him by Pope, who was then
+smarting from the praise Philips had received in _The Guardian_. But if
+Pope meant Gay to poke his fun at Philips in _The Shepherd's Week_, he
+must have been disappointed, for the poems were accepted as genuine
+bucolics, and although humorously absurd, are, to say the least, more
+true to rustic life than the pastorals either of Philips or of Pope.
+_The Shepherd's Week_ was followed by _Trivia_ (1715), a piece suggested
+by Swift's _City Shower_. It is one of Gay's most notable productions,
+not as a poem, but as a vivid description of the streets of London
+nearly two hundred years ago. The great reputation he obtained as the
+author of _The Fables_ (1727), and still more of _The Beggar's Opera_
+(1728), the idea of which was suggested to Gay by Swift, survived him
+for some years. _The Fables_ were written for and dedicated to the
+youthful Duke of Cumberland, who is asked to "accept the moral lay, and
+in these tales mankind survey." There is skill and ingenuity in the
+poems, but higher merit they cannot boast, and young readers are likely
+to prefer the illustrations which generally accompany _The Fables_ to
+the letterpress. Many of Gay's allusions are beyond the apprehension of
+the young, and have a political flavour. _The Beggar's Opera_ was
+intended as a burlesque of the Italian opera, which had been long the
+laughing-stock of men of letters, and as the play was thought to have
+political significance, and the character of Macheath to be a portrait
+of Walpole, it was received with enthusiasm, and acted in London for
+about sixty nights. So popular did the opera become, that ladies carried
+about the songs on their fans.
+
+Eight years before, Gay had published his poems by subscription, and in
+those happy days for versemen had gained L1,000 by the venture. He put
+the money into South Sea stock, and lost it all. For _The Beggar's
+Opera_ he received about L800. It was followed by _Polly_, a play of the
+same coarse character, which, for political reasons, was not allowed to
+be acted. The result was that it had a large sale, and put money in
+Gay's purse. Ten thousand five hundred copies are said to have been
+printed in one year, and the L1,200 realized by the sale were very
+wisely retained for the poet's use by the Duke of Queensberry, under
+whose roof he had at length found a warm nest. To the student Gay is
+chiefly interesting as the only noteworthy poet of the period, south of
+the Tweed, gifted with a lyrical capacity. Two or three of his songs and
+ballads, and especially _Black-Eyed Susan_, have a charm beyond the
+reach of the mechanical versifier. But the art of song is at a low level
+even in the hands of Gay. The lyric which the Elizabethan and Jacobean
+poets loved so well, and of which the present century has produced
+specimens to be matched only by Shakespeare, may be said to have been
+lost to English poetry for the first half of the last century, since
+neither Prior's verse, delightful though it be, nor the songs of Gay,
+have enough of the poetical element to form exceptions to this
+statement.
+
+In his _Tales_ he follows Prior in grossness, while inferior to him in
+art. Like the greater number of the Queen Anne poets, Gay flatters with
+a free hand. In an epistle addressed to Lintot, the bookseller, he
+declares that Anacreon lives once more in Sheffield, and Waller in
+Granville, that Buckingham's verse will last to distant time; while Ovid
+sings again in Addison, and 'Homer's _Iliad_ shines in his _Campaign_.'
+
+One of the liveliest and most graceful of Gay's poems is addressed to
+Pope 'On his having finished his translation of Homer's _Iliad_.' It is
+called _A Welcome from Greece_, and describes the friends who assembled
+to greet the poet on his return to England.
+
+Three stanzas from the Epistle shall be quoted:
+
+    'Oh, what a concourse swarms on yonder quay!
+      The sky re-echoes with new shouts of joy;
+    By all this show, I ween 'tis Lord Mayor's day;
+      I hear the voice of trumpet and hautboy--
+    No, now I see them near.--Oh, these are they
+      Who come in crowds to welcome thee from Troy.
+    Hail to the bard, whom long as lost we mourned
+    From siege, from battle, and from storm returned!
+
+    'What lady's that to whom he gently bends?
+      Who knows not her? Ah! those are Wortley's eyes:
+    How art thou honoured, numbered with her friends!
+      For she distinguishes the good and wise.
+    The sweet-tongued Murray near her side attends;
+      Now to my heart the glance of Howard flies;
+    Now Hervey, fair of face, I mark full well,
+    With thee Youth's youngest daughter, sweet Lepell.
+
+    'I see two lovely sisters hand in hand,
+      The fair-haired Martha and Teresa brown;
+    Madge Bellenden, the tallest of the land;
+      And smiling Mary, soft and fair as down.
+    Yonder I see the cheerful Duchess stand,
+      For friendship, zeal, and blithesome humours known;
+    Whence that loud shout in such a hearty strain?
+    Why, all the Hamiltons are in her train!'
+
+Gay's love of good living was known to all his friends. 'As the French
+philosopher,' Congreve wrote, 'used to prove his existence by _cogito
+ergo sum_, the greatest proof of Gay's existence is _edit ergo est_.'
+For a long time his health compelled him to give up wine, and he tells
+Swift that he had also left off verse-making, 'for I really think that
+man must be a bold writer who trusts to wit without it.' He was
+dispirited, he told Swift not long before his death, for want of a
+pursuit, and found 'indolence and idleness the most tiresome things in
+the world.'
+
+Gay died in 1732 at the Duke of Queensberry's house, and Pope grieved
+that one of his nearest and longest ties was broken. He was interred, to
+quote Arbuthnot's words, 'as a peer of the realm,' in Westminster Abbey.
+The superficial character of the poet may be seen in his couplet
+transcribed upon the monument:
+
+    'Life is a jest, and all things show it;
+    I thought so once, and now I know it.'
+
+[Sidenote: Edward Young (1684-1765).]
+
+Gay's moderate gift of song was withheld from the famous author of the
+_Night Thoughts_. Yet Young was vain enough to think that he possessed
+it, and wrote a patriotic ode called _Ocean_, preceded by an elaborate
+essay on lyric poetry. He also produced _Imperium Pelagi_ (1729), _A
+Naval Lyric written in Imitation of Pindar's spirit_. The lyric, which
+was travestied by Fielding in his _Tom Thumb_,[28] reads like a
+burlesque, and badly treated though Pindar was by the versemen of the
+last century, there is perhaps not one of them who mocks him more
+outrageously than Young. He says that this ode is an original, and no
+critic is likely to dispute the assertion.
+
+Young was born in 1684 at Upham, near Winchester, his father, who was
+afterwards Dean of Sarum, being at that time the rector of the village.
+Edward was placed upon the foundation at Winchester College, and
+remained there until he was eighteen. He was then sent up to New
+College, and afterwards removed to Corpus. At the age of twenty-seven he
+was nominated to a law fellowship at All Souls, and took his degree of
+B.C.L. and his doctor's degree some years later. Characteristically
+enough he began his poetical career by _An Epistle to Lord Lansdowne_
+(1712), who is praised for his heavenly numbers, and is said to have
+been born "to make the muse immortal." His next poem of any consequence,
+_The Last Day_, written in heroic couplets, and filling three books, is
+correct, or fairly so, in versification, and execrable in taste. Young,
+it may be supposed, wished to produce a sense of solemnity in the
+treatment of his theme, and he does so by lamenting that the very land
+'where the Stuarts filled an awful throne' will in that day be
+forgotten. The want of taste which so often deforms Young's verse is
+also seen in the imagery he employs to illustrate the fear which even
+good men may have on appearing before that 'dread tribunal.'
+
+    'Thus the chaste bridegroom, when the priest draws nigh,
+    Beholds his blessing with a trembling eye;
+    Feels doubtful passions throb in every vein,
+    And in his cheeks are mingled joy and pain,
+    Lest still some intervening chance should rise,
+    Leap forth at once, and snatch the golden prize,
+    Inflame his woe, by bringing it so late,
+    And stab him in the crisis of his fate.'
+
+His next poem, _The Force of Religion, or Vanquished Love_, was
+suggested by the execution of Lady Jane Grey and Lord Guildford, a
+subject chosen for a tragedy by John Banks (1694), by Rowe in 1715, and
+treated with considerable dramatic power in our own day by Ross Neil. In
+Young's hands this fine theme becomes a rhetorical exercise without
+poetry and without pathos. A few lines will suffice to show the style of
+the poem. Jane and Dudley, it must be premised, are imprisoned in a
+gloomy hall:
+
+    'What can they do? They fix their mournful eyes--
+    Then Guildford, thus abruptly: "I despise
+    An empire lost; I fling away the crown;
+    Numbers have laid that bright delusion down;
+    But where's the Charles, or Dioclesian, where,
+    Could quit the blooming, wedded, weeping fair?
+    Oh! to dwell ever on thy lip! to stand
+    In full possession of thy snowy hand!
+    And thro' the unclouded crystal of thine eye
+    The heavenly treasures of thy mind to spy!
+    Till rapture reason happily destroys,
+    And my soul wanders through immortal joys!
+    Give me the world, and ask me, where's my bliss?
+    I clasp thee to my breast and answer, this."'
+
+Verse of this quality, which might be amply quoted, is of interest to
+the student of literature, since in Young's day it passed current for
+poetry. But in accepting his claims as a poet the faith of the age must
+have been often strained.
+
+Walpole, who despised the whole tribe of poets, and cared nothing for
+literature, had by some strange chance awarded to Young a pension of
+L200 a-year, whereupon in a piece called _The Instalment_, addressed to
+Sir Robert, Britain is called upon to behold
+
+    'His azure ribbon and his radiant star,'
+
+and the poet's breast 'glows with grateful fire' as he exclaims:
+
+    'The streams of royal bounty turned by thee
+    Refresh the dry domains of poesy.
+    My fortune shows, when arts are Walpole's care,
+    What slender worth forbids us to despair:
+    Be this thy partial smile from censure free,
+    'Twas meant for merit, though it fell on me.'
+
+Following in the steps of George Sandys, but with inferior power, and in
+a less racy diction, Young performed the vain task of paraphrasing part
+of the Book of Job, one of the noblest poems the world possesses, and
+translated in our authorized version in language not to be surpassed for
+dignity and simplicity.
+
+In 1719 his _Busiris_ was performed. _The Revenge_, a better known
+tragedy, written on the French model, followed in 1721, and kept the
+stage for some time. Seven years later _The Brothers_, his third and
+last tragedy, was in rehearsal, but the poet, who had lately taken holy
+orders, withdrew it at the last moment. These tragedies, which are full
+of sound and fury, are destitute of tragic power. _The Revenge_, in
+which Zanga acts the part of an Iago, has some forcible scenes, and so,
+despite much rant and fustian, has _Busiris_. Plenty of blood is shed,
+of course, and the heroines of the plays die by their own hands. Tragedy
+is supposed to exercise an elevating influence, but to counteract this
+happy result, _Busiris_ and _The Revenge_ are followed by indecent
+epilogues, in which the speakers jest at the feelings which the plays
+may have excited. For _The Brothers_ Young wrote his own epilogue. It is
+decent and dull. His genius was better fitted for satire than for the
+drama, and _The Universal Passion_, which consists of seven satires
+published in a collected form in 1728, brought him reputation and money.
+The poet Crabbe was never more surprised in his life than when John
+Murray (the famous 'My Murray' of Byron) gave him L3,000 for the
+copyright of his poems; Young received the same sum for work
+immeasurably inferior in value, and in a less legitimate way. Two
+thousand pounds, it is stated, was a gift from the Duke of Grafton, who
+said it was the best bargain he ever made, as the satires were worth
+L4,000. Young, it will be seen, preceded Pope as a satirist. He is more
+generous and humane, and has none of the venomous attacks on living
+persons by which Pope added piquancy to his verse. But he is a careless
+writer, and for the most part lacks the exquisite precision, the subtle
+wit, the rhythmical felicity, which make the couplets of Pope so
+memorable. _The Dunciad_, the _Moral Essays_, and the _Imitations_ are
+read by all lovers of literature, but _The Universal Passion_ is
+forgotten. Of the six satires, the two on women are the most spirited,
+and may be compared with Pope's on the same subject. The different
+foibles, and faults worse than foibles of the women of that day are
+exhibited with a satirist's licence, and occasionally with a Pope-like
+terseness. Take the following, for example:
+
+    'There is no woman where there's no reserve,
+    And 'tis on plenty your poor lovers starve.'
+
+    'Few to good breeding make a just pretence;
+    Good breeding is the blossom of good sense.'
+
+    'A shameless woman is the worst of men.'
+
+    'Naked in nothing should a woman be,
+    But veil her very wit with modesty.'
+
+It was not until he was nearly fifty that Young, disappointed of the
+preferment he sought, took holy orders, and in 1730 accepted the college
+living of Welwyn, in Herts, which he held till his death.
+
+In the following year the poet married Lady Elizabeth Lee, a daughter of
+the Earl of Lichfield, a union that lasted ten years. One son was the
+offspring of this marriage. Lady Elizabeth had a daughter by a former
+marriage, who was married to Mr. Temple, a son of Lord Palmerston, and
+shortly before her own death she lost both daughter and son-in-law, who,
+there can be little doubt, are the Philander and Narcissa of the _Night
+Thoughts_, the earlier books of which were published in 1742. This once
+celebrated poem, written in his old age, is the one effort of Young's
+genius that has enjoyed a great popularity. It suited well an age which,
+while far from moral, delighted in moral treatises and in didactic
+verse. In the _Night Thoughts_ Young remembers that he is a clergyman,
+and puts on his gown and bands. He puts on also his singing robes, and
+shows the reader what none of his earlier poems prove, that he is in the
+presence of a poet.
+
+The _Night Thoughts_ is remarkable in its finest passages for a strong,
+but sombre imagination, and for a command of his instrument that puts
+Young at times nearly on a level with the greatest masters of blank
+verse. On this height, however, he does not stay long. He is rich in
+great thoughts, but they do not fall unconsciously, as it were, while
+the poet pursues his argument. They are aphorisms uttered generally in
+single lines which are apt to break the continuity of the poem and to
+injure the harmony of its versification. The theme of Life, Death, and
+Immortality is not a narrow one, and affords ample space for imaginative
+treatment. Young's treatment of it is too often declamatory; he drops
+the poet in the rhetorician and the wit. There is much of the false
+sublime in the poem, and much that reveals the hollow character of the
+writer. The first book is the finest, sparkling with felicitous
+expressions and rising frequently to true poetry. The poetical quality
+of that book, however, is lessened by the author's passion for
+antithesis. The merit of the following passage, for example, is not due
+to poetical inspiration:
+
+    'How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
+    How complicate, how wonderful is man!
+    How passing wonder He, who made him such!
+    Who centered in our make such strange extremes
+    From different natures, marvellously mixed,
+    Connexion exquisite of distant worlds!
+    Distinguished link in being's endless chain!
+    Midway from nothing to the Deity;
+    A beam etherial, sullied, and absorbt!
+    Though sullied and dishonoured still divine!
+    Dim miniature of greatness absolute!
+    An heir of glory! a frail child of dust!
+    Helpless immortal! insect infinite!
+    A worm! a god!--I tremble at myself,
+    And in myself am lost. At home a stranger,
+    Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast,
+    And wondering at her own: How reason reels!
+    O what a miracle to man is man!
+    Triumphantly distressed! what joy! what dread!
+    Alternately transported and alarmed!
+    What can preserve my life? or what destroy?
+    An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave:
+    Legions of angels can't confine me there.'
+
+The opening of the ninth and last book will give a more favourable
+illustration of Young's style:
+
+    'As when a traveller, a long day past
+    In painful search of what he cannot find,
+    At night's approach, content with the next cot,
+    There ruminates awhile, his labour lost;
+    Then cheers his heart with what his fate affords,
+    And chants his sonnet to deceive the time,
+    Till the due season calls him to repose;
+    Thus I, long-travelled in the ways of men,
+    And dancing with the rest the giddy maze
+    Where Disappointment smiles at Hope's career;
+    Warned by the languor of life's evening ray,
+    At length have housed me in an humble shed,
+    Where, future wandering banished from my thought,
+    And waiting, patient, the sweet hour of rest,
+    I chase the moments with a serious song.
+    Song soothes our pains, and age has pains to soothe.'
+
+While moralizing on man's mortality Young is seldom a cheerful monitor,
+he dwells with too great persistence on the incidents of death and of
+bodily corruption, too little on life with which we have more to do than
+with death. Thus with a strange perversion he exclaims:
+
+    'This is the desart, this the solitude,
+    How populous, how vital, is the grave!
+    This is creation's melancholy vault,
+    The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom,
+    The land of apparitions, empty shades!
+    All, all on earth is shadow, all beyond
+    Is substance; the reverse is folly's creed.'
+
+and harping on the same theme in the ninth book, says:
+
+    'What is the world itself? Thy world--a grave.
+    Where is the dust that has not been alive?
+    The spade, the plough, disturb our ancestors;
+    From human mould we reap our daily bread;
+    The globe around earth's hollow surface shakes,
+    And is the ceiling of her sleeping sons.
+    O'er devastation we blind revels keep;
+    Whole buried towns support the dancer's heel.'
+
+[Sidenote: Robert Blair (1699-1746).]
+
+On laying down the _Night Thoughts_ the student may be advised to read
+Blair's _Grave_, a poem in less than 800 lines of blank verse, composed
+in a fresher and more rigorous style than the far larger work of Young,
+and rather moulded, as Mr. Saintsbury has observed, 'upon dramatic than
+upon purely poetical models.' _The Grave_, which was written before the
+publication of the _Night Thoughts_,[29] abounds with poetical
+felicities, and is pregnant with suggestions that seize the imagination,
+and appeal alike to the intellect and the heart. The brevity of the
+piece is in its favour; there is not a line that flags.
+
+    'Tell us, ye dead! will none of you, in pity
+    To those you left behind, disclose the secret?
+    Oh! that some courteous ghost would blab it out,--
+    What 'tis you are and we must shortly be.
+    I've heard that souls departed have sometimes
+    Forewarned men of their death. 'Twas kindly done
+    To knock and give the alarm. But what means
+    This stinted charity? 'Tis but lame kindness
+    That does its work by halves. Why might you not
+    Tell us what 'tis to die? Do the strict laws
+    Of your society forbid your speaking
+    Upon a point so nice?--I'll ask no more:
+    Sullen, like lamps in sepulchres, your shine
+    Enlightens but yourselves. Well, 'tis no matter;
+    A very little time will clear up all,
+    And make us learn'd as you are, and as close.'
+
+
+Blair, who was a Scotch clergyman, wrote also an _Elegy in Memory of
+William Law_, a Professor of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh, whose
+daughter he married. He writes in a masculine and homely style. His
+imagery is often more powerful than pleasing, but some of his similes
+win attention by their beauty. For example:
+
+    "Look how the fair one weeps! the conscious tears
+    Stand thick as dewdrops on the bells of flowers."
+
+Among the victims claimed by the grave is
+
+        'The long demurring maid,
+    Whose lonely unappropriated sweets
+    Smiled, like yon knot of cowslips on the cliff,
+    Not to be come at by the willing hand.'
+
+And the death of a good man is pictured in this musical couplet:
+
+    'Night dews fall not more gently to the ground
+    Nor weary worn out winds expire so soft.'
+
+Cowper, referring to the poets of his century, said that every warbler
+had Pope's tune by heart. But if they had the tune by heart, many of
+them did not make it a vehicle for their verse, and among these are
+poets of the weight and worth of Thomson and Young, of Gray and Collins.
+Poets of a minor order, too, such as Somerville, Armstrong, Glover,
+Shenstone, Akenside, and John Dyer, either did not use the heroic
+distich which Pope crowned with such honour, or used it in their least
+significant poems.
+
+[Sidenote: James Thomson (1700-1748).]
+
+Thomson's influence, though less visible than Pope's, was probably as
+great. It was felt by the poets who loved Nature, and had no turn for
+satire. To pass to him from Prior, Gay, and Young is to leave the town
+for the country. English poetry owes much to the author of _The
+Seasons_, who was the first among the poets of his century to bring men
+back to 'Nature, the Vicar of the Almighty Lord.' He could not, indeed,
+shake off altogether the fetters of the conventional diction current in
+his day, and his style is often turgid and verbose. But Thomson had, to
+use a phrase of his own, 'a fine flame of imagination,' and when brought
+face to face with Nature he has the inspiration of a poet who discerns
+the lessons which Nature is ready to teach.
+
+James Thomson was born at Ednam, on the banks of the Tweed, on September
+11th, 1700, but his father removed to Jedburgh shortly afterwards, and
+there the future poet gained his first impression of rural scenes. He
+began to rhyme in boyhood, but, unlike most young poets, had the good
+sense to make an annual bonfire of his youthful effusions. At the early
+age of fifteen he was sent to the university at Edinburgh, his father,
+who was a Presbyterian minister, wishing that his son should follow the
+same vocation. But Thomson was not destined to 'wag his head in a
+pulpit.' He had a friend at this time in David Mallet, a minor poet of
+more prudence than principle, and when Mallet had the good fortune to
+gain a tutorship in London, his companion also started for the
+metropolis in search of money and fame. It was a desperate venture, and
+the young poet's difficulties were increased by the loss of his letters
+of introduction. Scotchmen however have always countrymen willing to
+help them, and Thomson whose pedigree on the mother's side connected him
+with the famous house of Home, found temporary employment as tutor to a
+child of Lord Binning who belonged by marriage to the same family.
+Afterwards he resided with Millan, a bookseller at Charing Cross, and
+then having finished _Winter_ (1726), on which he had been at work for
+some time, he sold it to the publisher for three guineas. Before long
+it was read and warmly praised by Aaron Hill, then a man of mark in the
+world of letters. Sir Spencer Compton, the Speaker, to whom the poem was
+dedicated, gave the poet twenty guineas for the compliment; Rundle, the
+Bishop of Derry, and several ladies of rank cheered him with their
+praise, and Thomson's success was assured. It was the age of patrons,
+and he practised without shame and without discrimination the art of
+flattery. Each book of _The Seasons_ had a dedication, and the honour
+was one for which some kind of payment was expected. _Summer_ appeared
+in 1727 and _Spring_ in the year following. In 1729 the appearance of
+_Britannia_ showed the popularity of the poet and of his theme, for
+three editions were sold. It is a distinctly party poem, and contains an
+attack upon Walpole--whom he had previously praised as the 'most
+illustrious of patriots'--for submitting to indignities from Spain. The
+British Lion roars loudly in it, but there is more of fustian in the
+piece than of true patriotism. 'How dares,' the poet exclaims, 'the
+proud Iberian rouse to wrath the masters of the main:'
+
+    'Who told him that the big incumbent war
+    Would not ere this have rolled his trembling ports
+    In smoky ruin? and his guilty stores,
+    Won by the ravage of a butchered world,
+    Yet unatoned, sunk in the swallowing deep,
+    Or led the glittering prize into the Thames?'
+
+In February, 1729-30, Thomson's tragedy of _Sophonisba_, a subject
+previously chosen by Marston (1606), and by Lee (1676), was acted at
+Drury Lane. The play was dedicated to the queen, and on the opening
+night the house was crowded, but the success of the piece was slight.
+Thomson's genius was not dramatic, and while his characters declaim,
+they do not act. His next play, _Agamemnon_ (1738), was not lost for
+want of labour or of friends. Pope appeared in the theatre on the first
+night, and was greeted with applause. The Prince and Princess of Wales
+were present on another occasion, but the play did not live long. His
+third attempt, _Edward and Eleanora_, was prohibited by the Lord
+Chamberlain, since it was supposed to praise the Prince of Wales at the
+expense of the Court. In 1740 the _Masque of Alfred_, by Thomson and
+Mallet, was performed. _Tancred and Sigismunda_ followed in 1745, and
+this tragedy, in which Garrick played the leading part, had at the time
+a considerable measure of success. The plot is more interesting than
+that of _Sophonisba_, and the characters are more life-like. Despite its
+effusive sentiment, Garrick's splendid acting would, no doubt, make the
+tragedy effective on the stage, but it does not add to the literary
+reputation of the poet. _Coriolanus_, Thomson's last drama, was not
+performed upon the stage until the year after his death.
+
+Voltaire, who had met Thomson and liked him--the liking, indeed, seemed
+to be universal--praised his tragedies for being 'elegantly writ.' 'It
+may be,' he says, 'that his heroes are neither moving nor busy enough,
+but taking him all in all, methinks he has the highest claim to the
+greatest esteem.' The value of Voltaire's criticism of an English
+dramatist is best appreciated by remembering his ignorant judgment of
+Shakespeare.
+
+Thomson's laurels were gained in another field of poetry. On the
+production of _Autumn_ in 1730, _The Seasons_ in its complete form was
+published by subscription in quarto. The four books, as we have already
+said, appeared at different times, _Winter_ being the first in order and
+_Autumn_ the latest. The Hymn with which the poem concludes may be
+compared, and will not greatly suffer in the comparison, with Adam's
+morning hymn in the fifth book of _Paradise Lost_, and with Coleridge's
+_Hymn in the Valley of Chamouni_. Like them it is raised, to use the
+poet's own words, to an 'Almighty Father.' A brief extract shall be
+given:
+
+    'His praise, ye brooks, attune, ye trembling rills;
+    And let me catch it as I muse along.
+    Ye headlong torrents, rapid, and profound;
+    Ye softer floods, that lead the humid maze
+    Along the vale; and thou, majestic main,
+    A secret world of wonders in thyself,
+    Sound His stupendous praise, whose greater voice
+    Or bids you roar, or bids your roarings fall.
+    Soft roll your incense, herbs, and fruits, and flowers,
+    In mingled clouds to Him, whose sun exalts,
+    Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil paints.
+    Ye forests bend, ye harvests wave, to Him;
+    Breathe your still song into the reaper's heart,
+    As home he goes beneath the joyous moon.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Great source of day! best image here below
+    Of thy Creator, ever pouring wide,
+    From world to world, the vital ocean round,
+    On Nature write with every beam His praise.
+    The thunder rolls: be hushed the prostrate world;
+    While cloud to cloud returns the solemn hymn.
+    Bleat out afresh, ye hills; ye mossy rocks
+    Retain the sound: the broad responsive low,
+    Ye valleys, raise; for the Great Shepherd reigns,
+    And His unsuffering kingdom yet will come.'
+
+Swift complains that the _Seasons_, being all descriptive, nothing is
+doing, a defect inseparable from the subject. But the work has a poet's
+best gift--imagination--and a poet's instinct for apprehending the charm
+of what is minute in Nature, as well as of what is grand.
+
+Thomson has been called the naturalist's poet, and Hartley Coleridge
+observes that he is 'a perfect reservoir of natural images.' In his
+account of what he had learnt only by report he depends sometimes on the
+ignorant traditions of the country people; but in describing what he
+observes with the bodily eye, and with the eye of the mind, he is
+faithful to what he sees, and to what he perceives. No Dutch painter can
+be more exact and accurate than Thomson in the delineation of familiar
+scenes, and of animal life. In illustration of this gift, which Cowper
+shares with him, a scene, not to be surpassed for truthfulness of
+description, shall be quoted from _Winter_:
+
+    'Through the hushed air the whitening shower descends,
+    At first thin-wavering; till at last the flakes
+    Fall broad and wide and fast, dimming the day
+    With a continual flow. The cherished fields
+    Put on their winter robe of purest white.
+    'Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts
+    Along the mazy current. Low the woods
+    Bow their hoar head; and ere the languid sun,
+    Faint from the west, emits his evening ray,
+    Earth's universal face, deep-hid and chill,
+    Is one wild dazzling waste, that buries wide
+    The works of man. Drooping, the labourer-ox
+    Stands covered o'er with snow, and then demands
+    The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven,
+    Tamed by the cruel season, crowd around
+    The winnowing store, and claim the little boon
+    Which Providence assigns them. One alone,
+    The redbreast, sacred to the household gods,
+    Wisely regardful of th' embroiling sky,
+    In joyless fields and thorny thickets, leaves
+    His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man
+    His annual visit. Half afraid, he first
+    Against the window beats; then brisk, alights
+    On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor,
+    Eyes all the smiling family askance,
+    And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is--
+    Till more familiar grown, the table-crumbs
+    Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds
+    Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare,
+    Though timorous of heart and hard beset
+    By death in various forms, dark snares, and dogs,
+    And more unpitying men, the garden seeks
+    Urged on by fearless want. The bleating kind
+    Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth,
+    With looks of dumb despair; then, sad-dispersed
+    Dig for the withered herb through heaps of snow.'
+
+Thomson loves also to paint the landscape on a broad scale, and though
+his diction is sometimes too florid, he generally satisfies the
+imagination, as, for instance, in the splendid description in _Summer_
+of a sand-storm in the desert.
+
+                                    'Breathed hot
+    From all the boundless furnace of the sky,
+    And the wide, glittering waste of burning sand,
+    A suffocating wind the pilgrim smites
+    With instant death. Patient of thirst and toil,
+    Son of the desert! even the camel feels,
+    Shot through his withered heart, the fiery blast.
+    Or from the black-red ether, bursting broad,
+    Sallies the sudden whirlwind. Straight the sands,
+    Commoved around, in gathering eddies play;
+    Nearer and nearer still they darkening come;
+    Till with the general all-involving storm
+    Swept up, the whole continuous wilds arise;
+    And by their noonday fount dejected thrown,
+    Or sunk at night in sad disastrous sleep,
+    Beneath descending hills, the caravan
+    Is buried deep. In Cairo's crowded streets
+    The impatient merchant, wondering, waits in vain,
+    And Mecca saddens at the long delay.'
+
+The _Seasons_ was at one time, and for many years the most popular
+volume of poetry in the country. It was to be found in every cottage,
+and passages from the poem were familiar to every school-boy. The
+appreciation of the work was more affectionate than critical, and
+Thomson's faults were sometimes mistaken for beauties; but the
+popularity of the _Seasons_ was a healthy sign, and the poem, a
+forerunner of Cowper's _Task_, brought into vigorous life, feelings and
+sympathies that had been long dormant.
+
+Pope, who is twice mentioned in the poem, took a great interest in its
+progress through the press. Thomson consulted him frequently, and
+accepted many of his suggestions, while apparently retaining at all
+times an independent judgment. To the familiar episode of 'the lovely
+young Lavinia' the following graceful passage is said, but on very
+doubtful authority to have been added by Pope.[30] The first line, given
+for the sake of the context, is from Thomson's pen:
+
+    'Thoughtless of beauty, she was Beauty's self,
+    Recluse amid the close-embowering woods;
+    As in the hollow breast of Apennine,
+    Beneath the shelter of encircling hills,
+    A myrtle rises, far from human eye,
+    And breathes its balmy fragrance o'er the wild;
+    So flourished, blooming and unseen by all,
+    The sweet Lavinia; till, at length, compelled
+    By strong necessity's supreme command
+    With smiling patience in her looks she went
+    To glean Palemon's fields.'
+
+Thomson had now gained the highest mark of his fame, and, like Pope, had
+won it in a few years. Nearly two years of foreign travel followed, the
+poet having obtained the post of governor to a son of the
+Solicitor-General. The fruit of this tour was a long poem in blank verse
+on _Liberty_, which probably gave him infinite labour, but his ascent
+upon this occasion of what he calls 'the barren, but delightful mountain
+of Parnassus,' was labour lost. It is enough to say of _Liberty_, that
+it contains more than three thousand lines of unreadable blank verse.
+Sinecures were the rewards of genius in Thomson's day, and he was made
+Secretary of Briefs in the Court of Chancery. He took a cottage at
+Richmond, within an easy walk of Pope, and the two poets met often and
+lived amicably.
+
+Thomson did not enjoy his official fortune long, for his patron died,
+and though he might have kept his post had he applied to the Lord
+Chancellor, in whose gift it was, he appears to have been too lazy to do
+so. His friend Lyttelton in this emergency introduced him to the Prince
+of Wales, who, on learning that his affairs 'were in a more poetical
+posture than formerly,' gave him a pension of L100 a year. There was no
+certainty in a gift of this nature, and in about ten years it was
+withdrawn.
+
+_The Castle of Indolence_ (1748) was the latest labour of Thomson's
+life, and in the judgment of many critics takes precedence of _The
+Seasons_ in poetical merit. This verdict may be questioned, but the
+poem, written in the Spenserian stanza, has a soothing beauty and an
+enchanting felicity of expression which show the poet's genius in a new
+light. It is unlike any poetry of that age, and when compared with _The
+Seasons_, the verse, as Wordsworth justly says, 'is more harmonious and
+the diction more pure.' All the imagery of the poem is adopted to the
+vague and sleepy action of the characters represented in it. It is a
+veritable poet's dream, which carries the reader in its earliest stanzas
+into 'a pleasing land of drowsy-head:'
+
+      'In lowly dale, fast by a river's side,
+      With woody hill o'er hill encompassed round,
+      A most enchanting wizard did abide,
+      Than whom a fiend more fell is nowhere found.
+      It was, I ween, a lovely spot of ground;
+      And there a season atween June and May
+      Half prankt with Spring, with Summer half embrowned,
+      A listless climate made, where, sooth to say,
+    No living wight could work, ne cared even for play.'
+
+There are verbal inspirations in a great poet which satisfy the ear,
+capture the imagination, and live in the memory for ever. Milton's pages
+are studded with them like stars; Gray has a few, Wordsworth many, and
+Keats some not to be surpassed for witchery. Of such poetically
+suggestive lines Thomson has his share, and although it seems unfair to
+remove them from their context, the excision may be made in a few cases,
+since they show not only that a new poet had appeared in an age of
+prose, but a poet of a new order, whose inspiration was felt by his
+successors. How poetically imaginative is Thomson's imagery of the
+'meek-eyed morn, mother of dews;' of
+
+    'Ships dim discovered dropping from the clouds;'
+
+of
+
+    'Autumn nodding o'er the yellow plain;'
+
+of the summer wind
+
+    'Sweeping with shadowy gust the fields of corn;'
+
+and of the Hebrid-Isles
+
+    'Placed far amid the melancholy main,'
+
+a line which may have suggested the lovelier verse of Wordsworth
+descriptive of the cuckoo:
+
+    'Breaking the silence of the seas
+    Among the farthest Hebrides.'
+
+Thomson did not live long after the publication of _The Castle of
+Indolence_. A cold caught upon the river led to a fever, which ended
+fatally on August 27th, 1748. He had for some years been in love with a
+Miss Young, the 'Amanda' of his very feeble love lyrics, and her
+marriage is said to have hastened his death. Men, however, do not die
+for love at the mature age of forty-nine, and as Thomson was 'more fat
+than bard beseems,' and was not always temperate in his habits,
+constitutional causes are more likely to have led to the poet's death
+than Amanda's cruelty.
+
+Dr. Johnson says somewhere that the further authors keep apart from each
+other the better, and the literary squabbles of the last century
+afforded him good ground for the remark. It is to Thomson's credit that,
+like Goldsmith twenty-six years later, he died, leaving behind him many
+friends and not a single enemy. His fame rests upon two poems, _The
+Seasons_ and _The Castle of Indolence_, and on a song which has gained a
+national reputation. Apart from _Rule Britannia_, which appeared
+originally in the _Masque of Alfred_ and is spirited rather than
+poetical, his attempts to write lyrical poetry resulted in failure; but
+from his own niche in the Temple of Fame time is not likely to dislodge
+Thomson.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[25] See _Martialis Epigrammata_, book v. lii.
+
+[26] Fenelon was Archbishop of Cambray.
+
+[27] _The Poetical Works of Gay_, edited, with Life and Notes, by John
+Underhill, 2 vols.
+
+[28]
+
+    'I'll swim through seas; I'll ride upon the clouds;
+    I'll dig the earth; I'll blow out every fire;
+    I'll rave; I'll rant; I'll rise; I'll rush; I'll war;
+    Fierce as the man whom smiling dolphins bore
+    From the prosaic to poetic shore.
+    I'll tear the scoundrel into twenty pieces.'
+
+'The reader,' Fielding adds in a note, 'may see all the beauties of this
+speech in a late ode called a _Naval Lyric_.'
+
+[29] Written but not published. The earlier books of the _Night
+Thoughts_ appeared in 1742, the _Grave_ in 1743, but in a letter dated
+Feb. 25th, 1741-2, Blair in transmitting the MS. of the poem to a friend
+states that the greater portion of it was composed several years before
+his ordination ten years previously. Southey states that Blair's _Grave_
+is the only poem he could call to mind composed in imitation of the
+_Night Thoughts_, but the style as well as the date contradicts this
+judgment.
+
+[30] The tradition is founded on a volume in the British Museum
+containing MS. corrections supposed to be in Pope's handwriting. It is
+now, however, the opinion of experts that the writing is not Pope's. If
+he be the author, it is the only example of blank verse which we have
+from his pen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+MINOR POETS.
+
+Sir Samuel Garth--Ambrose Philips--John Philips--Nicholas
+    Rowe--Aaron Hill--Thomas Parnell--Thomas Tickell--William
+    Somerville--John Dyer--William Shenstone--Mark Akenside--David
+    Mallet--Scottish Song-Writers.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Sir Samuel Garth (1660-1717-18).]
+
+In Pope's day even the medical profession was influenced by party
+feeling, and Samuel Garth became known as the most famous Whig
+physician, but his friendships were not confined to one side, and he
+appears to have been universally beloved.
+
+Garth came of a Yorkshire family, and was born in 1660. He was admitted
+a Fellow of the College of Physicians in 1693, gained a large practice,
+and is said to have been very benevolent to the poor. The _Dispensary_
+(1699) is a satire called forth by the opposition of the Society of
+Apothecaries, to an edict of the College, and is a mock-heroic poem,
+which the quarrel made so effective at the time that it passed through
+several editions. The merit of achieving what the satirist intended may
+therefore be granted to the _Dispensary_. Few modern readers, however,
+will appreciate the welcome it received, and it is ludicrous to read in
+Anderson's edition of the poet that the poem 'is only inferior in
+humour, discrimination of character, and poetical ardour to the _Rape of
+the Lock_.' It would be far more accurate to say that the _Dispensary_
+has not a single merit in common with that poem, and but slight merit of
+any kind.
+
+The following passage upon death is the most vigorous, and is
+interesting as having supplied Cowper with a line in the poem on his
+Mother's Picture:[31]
+
+    ''Tis to the vulgar Death too harsh appears,
+    The ill we feel is only in our fears;
+    To die is landing on some silent shore
+    Where billows never break, nor tempests roar;
+    Ere well we feel th' friendly stroke 'tis o'er.
+    The wise through thought th' insults of death defy,
+    The fools through blest insensibility.
+    'Tis what the guilty fear, the pious crave;
+    Sought by the wretch and vanquished by the brave.
+    It eases lovers, sets the captive free,
+    And though a tyrant, offers liberty.'
+
+Addison in defending Garth in the _Whig-Examiner_ from the criticisms of
+Prior in the _Examiner_, the organ of the Tory party, says he does not
+question but the author 'who has endeavoured to prove that he who wrote
+the _Dispensary_ was no poet, will very suddenly undertake to show that
+he who gained the battle of _Blenheim_ is no general.' The comparison
+was an unfortunate one. Marlborough's military reputation has grown
+brighter with time, Garth's fame as a poet has long ago ceased to exist.
+
+A literary although not a poetical interest is associated with the name
+of "well-natured Garth," who, as Pope acknowledges, was one of his
+earliest friends; like Arbuthnot, he lived among the wits, and as a
+member of the famous Kit-cat Club he wrote verses upon the Whig beauties
+toasted by its members. His name is linked with Dryden's as well as with
+that of his illustrious successor. It will be remembered how, on the
+death of Dryden, the poet's body lay in state in the College of
+Physicians, and how, before the great procession started for
+Westminster Abbey, Sir Samuel, who was then President, delivered a Latin
+oration.
+
+Garth died in January, 1717-18, and, according to Pope, was a good
+Christian without knowing it. Addison, however, who visited Garth in his
+last illness, told Dr. Berkeley that he rejected Christianity on the
+assurance of his friend Halley that its doctrines were incomprehensible,
+and the religion itself an imposture. According to another report which
+comes through Pope, he actually 'died a papist.'
+
+[Sidenote: Ambrose Philips (1671-1749).]
+
+Ambrose Philips, who belonged, like Tickell, to Addison's 'little
+senate,' was born in 1671, and educated at St. John's, Cambridge. His
+_Pastorals_ were published in Tonson's _Miscellany_ (1709), and the same
+volume contained the _Pastorals_ of Pope. Log-rolling was understood in
+those days, and Philips's verses received warm praise in more than one
+number of the _Guardian_, the writer in one place declaring that there
+have been only four masters of the art in above two thousand years:
+'Theocritus, who left his dominions to Virgil; Virgil, who left his to
+his son Spenser; and Spenser, who was succeeded by his eldest born,
+Philips.'
+
+Pope's _Pastorals_ were not mentioned, and in revenge he devised the
+consummate artifice of sending an anonymous paper to the _Guardian_, in
+which, while appearing to praise Philips, he exalted himself. Steele
+took the bait, and considering that the essay depreciated Pope would not
+publish it without his permission, which was of course readily granted.
+'From that time,' says Johnson, 'Pope and Philips lived in a perpetual
+reciprocation of malevolence.'
+
+Philips's tragedy, _The Distrest Mother_ (1712), a translation, or
+nearly so, of Racine's _Andromaque_, was puffed in the _Spectator_. It
+is the play to which Sir Roger de Coverley was taken by his friends, and
+the representation supplied the good knight with an opportunity for
+much humorous comment.
+
+'When Sir Roger saw Andromache's obstinate refusal to her lover's
+importunities, he whispered me in the ear that he was sure she would
+never have him; to which he added with a more than ordinary vehemence,
+"You cannot imagine, sir, what it is to have to do with a widow." Upon
+Pyrrhus his threatening afterwards to leave her, the knight shook his
+head, and muttered to himself, "Ay, do if you can." This part dwelt so
+much upon my friend's imagination that at the close of the third Act, as
+I was thinking of something else, he whispered in my ear, "These widows,
+sir, are the most perverse creatures in the world. But pray," says he,
+"you that are a critic, is this play according to your dramatic rules,
+as you call them? Should your people in tragedy always talk to be
+understood? Why, there is not a single sentence in this play that I do
+not know the meaning of."'[32] Addison also inserted and praised in the
+_Spectator_ Philips's translations from Sappho (Nos. 223, 229).
+
+His odes to babes and children earned for him the _sobriquet_ of 'Namby
+Pamby,' 'a term which has been incorporated into the English language to
+designate mawkish sentiment. Namby was the infantine pronunciation of
+Ambrose, and Pamby was formed by the first letter of Philips's surname
+and that reduplication of sound which is natural to lisping
+children.'[33]
+
+Between simplicity and absurdity the line is a narrow one, and Philips
+stepped over it when he wrote to a child in the nursery--
+
+    'Dimply damsel, sweetly smiling,
+    All caressing, none beguiling;
+    Bud of beauty, fairly blowing,
+    Every charm to nature owing.'
+
+The longest of his baby songs is addressed to the Hon. Miss Carteret, in
+which he pictures the child's progress to womanhood, and anticipates her
+future loveliness and maiden reign:
+
+    'Then the taper-moulded waist
+    With a span of ribbon braced;
+    And the swell of either breast,
+    And the wide high-vaulted chest;
+    And the neck so white and round,
+    Little neck with brilliants bound;
+    And the store of charms which shine
+    Above, in lineaments divine,
+    Crowded in a narrow space
+    To complete the desperate face;
+    These alluring powers, and more,
+    Shall enamoured youths adore;
+    These and more in courtly lays
+    Many an aching heart shall praise.'
+
+The inventory of the maiden's physical charms which follows includes
+veiny temples, sloping shoulders, a hazely lucid eye, and cheek of
+health; but in the category the only allusion to the attractions of
+intellect and heart is in a couplet foretelling her
+
+                              'Gentleness of mind,
+    Gentle from a gentle kind.'
+
+That Philips translated _The Persian Tales_ is indelibly recorded by
+Pope:
+
+    'The bard whom pilfered Pastorals renown,
+    Who turns a Persian tale for half-a-crown,
+    Just writes to make his barrenness appear,
+    And strains from hard-bound brains eight lines a year.'
+
+But even Pope could award praise to Philips. In a letter to Henry
+Cromwell, in 1710, he observes that he was capable of writing very
+nobly, 'as I guess by a small copy of his, published in the _Tatler_, on
+the Danish winter;' and two years later he says to his friend Caryll:
+'Mr. Philips has two lines which seem to me what the French call very
+_picturesque_, that I cannot omit to you:
+
+    'All hid in snow in bright confusion lie,
+    And with one dazzling waste fatigue the eye!'
+
+The lines, not quite accurately quoted by Pope, are from an epistle,
+addressed to Lord Dorset from Copenhagen, which contains a few striking
+couplets, two of which may be transcribed before bidding adieu to
+Ambrose Philips:
+
+    'The vast leviathan wants room to play,
+    And spout his waters in the face of day.
+    The starving wolves along the main sea prowl,
+    And to the moon in icy valleys howl.'
+
+[Sidenote: John Philips (1676-1708).]
+
+Ambrose Philips must not be confounded with his namesake John, the
+author of a clever burlesque of Milton, called _The Splendid Shilling_
+(1705); of _Blenheim_ (1705), a poem which he was urged to write by the
+Tories in opposition to Addison's _Campaign_; and of a poem upon _Cider_
+(1706), in 'Miltonian verse,' which seems to have afforded several
+suggestions to Pope in his _Windsor Forest_. It is said to display a
+considerable knowledge of the subject, and in that its principal merit
+consists. From _The Splendid Shilling_ a brief extract may be given:
+
+    'So pass my days. But when nocturnal shades
+    This world envelop, and th' inclement air
+    Persuades men to repel benumbing frosts
+    With pleasant wines, and crackling blaze of wood;
+    Me, lonely sitting, nor the glimmering light
+    Of make-weight candle, nor the joyous talk
+    Of loving friend delights; distressed, forlorn,
+    Amidst the horrors of the tedious night,
+    Darkling I sigh, and feed with dismal thoughts
+    My anxious mind; or sometimes mournful verse
+    Indite, and sing of groves and myrtle shades,
+    Or desperate lady near a purling stream,
+    Or lover pendent on a willow tree.
+    Meanwhile I labour with eternal drought
+    And restless wish, and rave; my parched throat
+    Finds no relief, nor heavy eyes repose.
+    But if a slumber haply does invade
+    My weary limbs, my fancy still awake,
+    Thoughtful of drink, and eager, in a dream
+    Tipples imaginary pots of ale
+    In vain; awake I find the settled thirst
+    Still gnawing, and the pleasant phantom curse.'
+
+'Philips,' says the poet Campbell, 'had the merit of studying and
+admiring Milton, but he never could imitate him without ludicrous
+effect, either in jest or earnest. His _Splendid Shilling_ is the
+earliest and one of the best of our parodies; but _Blenheim_ is as
+completely a burlesque upon Milton as _The Splendid Shilling_, though it
+was written and read with gravity, ... yet such are the fluctuations of
+taste that contemporary criticism bowed with solemn admiration over his
+Miltonic cadences.'
+
+[Sidenote: Nicholas Rowe (1673-1718).]
+
+Nicholas Rowe had the honour, if it was one in those days, of being made
+Laureate on the accession of George I. His odes, epistles, and songs are
+without merit, but he gained reputation as the translator of Lucan's
+_Pharsalia_, of which Sir Arthur Gorges had produced a version in 1614,
+and his plays entitle him to a place, though not a high one, in our
+dramatic literature.
+
+Rowe edited an edition of Shakespeare, and should have known his author,
+yet in a prologue he declares that he could not draw women--an amazing
+assertion echoed by Collins, who praises Fletcher for his knowledge of
+the 'female mind,' and adds that 'stronger Shakespeare felt for man
+alone.'
+
+The chronological list of Rowe's dramas runs as follows: _The Ambitious
+Step-mother_ (1700); _Tamerlane_ (1702); _The Fair Penitent_ (1703);
+_Ulysses_ (1705); _The Royal Convert_ (1707); the _Tragedy of Jane
+Shore_ (1714); and the _Tragedy of Lady Jane Grey_ (1715). Measured by
+his contemporary dramatists he is a distinguished playwright. His
+characters do not live, but he could invent effective scenes, though in
+some cases the poet's taste may be questioned.
+
+For many years _Tamerlane_ was acted at Drury Lane on the anniversary of
+King William's landing in England, and under the names of Tamerlane and
+Bajazet the king is belauded at the expense of Louis XIV. _The Fair
+Penitent_, a piece even more successful upon the stage, will still
+please the reader, though he may question the high eulogium of Johnson,
+that "scarcely any work of any poet is at once so interesting by the
+fable, and so delightful by the language." Rowe has not the tragic power
+which can express passion without rant, and pathos without extravagance.
+In _The Fair Penitent_ Calista gives utterance to her feelings by piling
+up expletives. Thus, when her husband attacks the lover who has ruined
+her, she exclaims, 'Destruction! fury! sorrow! shame! and death!' and,
+on another occasion, she cries out, 'Madness! confusion!' words which
+give a sense of the ludicrous rather than of the tragic; and so also
+does Calista's last utterance when, addressing Altamont, she says:
+
+                    'Had I but early known
+    Thy wondrous worth, thou excellent young man
+    We had been happier both--now 'tis too late!'
+
+Rowe may be regarded as the principal representative of tragedy in the
+'age of Pope,' but his respectable work shows a fatal degeneration from
+the 'gorgeous tragedy' of the Elizabethans.
+
+[Sidenote: Aaron Hill (1684-1749).]
+
+Aaron Hill, unlike Rowe, was not distinguished as a dramatist, and
+succeeded only in two or three adaptations from the French. His claims
+as a poet are also insignificant. He was born in London in 1684, with
+expectations that were not destined to be realized, but Fortune was not
+unkind to him. His uncle, Lord Paget, Ambassador at Constantinople, gave
+the youth a warm welcome, supplied him with a tutor, and sent him to
+travel in the East. On Lord Paget's return to England, Hill accompanied
+him, and together they are said to have visited a great part of Europe.
+Some time later Hill went abroad again, and was absent two or three
+years. For awhile--it could not have been long--he was secretary to the
+Earl of Peterborough, and at the age of twenty-six, his good star being
+still in the ascendant, he married a young lady 'of great merit and
+beauty, with whom he had a very handsome fortune.' Hill was then
+appointed manager of Drury Lane, and he wrote a number of plays, the
+very names of which are now forgotten. Few men indeed so well known in
+his own day have sunk into such insignificance in ours. He wrote eight
+books of a long and unfinished epic called _Gideon_, which I suppose no
+one in the present century has had the hardihood to read; like Young he
+wrote a poem on _The Judgment Day_, a theme attempted also, shortly
+before his death, by John Philips, and that, after his kind, he produced
+a Pindaric ode goes without saying. A long poem called _The Northern
+Star_, a panegyric on Peter the Great, is said to have passed through
+several editions. The poem does not prove Hill to be a poet, but it
+shows his command of the heroic couplet. The style of the poem, which
+is an indiscriminate panegyric, may be judged from the following lines:
+
+    'Transcendent prince! how happy must thou be!
+    What can'st thou look upon unblessed by thee?
+    What inward peace must that calm bosom know,
+    Whence conscious virtue does so strongly flow!
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Such are the kings who make God's image shine,
+    Nor blush to dare assert their right divine!
+    No earth-born bias warps their climbing will,
+    No pride their power, no avarice whets their skill.
+    They poise each hope which bids the wise obey,
+    And shed broad blessings from their widening sway;
+    To raise the afflicted, stretch the healing hand,
+    Drive crushed oppression from each rescued land,
+    Bold in alternate right, or sheath or draw
+    The sword of conquest, or the sword of law;
+    Spare what resists not, what opposes bend,
+    And govern cool, what they with warmth defend.'
+
+Hill has the merit of having turned the tables upon Pope, who had put
+him into the treatise on the _Bathos_, and then into the _Dunciad_,
+where, however, the lines have more of compliment than censure, since he
+is made to mount 'far off among the swans of Thames.' Irritated by a
+note in the _Dunciad_, Hill replied in a long poem entitled _The
+Progress of Wit, a Caveat_, which opens with the following pointed
+lines:
+
+    'Tuneful Alexis, on the Thames' fair side,
+    The ladies' plaything, and the Muses' pride;
+    With merit popular, with wit polite,
+    Easy though vain, and elegant though light;
+    Desiring, and deserving others' praise,
+    Poorly accepts a fame he ne'er repays;
+    Unborn to cherish, sneakingly approves,
+    And wants the soul to spread the worth he loves.'
+
+In a letter to Hill Pope complained of these lines, and had the
+hypocrisy to say that he never thought any great matters of his poetical
+capacity, but prided himself on the superiority of his moral life. Hill
+returned a masterly and incisive reproof to this ridiculous statement,
+in the course of which he says:
+
+    'I am sorry to hear you say you never thought any great matters
+    of your poetry. It is in my opinion the characteristic you are
+    to hope your distinction from. To be honest is the duty of every
+    plain man. Nor, since the soul of poetry is sentiment, can a
+    great poet want morality. But your honesty you possess in common
+    with a million who will never be remembered; whereas your poetry
+    is a peculiar, that will make it impossible that you should be
+    forgotten.'
+
+He adds that if Pope had not been in the spleen when he wrote, he would
+have remembered that humility is a moral virtue; and how, asks the
+writer, can you know that your moral life is above that of most of the
+wits 'since you tell me in the same letter that many of their names were
+unknown to you?'
+
+Aaron Hill, though he could write a sensible letter, was not a wise man.
+He was 'everything by turns and nothing long.' Poetry was but one of his
+accomplishments, and we are told that he cultivated it 'as a relaxation
+from the study of history, criticism, geography, physic, commerce,
+agriculture, war, law, chemistry, and natural philosophy, to which he
+devoted the greatest part of his time.'
+
+As a poet Hill has the facility in composition exhibited by so many of
+his contemporaries, and he has occasionally a pretty turn of fancy. His
+last labour was the successful adaptation of Voltaire's _Merope_ to the
+English stage (1749); sixteen years before he had adapted _Zara_ with
+equal success.
+
+[Sidenote: Thomas Parnell (1679-1718).]
+
+Among the minor poets of the period an honourable place must be given to
+Parnell, who possessed the soul of a poet, but gave limited expression
+to it, for it was only during the later years of a short life that he
+discovered where his genius lay. The friend of Pope, Arbuthnot, and
+Swift, his biography has been written by Johnson, and more discursively
+by his countryman Goldsmith.
+
+Thomas Parnell was born in Dublin, 1679, entered Trinity College at the
+early age of thirteen, and in 1700 obtained the degree of Master of
+Arts. Having taken orders he gained preferment in the Church, became, in
+1706, Archdeacon of Clogher, and through the recommendation of Swift
+obtained also a good living. Parnell was fond of society, and was
+accustomed as often as possible to join the wits in London. He was a
+member of the Scriblerus Club, wrote for the _Spectator_, preached
+eloquent sermons, and had the ambition of a poet. But the loss of his
+wife preyed upon his mind, and he is said, though I believe chiefly on
+Pope's authority, to have given way to intemperance. He died suddenly at
+Chester at the age of thirty-nine in 1718.
+
+Parnell was one of the poets whose fortunes Swift did his best to
+promote. Writing in 1712, he says, 'I gave Lord Bolingbroke a poem of
+Parnell's. I made Parnell insert some compliments in it to his lordship.
+He is extremely pleased with it, and read some parts of it to-day to
+Lord Treasurer, who liked it as much. And indeed he outdoes all our
+poets here a bar's length.' And a month later he writes, 'Lord
+Bolingbroke likes Parnell mightily, and it is pleasant to see that one
+who hardly passed for anything in Ireland, makes his way here with a
+little friendly forwarding.'
+
+_The Hermit_, the _Hymn to Contentment_, an _Allegory on Man_, and a
+_Night Piece on Death_, give Parnell his title to a place among the
+poets. _The Rise of Woman_, and _Health, an Eclogue_, have also much
+merit, and were praised by Pope (but this was to their author) as 'two
+of the most beautiful things he ever read.' The story of _The Hermit_,
+written originally in Spanish, is given in _Howell's Letters_
+(1645-1655), and is admirably told by Parnell, but much that he wrote,
+including a series of long poems on Scripture characters, is poetically
+worthless. His poems, published five years after his death, were edited
+by Pope, who wisely suppressed some pieces unworthy of the poet. Then,
+as now, literary scavengers were at work. In 1758 the suppressed poems
+were published, and called forth the comment from Gray, 'Parnell is the
+dunghill of Irish Grub Street.' To Parnell Pope was indebted for the
+_Essay on Homer_ prefixed to the translation, with which he does not
+seem to have been well pleased. He complained of the stiffness of the
+style, and said it had cost him more pains in the correcting than the
+writing of it would have done.
+
+If Parnell's prose has the defect of stiffness, his lines glide with a
+smoothness that must have satisfied the ear of Pope. The higher
+harmonies of verse were unknown to him, but ease is not without a charm,
+and in illustration of Parnell's gift the final lines of _A Night Piece
+on Death_ shall be quoted:
+
+    'When men my scythe and darts supply,
+    How great a king of fears am I!
+    They view me like the last of things,
+    They make and then they draw my stings.
+    Fools! if you less provoked your fears,
+    No more my spectre form appears.
+    Death's but a path that must be trod,
+    If man would ever pass to God;
+    A port of calms, a state to ease
+    From the rough rage of swelling seas.
+    Why then thy flowing sable stoles,
+    Deep pendent cypress, mourning poles,
+    Loose scarfs to fall athwart thy weeds,
+    Long palls, drawn hearses, covered steeds,
+    And plumes of black that as they tread,
+    Nod o'er the scutcheons of the dead?
+    Nor can the parted body know,
+    Nor wants the soul these forms of woe;
+    As men who long in prison dwell,
+    With lamps that glimmer round the cell,
+    Whene'er their suffering years are run,
+    Spring forth to greet the glittering sun;
+    Such joy, though far transcending sense,
+    Have pious souls at parting hence.
+    On earth and in the body placed,
+    A few and evil years they waste;
+    But when their chains are cast aside,
+    See the glad scene unfolding wide,
+    Clap the glad wing, and tower away,
+    And mingle with the blaze of day.'
+
+[Sidenote: Thomas Tickell (1686-1740).]
+
+Tickell wished to be remembered as the friend of Addison, and with
+Addison his name is indissolubly associated. The poem dedicated to the
+essayist's memory is perhaps over-praised by Macaulay when he says that
+it would do honour to the greatest name in our literature, but it proved
+incontestibly that Tickell, as a poet, was superior to the master whom
+he so loved and honoured. His reputation hangs upon this elegy, which
+Fox pronounced perfect.[34] The _Prospect of Peace_, which passed
+through several editions, had at one time a considerable reputation, not
+assuredly for its poetry, but because it appealed to the spirit of the
+time The style of the poem may be judged from these lines:--
+
+    'Accept, great Anne, the tears their memory draws,
+    Who nobly perished in their sovereign's cause;
+    For thou in pity bidd'st the war give o'er,
+    Mourn'st thy slain heroes, nor wilt venture more.
+    Vast price of blood on each victorious day!
+    (But Europe's freedom doth that price repay.)
+    Lamented triumphs! when one breath must tell
+    That Marlborough conquered and that Dormer fell.'
+
+His _Colin and Lucy_ called forth high praise from Goldsmith as one of
+the best ballads in our language, and Gray terms it the prettiest ballad
+in the world. Three stanzas from this once famous poem shall be
+quoted:--
+
+    '"I hear a voice you cannot hear,
+      Which says I must not stay;
+    I see a hand you cannot see,
+      Which beckons me away.
+    By a false heart and broken vows,
+      In early youth I die;
+    Was I to blame because his bride
+      Was thrice as rich as I?
+
+    '"Ah, Colin, give not her thy vows,
+      Vows due to me alone;
+    Nor thou, fond maid, receive his kiss,
+      Nor think him all thy own.
+    To-morrow in the church to wed,
+      Impatient, both prepare!
+    But know, fond maid, and know, false man,
+      That Lucy will be there!
+
+    '"Then bear my corse, my comrades, bear,
+      This bridegroom blithe to meet,
+    He in his wedding trim so gay,
+      I in my winding-sheet."
+    She spoke, she died; her corse was borne
+      The bridegroom blithe to meet,
+    He in his wedding trim so gay,
+      She in her winding-sheet.'
+
+There is some fancy but no imagination in the machinery of Tickell's
+long poem on _Kensington Gardens_, a title which recalls Matthew
+Arnold's exquisite stanzas. But the pathetic beauty of Arnold's lines
+belongs to a world of poetry wholly unlike that in which even the best
+of the Queen Anne poets lived and moved.
+
+Tickell's translation of the first book of the _Iliad_ led to the
+quarrel already mentioned in the account of Pope. He wrote, also, a
+rather lengthy poem on Oxford, in which there is some absurd criticism
+of insignificant poetasters, and, as a matter of course, an extravagant
+eulogium of Addison.
+
+The few facts recorded of Tickell's life may be summed up in a
+paragraph. He was born in 1686 at Bridekirk, in Cumberland, and entered
+Queen's College, Oxford, in 1701. In 1708 he obtained his M.A. degree,
+and two years later was chosen Fellow. For sixteen years Tickell held
+his fellowship, but resigned it on his marriage in 1726. In a poem
+addressed to the lady before marriage, he asks whether
+
+    'By thousands sought, Clotilda, canst thou free
+    Thy crowd of captives and descend to me?'
+
+Praise which in those days would be regarded as fulsome secured the
+friendship and patronage of Addison, who employed him in public affairs,
+and when he became Secretary of State made Tickell Under-Secretary. To
+him Addison left the charge of editing his works, which were published
+by subscription, and appeared in four quarto volumes in 1721. In 1725 he
+was made secretary to the Lord Justices of Ireland, 'a place of great
+honour,' which he held until his death in 1740. The praise of
+Wordsworth, a poet always chary of expressing approbation, has been
+bestowed upon Tickell. 'I think him,' he said, 'one of the very best
+writers of occasional verses.'
+
+[Sidenote: William Somerville (1692-1742).]
+
+Tickell had written some lines on hunting, which he published as a
+fragment. His contemporary Somerville, selecting the same subject, wrote
+_The Chase_ (1735), a poem in blank verse. He was born at Edston, in
+Warwickshire, and was said, Dr. Johnson writes, 'to be of the first
+family in his county.' He was educated at Winchester and Oxford, and had
+the tastes of a scholar as well as of a country gentleman, which, among
+other accomplishments, included that of hard drinking. We know little
+about him, and what we do know is deplorable, for his friend Shenstone
+writes that he was plagued and threatened by low wretches, and 'forced
+to drink himself into pains of the body in order to get rid of the pains
+of the mind.' He died in 1742, the owner of a good estate, which, owing
+to a contempt for economy, he was never able to enjoy. 'I loved him for
+nothing so much,' said Shenstone, 'as for his
+flocci-nauci-nihili-pili-fication of money.'
+
+In _The Chase_ Somerville had the advantage of knowing his subject, but
+knowledge is not poetry, and the interest of the poem is not due to its
+poetical qualities. He deserves some credit for his skill in handling a
+variety of metres as well as blank verse, in which his principal poem is
+written. In an address _To Mr. Addison_, the couplet,
+
+    'When panting Virtue her last efforts made,
+    You brought your Clio to the virgin's aid,'
+
+is praised by Johnson as one of those happy strokes which are seldom
+attained. In the same poem Shakespeare and Addison are brought together
+in a way that is far from happy:
+
+    'In heaven he sings; on earth your muse supplies
+    Th' important loss, and heals our weeping eyes,
+    Correctly great, she melts each flinty heart
+    With equal genius, but superior art.'
+
+Praise can be too strong even for a poet's digestion, and Somerville,
+who writes a great deal more nonsense in the same strain, should have
+remembered that he was not addressing a fool. If the poetical adulation
+of the time is to be excused, it must be on the ground that a poet had
+to live by patronage and not by the public. In a pecuniary point of view
+his subservience to men in high position was often successful. An almost
+universal custom, it was not regarded as degrading; but the poet must
+have been peculiarly constituted who was not degraded by it.
+
+[Sidenote: John Dyer (1698(?)-1758).]
+
+In the last century any subject was deemed suitable for poetry, and the
+Welsh poet, John Dyer, who was born about 1698, found in his later life
+poetical materials in _The Fleece_ (1757), a poem in four books of blank
+verse. His genius for descriptive poetry and his passionate and
+intelligent delight in natural objects are seen more pleasantly in
+_Grongar Hill_ (published in the same year as Thomson's _Winter_), a
+poem not without grammatical inaccuracies, one of which deforms the
+first couplet, but full of poetical feeling. In an ease of composition
+which runs into laxity he reminds us occasionally of George Wither. His
+chief merit is, that while independent of Thomson, he was inspired by
+the same love, and wrote with the same aim. Dyer is not content with
+bare description, but likes to moralize on the landscape he surveys.
+Thus, when looking on a ruined tower, the poet exclaims:
+
+    'Yet time has seen, that lifts the low,
+    And level lays the lofty brow,
+    Has seen this broken pile compleat,
+    Big with the vanity of state;
+    But transient is the smile of fate!
+    A little rule, a little sway,
+    A sunbeam in a winter's day,'
+    Is all the proud and mighty have
+    Between the cradle and the grave.'
+
+Dyer who is best seen in the octosyllabic metre, chose it also for _The
+Country Walk_, a poem in which, notwithstanding an occasional lapse into
+the conventional diction of the period, the rural pictures are drawn
+from life. He takes the reader into the farm-yard and fields as he
+writes:
+
+    'I am resolved this charming day
+    In the open field to stray,
+    And have no roof above my head
+    But that whereon the gods do tread.
+    Before the yellow barn I see
+    A beautiful variety
+    Of strutting cocks, advancing stout,
+    And flirting empty chaff about;
+    Hens, ducks, and geese, and all their brood,
+    And turkeys gobbling for their food;
+    While rustics thrash the wealthy floor,
+    And tempt all to crowd the door.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    And now into the fields I go,
+    Where thousand flaming flowers glow,
+    And every neighbouring hedge I greet
+    With honey-suckles smelling sweet;
+    Now o'er the daisy meads I stray
+    And meet with, as I pace my way,
+    Sweetly shining on the eye
+    A rivulet gliding smoothly by,
+    Which shows with what an easy tide
+    The moments of the happy glide.'
+
+_An Epistle to a Friend in Town_, records his satisfaction with the
+country retirement in which his days are passed. In a rather awkward
+stanza he says that he is more than content, and is indeed charmed with
+everything, and the lines close with the moralizing that was dear to
+Dyer's heart:
+
+    'Alas! what a folly that wealth and domain
+      We heap up in sin and in sorrow!
+    Immense is the toil, yet the labour how vain!
+      Is not life to be over to-morrow?
+    Then glide on my moments, the few that I have,
+      Smooth-shaded and quiet and even;
+    While gently the body descends to the grave,
+      And the spirit arises to heaven.'
+
+Dyer was an artist as well as a poet, and visited Italy, which suggested
+a poem in blank verse, _The Ruins of Rome_ (1740). After his return to
+England he entered into holy orders, took a wife, who is said to have
+been a descendant of Shakespeare, and settled at Calthorp in
+Leicestershire, which he afterwards exchanged for a living in
+Lincolnshire. There is much to like in Dyer, and he has had the good
+fortune to win the applause of two great poets. Gray says, in a letter
+to Horace Walpole, that he had 'more of poetry in his imagination than
+almost any of our number,' and Wordsworth in a sonnet, _To the Poet,
+John Dyer_, writes:
+
+    'Though hasty Fame hath many a chaplet culled
+    For worthless brows, while in the pensive shade
+    Of cold neglect she leaves thy head ungraced,
+    Yet pure and powerful minds, hearts meek and still,
+    A grateful few, shall love thy modest Lay,
+    Long as the shepherd's bleating flock shall stray
+    O'er naked Snowdon's wide aerial waste;
+    Long as the thrush shall pipe on Grongar Hill!'
+
+[Sidenote: William Shenstone (1714-1764).]
+
+'The true rustic style,' Charles Lamb writes, 'I think is to be found in
+Shenstone,' and he calls his _Schoolmistress_ the 'prettiest of poems.'
+
+William Shenstone was born in 1714 at the Leasowes in Hales-Owen, a spot
+upon which he afterwards expended his skill as a landscape gardener. In
+1732 he went up to Pembroke College, Oxford, and remained there for some
+years without taking a degree. Those years appear to have been devoted
+to poetry. In 1737 Shenstone published a small volume anonymously. This
+was followed by the _Judgment of Hercules_ (1741), and by the
+_Schoolmistress_ (1742). In 1745 he undertook the management of his
+estate, and began, to quote Dr. Johnson's quaint description, 'to point
+his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his walks, and to
+wind his waters; which he did with such judgment and such fancy, as made
+his little domain the envy of the great and the admiration of the
+skilful; a place to be visited by travellers and copied by designers.'
+On this estate, with its lakes and cascades, its urns and poetical
+inscriptions, its hanging woods, and 'wild shaggy precipice,' Shenstone
+appears to have spent all his fortune. He led the life of a dilettante,
+and died unmarried at the age of fifty. His elegies and songs are dead,
+and whatever vitality remains in his verse will be found in the
+_Pastoral Ballad_ and the _Schoolmistress_.
+
+The ballad written in anapaestic verse has an Arcadian grace, against
+which even Johnson's robust intellect was not proof. For the following
+lines he says, 'if any mind denies its sympathy it has no acquaintance
+with love or nature':
+
+    'When forced the fair nymph to forego,
+      What anguish I felt in my heart!
+    Yet I thought--but it might not be so--
+      'Twas with pain that she saw me depart.
+    She gazed as I slowly withdrew,
+      My path I could hardly discern;
+    So sweetly she bade me adieu,
+      I thought that she bade me return.
+
+The _Schoolmistress_, written in imitation of Spenser, has the merits of
+simplicity and homely humour. The village dame is a life-like character,
+and the urchins whom she is supposed to teach, and does sometimes teach
+by chastisement, are cunningly portrayed.
+
+From the verses _Written at an Inn in Henley_ three stanzas may be
+quoted. The last will be already known to readers familiar with their
+Boswell:
+
+    'I fly from pomp, I fly from plate,
+      I fly from falsehood's specious grin!
+    Freedom I love, and form I hate,
+      And choose my lodgings at an inn.
+
+    'Here, waiter! take my sordid ore,
+      Which lacqueys else might hope to win;
+    It buys what courts have not in store,
+      It buys me freedom at an inn!
+
+    'Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round,
+      Where'er his stages may have been,
+    May sigh to think he still has found
+      The warmest welcome at an inn.'
+
+Unhappily this final verse, which Johnson is said to have repeated 'with
+great emotion,' has lost its application. The modern traveller, instead
+of being warmly welcomed at an inn, loses his identity and becomes a
+number.
+
+[Sidenote: Mark Akenside (1721-1770).]
+
+Akenside, who was born at Newcastle, 1721, received his education in
+Edinburgh, where he was sent to prepare for the ministry among the
+Dissenters. He, however, changed his mind, became a medical student, and
+finally, though much disliked for his manners, gained reputation as a
+physician in London. He is stated to have been excessively stiff and
+formal, and a frigid stiffness marks the _Pleasures of Imagination_
+(1744), a remarkable work considering the writer's age, since it is
+without the faults of youth. The poem is founded on Addison's _Essays_
+on the subject in the _Spectator_, and the poet also owes a considerable
+debt to Shaftesbury. Akenside's blank verse has the merits of dignity
+and strength. But the work is as cold as the author's manners were said
+to be, and in spite of what may be called poetical power, as distinct
+from a high order of inspiration, the poem leaves the reader unmoved.
+Pope, who saw it in MS., said that Akenside was 'no everyday writer,'
+which is a just criticism. The _Pleasures of Imagination_ has the merits
+of careful workmanship and of some originality, but the interest which
+it at one time excited is not likely to be revived. In 1757 Akenside
+re-wrote the poem, and I believe that no critic, with the exception of
+Hazlitt, regards the second attempt as an improvement on the first. His
+skill in the use of classical imagery is seen to advantage in the _Hymn
+to the Naiads_ (1746), and he deserves praise, too, for his
+inscriptions, which are distinguished for conciseness and vigour of
+style. The poet, it may be added, wrote a great number of odes that lack
+all, or nearly all, the qualities which should distinguish lyrical
+poetry. Not a spark of the divine fire warms or illuminates these
+reputable verses, but the author states that his chief aim was to be
+correct, and in that he has succeeded.
+
+[Sidenote: David Mallet (1700-1765).]
+
+David Mallet, a friend or acquaintance of Thomson, was contemptible as a
+man and comparatively insignificant as a poet. He did a large amount of
+dirty work, and appears to have made a good income by it. The base
+character of the man was known to Bolingbroke, of whose basest purpose
+he made him the instrument (see c. vii.). Mallet's ballad of _William
+and Margaret_ (1724) is known to many readers, and so is the inferior
+ballad _Edwin and Emma_, which was written many years afterwards. In
+1728 he published _The Excursion_, a poem not sufficiently significant
+to prevent Wordsworth from selecting the same title. In Mallet's poem on
+_Verbal Criticism_ (1733), Johnson states that he paid court to Pope,
+and was rewarded by a travelling tutorship gained through the poet's
+influence. In 1731 his tragedy, _Eurydice_, was acted at Drury Lane. He
+joined Thomson, as we have said elsewhere, in the composition of the
+masque of _Alfred_, and 'almost wholly changed' the piece after
+Thomson's death. _Amyntor and Theodora_, a long poem in blank verse,
+appeared in 1747; _Britannia_, a masque, in 1753, and _Elvira_, a
+tragedy, in 1763. Mallet, who was without qualifications for the task,
+wrote a life of Lord Bacon. He is said to have obtained a pension for
+inflaming the mind of the public against Admiral Byng, and thereby
+hastening his execution.
+
+In Anderson's edition of the poets, Mallet's biography is related with
+more fulness than by Dr. Johnson, and, after frankly recording acts
+which fully justify Macaulay's statement that Mallet's character was
+infamous, the writer adds, 'his integrity in business and in life is
+unimpeached.'
+
+
+SCOTTISH SONG-WRITERS.
+
+When the poets of England were writing satires, moral essays, and
+elaborate didactic treatises, the poets of Scotland were singing, in
+bird-like notes, songs of humour and of love. It is remarkable that the
+Scotch, the shrewdest, hardest, and most business-like people in these
+islands, should be so richly endowed with a gift shared and enjoyed by
+rich and poor alike. The most exquisite of English lyrics fall, where
+culture is wanting, on regardless ears; the songs of Ramsay and of
+Burns, of Lady Anne Lindsay and Jane Elliot, of Hogg and Lady Nairne, of
+Tannahill and Macneil, are household words in Scotland to gentle and
+simple. A few of the choicest songs of Scotland are due to ladies of
+rank, but the larger number have sprung from 'the huts where poor men
+lie.' Ramsay was a barber and wig-maker; Burns, as all the world knows,
+followed the plough; Tannahill was a weaver; Hogg a shepherd; and Robert
+Nicoll the son of a small farmer, 'ruined out of house and hold.'
+
+[Sidenote: Allan Ramsay (1686-1758).]
+
+Allan Ramsay was, born at Leadhills, in Lanarkshire, in 1686, and was
+therefore Pope's senior by two years. He has been called 'the restorer
+of Scottish poetry,' and by his compilation of _The Evergreen_ (1724),
+and of _The Tea-Table Miscellany_, published in the same year, he
+gathered up the wealth of song scattered through the country. _The
+Miscellany_ extended to four volumes, and before the poet's death had
+reached twelve editions. An undying interest belongs to both
+anthologies. _The Evergreen_ was the first poetry Walter Scott perused,
+and in a marginal note on his copy of _The Tea-Table Miscellany_ he
+writes: 'This book belonged to my grandfather, Robert Scott, and out of
+it I was taught _Hardiknute_ by heart before I could read the ballad
+myself. It was the first poem I ever learnt, the last I shall ever
+forget.' The ballad Scott loved so well, I may say in passing, was
+written as a whole or in part by Lady Wardlaw (1677-1727),[35] and
+belongs therefore either to our period or to the later years of the
+seventeenth century.
+
+In 1725 Ramsay published _The Gentle Shepherd_, a pastoral that puts to
+shame the numerous semi-classical and mythological poems which appeared
+under that name in England. It is essentially a rural poem, in which the
+action and language harmonize with what we know, or think we know, of
+country manners and life. There is neither striking invention in the
+plot nor much individuality in the characters, but there is poetical
+harmony throughout, many pretty rustic scenes, and sufficient interest
+to carry the reader pleasantly over the ground. _The Gentle Shepherd_ is
+the work of a poet, and gives a higher impression of Ramsay's power than
+his songs alone would warrant. His lyrical pieces, though not wholly
+without the lilt and charm such verse exacts, are perhaps mainly of
+service in showing the immeasurable superiority of Burns. Ramsay was a
+successful poet, and not too much of a poet to be also a successful man
+of business. He exchanged wig-making for bookselling, kept a shop in the
+High Street of Edinburgh, and finally retired to a villa which he had
+built for himself on the Castle Hill. A good-humoured, care-defying man,
+he enjoyed life in an easy way, and was not disposed to repine when his
+road lay down the hill. In an epistle to a friend he writes:
+
+    'And now in years and sense grown auld,
+    In ease I like my limbs to fauld,
+    Debts I abhor, and plan to be
+    From shackling trade and dangers free;
+    That I may, loosed frae care and strife,
+    With calmness view the edge of life;
+    And when a full ripe age shall crave,
+    Slide easily into my grave.'
+
+Among the Scottish song-writers of the period may be mentioned Robert
+Crawford (1695?-1732), whose love verses, written in a conventional
+strain, are not without music; Lord Binning (1696-1732), the author of a
+pretty song called _Ungrateful Nanny_; and William Hamilton of Bangour
+(1704-1754), who wrote the well-known _Braes of Yarrow_. The most
+charming of Scottish lyrics belong, however, to a later period of the
+century than the age of Pope.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The student who reads the minor poets who figured, in some cases with
+much applause, during the years of Pope's ascendency, will be struck by
+the almost total absence from their works of creative power. These
+rhymers wrote for the age, and illustrate it, but they did not write for
+all time, and a small volume would suffice to hold all their verse which
+is of permanent value. Too often they imagined that by the composition
+of flowing couplets they proved their title to rank with inspired poets.
+They confounded the art of verse-making with the divine art of poetry,
+and were not aware that the substance of their work is prose. Now and
+then the digger in this mine will discover a small nugget of gold, but
+for the most part the interest called forth by the poets mentioned in
+the present chapter, is more historical than poetical, and the reader in
+passing to the great prose writers of the age will be conscious of gain
+rather than of loss.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[31] Cowper's line,
+
+    'Where tempests never beat nor billows roar,'
+
+is not an improvement upon Garth's. Tempests, it has been justly said,
+do not beat.
+
+[32] The _Spectator_, No. 335.
+
+[33] Elwin and Courthope's _Pope_, vol. vii., p. 62.
+
+[34] Edward Young tried his skill on the same theme in a poetical
+epistle to Tickell, but his lines are leaden and his praise absurd.
+Addison's glory was so great, he says, as a statesman and a patriot,
+that
+
+          'It borders on disgrace
+    To say he sung the best of human race.'
+
+
+[35] To Lady Wardlaw Dr. Robert Chambers attributed twenty-five ballads,
+and among them several of the finest we possess, which are regarded as
+ancient by every other authority. If the assumption were proved, this
+lady would hold a distinguished and unique position among the poets of
+the Pope period, but there is absolutely no ground for the theory so
+zealously advocated by Chambers.
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+THE PROSE WRITERS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+JOSEPH ADDISON--SIR RICHARD STEELE.
+
+
+As essayists, the writings of Addison and of Steele are familiar to all
+readers of eighteenth-century literature. Their work in other
+departments may be neglected without much loss; but the student who
+disregards the _Tatler_, the _Spectator_, the _Guardian_, and some of
+the essay-volumes which follow in their wake, will be blind to one of
+the most significant literary features of the period.
+
+The alliance between Addison and Steele was so intimate, that to judge
+of one apart from the other, would be fair to neither. It may be well,
+therefore, after giving the leading facts in the lives of the two
+friends, to bring them together again while considering the work they
+accomplished in their literary partnership. One point, I think, will
+come out clearly in this examination, namely, that while Steele might,
+under very inferior conditions, have produced the _Tatler_ and
+_Spectator_ without Addison, it is highly improbable that Addison, as an
+essayist, would have existed without Steele.
+
+[Sidenote: Joseph Addison (1672-1719).]
+
+Addison lives on the reputation of his prose works, but he thought that
+he was a poet, and was regarded as a poet by his contemporaries. It was
+by verse that he won his earliest reputation, and it was on his Pegasus
+that he rose to be Secretary of State. He was born on May 1st, 1672, at
+Milston, in Wiltshire, a parish of which his father was the rector, and
+was educated at the Charterhouse, where he contracted his memorable
+friendship with Steele. Thence, in 1687, at the boyish age of fifteen,
+he went up to Queen's College, Oxford, and in a few months, thanks to
+his Latin verses, gained a scholarship at Magdalen, of which college ten
+years later he became a fellow.
+
+While at Oxford he acquired, after the fashion of the day, what Johnson
+calls 'the trade of a courtier.' His Latin poem on the _Peace of
+Ryswick_ was dedicated to Montague, and two years later a pension of
+L300 a year, gained through Somers and Montague, enabled him to travel,
+in order that by gaining a knowledge of French and Italian, he might be
+fitted for the diplomatic service. Some time after his return to England
+he published his _Remarks on Several Parts of Italy_ (1705), and
+dedicated the volume to Swift, 'the most agreeable companion, the truest
+friend, and the greatest genius of his age.'
+
+Addison's patrons had now lost their power, and he was left to his own
+exertions. His difficulties did not last long. In 1704 the battle of
+Blenheim called forth several weak efforts from the poetasters, and as
+the Government required verse more worthy of the occasion, the
+Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the recommendation of Montague, now Earl
+of Halifax, applied to Addison, who, in answer to the appeal, published
+_The Campaign_, in 1705. The poem contains the well-known similitude of
+the angel, and also an apt allusion to the great storm that had lately
+destroyed fleets and devastated the country.
+
+    'So when an angel by divine command
+    With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,
+    Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past,
+    Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
+    And, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform,
+    Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.'
+
+_The Campaign_, which has no other passage worth quoting, proved a happy
+hit, and was of such service to the Ministry, that Addison found the way
+to fame and fortune. He was appointed Commissioner of Appeals, and not
+long after Under Secretary of State. In 1707 he accompanied his friend
+and patron, Halifax, on a mission to Hanover, and two years later he was
+appointed Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. In Dublin
+he gained golden opinions. 'I am convinced,' Swift writes, 'that
+whatever Government come over, you will find all marks of kindness from
+any parliament here with respect to your employment; the Tories
+contending with the Whigs which should speak best of you. In short, if
+you will come over again when you are at leisure, we will raise an army
+and make you king of Ireland.' When the Whig Ministry fell in 1710, and
+Addison lost his appointment, he must have gained a fortune, for he was
+able to purchase an estate for L10,000.
+
+In the early years of the century the Italian opera, which had been
+brought into England in the reign of William and Mary, excited the mirth
+and opposition of the wits. Lord Chesterfield, who called it 'too absurd
+and extravagant to mention,' said, 'Whenever I go to the opera I leave
+my sense and reason at the door with my half-guinea, and deliver myself
+up to my eyes and ears.' Steele, Gay, and Pope ridiculed the new-fangled
+entertainment, and Colley Cibber, too, pointed his jest at these
+'poetical drams, these gin-shops of the stage that intoxicate its
+auditors, and dishonour their understanding with a levity for which I
+want a name.' Addison, who has some lively papers on the subject in the
+_Spectator_, undertook to give a faithful account of the progress of
+the Italian opera on the English stage, 'for there is no question,' he
+writes, 'but our great grandchildren will be very curious to know why
+their forefathers used to sit together like an audience of foreigners in
+their own country; and to hear whole plays acted before them in a tongue
+which they did not understand.'
+
+Before writing thus in the _Spectator_, Addison, in order to oppose the
+Italian opera, by what he regarded as a more rational pastime, produced
+his English opera of _Rosamond_, which was acted in 1706, and proved a
+failure on the stage. The music is said to have been bad, and the poetry
+is the work of a writer destitute of lyrical genius. Lord Macaulay, who
+finds a merit in almost everything produced by Addison, praises 'the
+smoothness with which the verses glide, and the elasticity with which
+they bound,' and considers that if he 'had left heroic couplets to Pope,
+and blank verse to Rowe, and had employed himself in writing airy and
+spirited songs, his reputation as a poet would have stood far higher
+than it now does.' The gliding movement of the verse may be admitted;
+but lyric poetry demands the higher qualities of music and imaginative
+treatment, and Addison's 'smoothness,' so far from being a poetical
+gift, is a mechanical acquisition.
+
+In 1713 his _Cato_, with its stately rhetoric and cold dignity, received
+a very different reception. The prologue, written by Pope, is in
+admirable accordance with the spirit of the play. Addison's purpose is
+to exhibit a great man struggling with adversity, and Pope writes:
+
+    'He bids your breasts with ancient ardour rise,
+    And calls forth Roman drops from British eyes;
+    Virtue confessed in human shape he draws,
+    What Plato thought, and God-like Cato was:
+    No common object to your sight displays,
+    But what with pleasure Heaven itself surveys;
+    A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,
+    And greatly falling with a falling state!
+    While Cato gives his little senate laws,
+    What bosom beats not in his country's cause?'
+
+Addison has proved that he could draw a life-like character in his
+representation of Sir Roger de Coverley, but the _dramatis personae_, who
+act a part, or are supposed to act one, in _Cato_, are mere dummies,
+made to express fine sentiments. There is no flesh and blood in them,
+and owing to the dramatist's regard for unity of place, the play is full
+of absurdities. Yet _Cato_ was received with immense applause. It was
+regarded from a political aspect, and both Whig and Tory strove to turn
+the drama to party account. 'The numerous and violent claps of the Whig
+party,' Pope writes, 'on the one side of the theatre, were echoed back
+by the Tories on the other; while the author sweated behind the scenes
+with concern to find their applause proceeding more from the hand than
+the head.'
+
+In another letter he says: 'The town is so fond of it, that the orange
+wenches and fruit women in the parks offer the books at the side of the
+coaches, and the prologue and epilogue are cried about the streets by
+the common hawkers.' It would be interesting to ascertain what there was
+in the state of public affairs in the spring of 1713, which created this
+enthusiasm. Swift, writing to Stella, alludes to a rehearsal of the
+play, but makes no criticism upon it; and Berkeley, who was in London at
+the time, and had a seat in Addison's box on the first night, is also
+silent about it. In a letter written, as it happens, by Bolingbroke, on
+the day that _Cato_ was produced, he indicates the signs of the time, as
+they appeared to a Tory statesman: 'The prospect before us,' he writes,
+'is dark and melancholy. What will happen no man is able to foretell.'
+
+It was this sense of doubt and insecurity in the nation that gave
+significance to trifles. The political atmosphere was charged with
+electricity. The Tories, though in office, were far from feeling
+themselves secure, and both Harley and Bolingbroke were in
+correspondence with the Pretender. Atterbury, who was heart and soul
+with him, had just been made a bishop, Protestant ascendancy was in
+danger, the security of the country seemed to hang on the frail life of
+the Queen, and the strong party spirit of the time was easily fanned
+into a flame. We cannot now place ourselves in the position of the
+spectators whose passions gave such popularity to _Cato_. Its mild
+platitudes and rhetorical periods, its coldness and sobriety, seem ill
+fitted to arouse the fervour of playgoers, but Addison, whose good luck
+rarely failed him, was especially fortunate in the moment chosen for the
+representation of the play. Had _Cato_ exhibited genius of the highest
+order, it could not have been more successful. Cibber writes that it was
+acted in London five times a week for a month to constantly crowded
+houses, and when the tragedy was acted at Oxford, 'Our house,' he says,
+'was in a manner invested, and entrance demanded by twelve o'clock at
+noon, and before one it was not wide enough for many who came too late
+for places.'[36]
+
+_Cato_ had the good fortune to run in London for thirty-five nights, and
+gained also some reputation on the continent. It is formed on the French
+model, and Addison was therefore praised by Voltaire as 'the first
+English writer who composed a regular tragedy.' He added that _Cato_ was
+'a masterpiece.' If so, it is one of the masterpieces that has long
+ceased to be read. Little could its author have surmised that his
+tragedy, received with universal praise, had but a brief life to live,
+while the Essays which he had already contributed to the _Tatler_ and
+_Spectator_ would make his name familiar to future generations.
+
+Addison's poetry may now be regarded as extinct, and most of the poems
+he wrote are probably unknown to the present generation of readers even
+by name. His Latin verses are pronounced excellent by all competent
+critics, but when a man writes verses in a dead language he does so
+generally to show his scholarship, and not to express his inspiration.
+Latin verse is, as M. Taine says, a faded flower. Now and then, indeed,
+a poem has been written with merits apart from its latinity--witness the
+_Epitaphium Damonis_ of Milton--but Addison, who lacked poetic fire in
+his native language, was not likely to find it in a dead tongue. His
+English poems are generally dull, and sometimes, as in his earliest
+poem, the _Account of the greatest English Poets_ (1694), the tameness
+of the verse is matched by the ignorance of the criticism. The student
+will observe how differently the theme is treated by a true poet like
+Drayton in his _Epistle to Reynolds_; or, like Ben Jonson, in the many
+allusions that he makes to his country's poets. Compare, too, Addison's
+_Letter from Italy_ (1701) with the lovely lines on a like theme in
+Goldsmith's _Traveller_, and the contrast between a verseman and a poet
+is at once apparent. Addison, it may be added, is remembered for his
+hymns, which may be found in most selections of sacred verse, and
+deserve a place in the best of them. As the forerunner of Isaac Watts
+(1674-1748) and of Charles Wesley (1708-1788), he struck upon what at
+that time might, in our country, be almost called a new department of
+literature; and it is remarkable that an age which so dreaded enthusiasm
+should have originated verse which gives utterance to the most emotional
+form of spiritual aspiration. As hymn-writers, Englishmen were more
+than a century behind the best sacred poets of Germany. Luther had
+taught the German people the power of hymnody, but it was during the
+Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), and after its conclusion, that the spirit
+of devotion found full expression in religious verse. Just before the
+engagement at Leipzic, Gustavus Adolphus wrote his well-known battle
+hymn, and the peace was celebrated in a noble hymn by Martin Rinkart. He
+was followed by a succession of sacred singers whose devout utterances
+influenced and in some degree inspired the Wesleys.
+
+    "A verse may find him whom a sermon flies,"
+
+says George Herbert, and the enormous power wielded by Methodism owes a
+large portion of its strength to song.
+
+Amidst much in their writings that is questionable in taste and weak in
+expression, both Watts and Charles Wesley have written hymns which prove
+their incontestible right to a place among the poets, and the influence
+they have exerted over the English-speaking race is beyond the power of
+the literary historian to estimate. The external divisions of the
+Christian Church are numerous; its unity is to be seen in the Hymn Book.
+'Men whose theological views contrast most strongly,' says Mr. Abbey in
+his essay on _The English Sacred Poetry of the Eighteenth Century_,
+'meet on common ground when they express in verse the deeper aspirations
+of the heart and the voice of Christian praise.'
+
+In 1714, on the death of the Queen, Addison was once more in office, and
+held his old position of Irish Secretary. In the following year he
+defended the Whig Government and Whig principles in the _Freeholder_, a
+paper published twice weekly. In it he gives no niggard praise to the
+Government of George I., and to the King himself, for his 'civil
+virtues,' and for his martial achievements. Addison's praise disagrees,
+it need scarcely be said, with the more minute and veracious description
+of the King given by Thackeray, but a party politician in those days
+could scarcely be a faithful chronicler. He could see what he wished to
+see, but found it necessary to shut his eyes when the prospect became
+unpleasant. George was a heartless libertine, but Addison observes with
+great satisfaction that the women most eminent for virtue and good sense
+are in his interest. 'It would be no small misfortune,' he says, 'to a
+sovereign, though he had all the male part of the nation on his side, if
+he did not find himself king of the most beautiful half of his subjects.
+Ladies are always of great use to the party they espouse, and never fail
+to win over numbers to it. Lovers, according to Sir William Petty's
+computation, make at least the third part of the sensible men of the
+British nation, and it has been an uncontroverted maxim in all ages,
+that though a husband is sometimes a stubborn sort of a creature, a
+lover is always at the devotion of his mistress. By this means it lies
+in the power of every fine woman to secure at least half-a-dozen
+able-bodied men to his Majesty's service. The female world are likewise
+indispensably necessary in the best causes to manage the controversial
+part of them, in which no man of tolerable breeding is ever able to
+refute them. Arguments out of a pretty mouth are unanswerable.'
+
+The essayist thinks it fortunate for the Whigs 'that their very enemies
+acknowledge the finest women of Great Britain to be of that party;' and
+in an amusing but rather absurd way he discourses to maids, wives, and
+widows on the advantages of adhering to the Hanoverian Government. It is
+characteristic of Addison that a political paper like the _Freeholder_
+should be flavoured with the humour and badinage he found so effective
+in the _Spectator_. To the ladies he appeals again and again, but not to
+their reason. He gives them mirth instead of argument, and thinks it
+more likely to prevail with the 'Fair Sex.' The _Freeholder_ has several
+papers worthy of the author in his best moods, the best of them,
+perhaps, being the 'Tory Fox-hunter,' with which, to quote Johnson's
+words, 'bigotry itself must be delighted.' In the year which gave birth
+to the _Freeholder_, _The Drummer_, a comedy, was acted at Drury Lane,
+and ran three nights. The play was not acknowledged by Addison, neither
+was it printed in Tickell's edition of his works; but Steele, who
+published an edition of the play, with a dedication to Congreve, never
+doubted, and there is no reason to doubt, that Addison was the author.
+'The piece,' Mr. Courthope writes, 'is like _Cato_, a standing proof of
+Addison's deficiency in dramatic genius. The plot is poor and trivial,
+nor does the dialogue, though it shows in many passages traces of its
+author's peculiar vein of humour, make amends by its brilliancy for the
+tameness of the dramatic situation.'[37]
+
+After the _Freeholder_ Addison wrote nothing of importance, unless we
+except the essay published after his death _On the Evidences of
+Christianity_. Of this essay it will suffice to quote the judgment of
+his most distinguished eulogist. After observing that the treatise shows
+the narrow limits of Addison's classical knowledge, Lord Macaulay adds:
+'It is melancholy to see how helplessly he gropes his way from blunder
+to blunder. He assigns as grounds for his religious belief stories as
+absurd as that of the Cock Lane Ghost, and forgeries as rank as
+Ireland's Vortigern; puts faith in the lie about the Thundering Legion;
+is convinced that Tiberius moved the senate to admit Jesus among the
+gods, and pronounces the letter of Agbarus, King of Edessa, to be a
+record of great authority. Nor were these errors the effects of
+superstition, for to superstition Addison was by no means prone. The
+truth is, that he was writing about what he did not understand.'
+
+In 1716, after having been made one of the Commissioners for Trades and
+Colonies, he married the Countess Dowager of Warwick, with whom he had
+been acquainted for some years. The marriage, according to the doubtful
+authority of Pope, was not a happy one, and is said to have driven
+Addison to the consolations of the tavern. He did not need them long. In
+1717 Sunderland became Prime Minister, and made Addison a Secretary of
+State, an appointment which he resigned eleven months afterwards; and in
+1719 he died at Holland House at the age of forty-seven, leaving one
+daughter as the memorial of the union. He lies, as is fitting, in the
+great Abbey of which he has written so beautifully.
+
+Tickell's noble tribute to his friend's memory belongs to the undying
+poetry which neither age nor fresher forms of verse can render obsolete.
+It must suffice to quote here a few lines from a poem which, despite
+some conventional expressions common to the time, is worthy of its theme
+throughout:
+
+    'If pensive to the rural shades I rove,
+    His shape o'ertakes me in the lonely grove;
+    'Twas there of Just and Good he reasoned strong,
+    Cleared some great truth, or raised some serious song;
+    There patient showed us the wise course to steer,
+    A candid censor, and a friend severe;
+    There taught us how to live; and (oh! too high
+    The price for knowledge) taught us how to die.'
+
+There are few men of literary eminence in the eighteenth century of whom
+we know so little as of Addison. His own _Spectator_, who never opened
+his lips but in his club, is scarcely more silent than the essayist's
+biographers, so trifling are the details they have to record beyond the
+bare facts of his official and literary career. Steele knew him better,
+and, in spite of an unhappy estrangement at the last, probably loved him
+more than anyone else, and had he written his story, as he once proposed
+doing, the narrative might have been charming; but, alas for Steele's
+resolutions!
+
+That Addison was a shy man we know--Lord Chesterfield said he was the
+most timid man he ever knew--and it speaks well for his resolution and
+strength of purpose that he should have risen notwithstanding this
+timidity to so high a position in public affairs. His want of oratorical
+power was a drawback to his efficiency, and Sir James Macintosh was
+probably right in saying that Addison as Dean of St. Patrick's, and
+Swift as Secretary of State, would have been a happy stroke of fortune,
+putting each into the place most fitted for him. The essayist's reserve,
+while it closed his lips in general society, did not prevent him from
+being one of the most fascinating of companions in the freedom of
+conversation with a few intimate friends. Swift, Steele, and even Pope,
+testify to Addison's irresistible charm in the select society that he
+loved. Young said he could chain the attention of every hearer, and Lady
+Mary Montagu declared that he was the best company in the world.
+
+[Sidenote: Richard Steele (1672-1729).]
+
+Richard Steele was born in Dublin, 1672, of English parents, and
+educated at the Charterhouse, where, as we have said, Addison was at the
+same time a pupil. In 1690 he matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford,
+Addison being then demy at Magdalen. Steele left college without taking
+a degree, and entered the army as a cadet. After a time he obtained the
+rank of captain in Lord Lucas's fusiliers, and wrote his treatise, _The
+Christian Hero_ (1701), with the design, he says, 'principally to fix
+upon his own mind a strong impression of virtue and religion in
+opposition to a stronger propensity towards unwarrantable pleasure.'
+Steele was an honest lover of the things most worthy of love, but his
+frailty too often proved stronger than his virtue, and the purpose of
+_The Christian Hero_ was not answered.
+
+Jeremy Collier's _Short View of the Immorality and Profanity of the
+English Stage_, published in 1698, had made, as it well might, a
+powerful impression, and Steele, who was always ready to inculcate
+morality on other people, wrote four comedies with a moral purpose. _The
+Funeral; or Grief a-la-Mode_ was acted with success at Drury Lane in
+1701, and when published passed through several editions. _The Lying
+Lover_ followed two years later, and was, in the comfortable judgment of
+the author, 'damned for its piety.' This was followed, in 1705, by _The
+Tender Husband_, a play suggested by the _Sicilien_ of Moliere, as _The
+Lying Lover_ had been founded on the _Menteur_ of Corneille. Many years
+later Steele's last play, _The Conscious Lovers_ (1722), completed his
+performances as a dramatist. It was dedicated to the King, who is said
+to have sent the author L500. The modern reader will find little worthy
+of attention in the dramas of Steele. His sense of humour enlivens some
+of the scenes, and is, perhaps, chiefly visible in _The Funeral_; but
+for the most part dulness is in the ascendant, and the sentiment is
+frequently mawkish. _The Conscious Lovers_, said Parson Adams, contains
+'some things almost solemn enough for a sermon.' This may be true, but
+we do not desire a sermon in a play, and Steele, who is always a lively
+essayist, loses his liveliness in writing for the stage. It has been
+observed by Mr. Ward that, taking a hint from Colley Cibber, he 'became
+the real founder of that sentimental comedy which exercised so
+pernicious an influence upon the progress of our dramatic literature.'
+'It would be unjust,' he adds, 'to hold him responsible for the
+feebleness of successors who were altogether deficient in the comic
+power which he undoubtedly even as a dramatist exhibits; but in so far
+as their aberrations were the result of his example, he must be held to
+have contributed, though with the best of motives, to the decline of the
+English drama.'[38] One of the prominent offenders who followed in
+Steele's wake was George Lillo (1693-1739), whose highly moral
+tragedies, written for the edification of playgoers, have the kind of
+tragic interest which is called forth by any commonplace tale of crime
+and misery. In Lillo's two most important dramas, _George Barnwell_
+(1731), a play founded on the old ballad, and _The Fatal Curiosity_
+(1736), there is a total absence of the elevation in character and
+language which gives dignity to tragedy. His plays are like tales of
+guilt arranged and amplified from the Newgate Calendar. The author wrote
+with a good purpose, and the public appreciated his work, but it is not
+dramatic art, and has no pretension to the name of literature.
+
+Throughout his life Steele was at war with fortune. His hopefulness was
+inexhaustible, but he learnt no lessons from experience, and escaped
+from one slough to fall into another. He was as unthrifty as Goldsmith,
+whom in many respects he resembles, and his warm, impulsive nature was
+allied to a combativeness and jealousy which sometimes led him to
+quarrel with his best friends. Of his passion for the somewhat exacting
+lady whom he married,[39] and of the 400 and odd notelets addressed by
+the lover-husband to his 'dear, dearest Prue,' and 'absolute Governess,'
+it is enough to say here, that the story told offhand in his own words,
+shows how lovable the man was in spite of the faults which he never
+attempted to conceal. Only about a week before the marriage the lady had
+fair warning of one probable drawback to her happiness as a wife.[40] On
+the morning of August 30th, 1707, Steele advised his 'fair one' to look
+up to that heaven which had made her so sweet a companion, and in the
+evening of that day he wrote:
+
+
+    'DEAR LOVELY MRS. SCURLOCK,
+
+    'I have been in very good company, where your health, under the
+    character of _the woman I loved best_, has been often drunk, so
+    that I may say I am dead drunk for your sake, which is more than
+    I _die for you_.
+
+    'RICH. STEELE.'
+
+
+
+After marriage Steele's extravagance and impecuniosity must have proved
+a severe trial to Prue. At times he would live in considerable style,
+and Berkeley, who writes, in 1713, of dining with him frequently at his
+house in Bloomsbury Square, praises his table, servants, and coach as
+'very genteel.' At other times the family were without common
+necessaries, and on one occasion there was not 'an inch of candle, a
+pound of coal, or a bit of meat in the house.'
+
+On the 12th April, 1709, Steele issued the first number of the
+_Tatler_, its supposed author being the Isaac Bickerstaff, whose name,
+thanks to Swift, had been 'rendered famous through all parts of Europe.'
+The essays appeared every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, for the
+convenience of the post, and at the outset contained political news,
+which Steele, by his government appointment of Gazetteer, was enabled to
+supply. After awhile, however, much to the advantage of the _Tatler_,
+this news was dropped. The articles are dated from White's
+Chocolate-house, from Will's Coffee-house, from the Grecian, and from
+the St. James's. It is probable that the column in Defoe's _Review_,
+containing _Advice from the Scandal Club_, suggested his 'Lucubrations'
+to Steele. If so, it does not detract from his originality of treatment,
+for Defoe's town gossip is poor stuff. Addison, who knew nothing of the
+project beforehand, came, ere long, to his friend's assistance; but it
+was not until about eighty numbers had appeared, that he became a
+frequent contributor, and before that time Steele had made his mark.
+When the essays were afterwards reprinted in four volumes, Steele, who
+was never wanting in gratitude, generously acknowledged the help he had
+received. 'I fared,' he says, 'like a distressed prince who calls in a
+powerful neighbour to his aid. I was undone by my auxiliary. When I had
+once called him in, I could not subsist without dependence on him.' The
+_Tatler_ still supplies delightful entertainment, and in the almost
+total absence of amusing and wholesome reading in Steele's time, must
+have proved a welcome companion. Readers who are inundated by what is
+called 'light literature' can with difficulty imagine the dearth
+suffered in Pope's day, when the interminable romances of Calprenede, of
+Mdlle. de Scuderi and her brother, and of Madame la Fayette, were the
+liveliest books considered fit for a modest woman to read. A novel,
+however, in ten volumes, like the _Grand Cyrus_ or _Clelie_, had one
+advantage over the cheap fictions of our time, its interest was not soon
+exhausted.
+
+The _Tatler_ has claims upon the student's attention, apart from the
+entertainment it affords. Steele, who lived from hand to mouth, and
+wrote, as he lived, on the impulse of the moment, had unwittingly begun
+a work destined to form an epoch in English literature. The _Essay_, as
+we now understand the word, dates from the _Lucubrations of Isaac
+Bickerstaff_, and Steele and Addison, who may boast a numerous progeny,
+have in Charles Lamb the noblest of their sons.
+
+On the 2nd January, 1711, Steele wrote the final number of the _Tatler_,
+partly on the plea that the essays would suffice to make four volumes,
+and partly because he was known to be the author, and could not, as Mr.
+Steele, attack vices with the freedom of Mr. Bickerstaff. Addison, who
+had done so much to assist Steele in his first venture, was as ignorant
+of his intention to close the work as he was of its initiation. Two
+months later _The Spectator_ appeared, and this time the friends worked
+in concert. It proved a brilliantly successful partnership. The second
+number, in which the characters of the club are introduced, was written
+by Steele, and to him we owe the first sketch of the immortal Sir Roger
+de Coverley:
+
+'When he is in town he lives in Soho Square. It is said he keeps himself
+a bachelor by reason he was crossed in love by a perverse, beautiful
+widow of the next county to him. Before his disappointment, Sir Roger
+was what you call a fine gentleman, had often supped with my Lord
+Rochester and Sir George Etheridge, fought a duel upon his first coming
+to town, and kicked bully Dawson in a public coffee-house for calling
+him youngster. But being ill-used by the above-mentioned widow, he was
+very serious for a year and a half; and though, his temper being
+naturally jovial, he at last got over it, he grew careless of himself,
+and never dressed afterwards. He continues to wear a coat and doublet of
+the same cut that were in fashion at the time of his repulse, which, in
+his merry humours, he tells us has been in and out twelve times since he
+first wore it.... He is now in his fifty-sixth year, cheerful, gay, and
+hearty, keeps a good house both in town and country; a great lover of
+mankind; but there is such a mirthful cast in his behaviour, that he is
+rather beloved than esteemed. His tenants grow rich, his servants look
+satisfied, all the young women profess love to him, and the young men
+are glad of his company. When he comes into a house he calls the
+servants by their names, and talks all the way upstairs to a visit. I
+must not omit that Sir Roger is a justice of the quorum; that he fills
+the chair at a quarter-session with great abilities; and three months
+ago gained universal applause by explaining a passage in the Game Act.'
+
+In their daily issue, as well as afterwards in volumes, the essays had
+an extensive sale. They were to be found on every breakfast-table, and
+so popular did they prove, that when the imposition of a halfpenny tax
+destroyed a number of periodicals, Steele found it safe to double the
+price of the _Spectator_. The vivacity and humour of the paper were
+visible from the beginning. 'Mr. Steele,' Swift wrote, 'seems to have
+gathered new life, and to have a new fund of wit.' Of 555 papers,
+Addison wrote 274 and Steele 236, while the remaining forty-five were
+the work of occasional contributors. In the full tide of its success,
+and without any assigned reason, the _Spectator_ was brought to a
+conclusion in December, 1712, and in the following spring Steele started
+the _Guardian_, which might have been as fortunate as its predecessor,
+had not the editor's zeal tempted him to diverge to politics. He had
+also a disagreement with his publisher, and the _Guardian_ was allowed
+but a short life of 175 numbers. Of these about fifty were due to
+Addison, and upwards of eighty to Steele.
+
+Steele's political ardour was irrepressible, and a paper in the
+_Guardian_ (No. 128), demanding the abolition of Dunkirk, called forth a
+pamphlet from Swift, in which the weaknesses of his former friend are
+sneered at and denounced with enough of truthfulness to enhance their
+malice. After allowing that Steele has humour, and is no disagreeable
+companion 'after the first bottle,' Swift adds, 'Being the most
+imprudent man alive, he never follows the advice of his friends, but is
+wholly at the mercy of fools and knaves, or hurried away by his own
+caprice, by which he has committed more absurdities in economy,
+friendship, love, duty, good manners, politics, religion, and writing
+than ever fell to one man's share.' A little later, in anticipation of
+the Queen's death, Steele published _The Crisis_ (1714), a political
+pamphlet, which led to his expulsion from the House of Commons. It was
+answered by one of the most masterly of Swift's pamphlets, _The Public
+Spirit of the Whigs_, in which it is suggested that Steele might be
+superior to other writers on the Whig side 'provided he would a little
+regard the propriety and disposition of his words, consult the
+grammatical part, and get some information in the subject he intends to
+handle.'
+
+The reader is chiefly concerned with Steele as an essayist, and it is
+unnecessary to follow his career in the House of Commons and out of it.
+Yet there is one anecdote too characteristic to be omitted in the
+briefest notice of his life. Lady Charlotte Finch had been attacked in
+the _Examiner_ 'for knotting in St. James's Chapel during divine
+service, in the immediate presence both of God and her Majesty, who were
+affronted together.' Steele denounced the calumny in the _Guardian_.
+Upon taking his seat as member for Stockbridge, he was attacked by the
+Tories on account of _The Crisis_, which they deemed an inflammatory
+libel, and defended himself in a speech which occupied three hours. When
+he left the House, Lord Finch, who, like Steele, was a new member, rose
+to make his maiden speech in defence of the man who had defended his
+sister; a nervous feeling caused him to hesitate, and he sat down,
+exclaiming, 'It is strange I cannot speak for this man, though I could
+readily fight for him.' The House cheered these generous words, and Lord
+Finch rising again, made an able speech. The effort was a vain one, and
+Steele lost his seat. A few months later, after the death of Queen Anne,
+he entered the House again as member for Boroughbridge, and having been
+placed in the commission of peace for Middlesex, on presenting an
+address from the county, he received the honour of knighthood.
+
+Meanwhile he had not renounced his vocation of essayist. The _Guardian_
+was followed by the _Englishman_ (1713), the _Englishman_ by the _Lover_
+(1714), and the _Lover_ by the _Reader_ (1714), a journal strongly
+political in character. Of this only nine numbers were issued. Then came
+_Town Talk_, the _Tea Table_, _Chit-chat_, and the _Theatre_. Sir
+Richard appears to have been always in a hurry to break new ground, a
+foible not confined to literature. He was continually starting new
+projects, and never doubted, in spite of numberless failures, that his
+latest effort to make a fortune would be successful.
+
+Notwithstanding his appointments as manager of Drury Lane and as a
+Commissioner in Scotland to inquire into the Estates of Traitors,
+Steele's money difficulties did not lessen as he advanced in life; worse
+still, he had the misfortune to quarrel with his oldest and dearest
+friend. For this he and Addison were alike to blame, and Addison dying a
+few months later, there was no time for reconciliation. In 1718 Steele
+had lost his wife, and some years afterwards his only remaining son.
+Ultimately, broken in health and fortune, Sir Richard retired to
+Carmarthen, and there, in 1729, he died.
+
+'I was told,' says Victor, 'he retained his cheerful sweetness of temper
+to the last; and would often be carried out in a summer's evening, when
+the country lads and lasses were assembled at their rural sports, and
+with his pencil give an order on his agent, the mercer, for a new gown
+to the best dancer.'[41]
+
+All literature worthy of the name is the expression of the writer's
+life, of his aspirations, and of his ultimate aims; and since man is a
+moral being, it cannot be severed from morality. To point a moral, if it
+be within the scope of imaginative art, is subordinate to its main
+purpose. To delight by stimulating the imagination, to give a new beauty
+to existence by widening the realm of thought,--these are some of the
+noblest purposes of literature; and while men and women of creative
+genius are among our wisest teachers, the wisdom we gain from them comes
+to us without direct enforcement. In the last century, however, authors
+of good character, and authors who had no character to boast of, were
+equally impressed with the necessity of adorning their pages with moral
+maxims, and if this moral was not inserted in the body of the work, it
+was inevitable that it should be tacked on to the end of it like a tail
+to a kite. Steele in his artless way had a moral end in view, though his
+method of reaching it was not always wise or even discreet. Addison had
+his moral also. It pervades everything he wrote, but so artfully does
+he make use of it, that the reader is not unpleasantly conscious of a
+purpose. His allegories belong to an obsolete form of literature, but
+one of them at least _The Vision of Mirza_, may be still read with
+pleasure. His Saturday essays, which are nearly always serious in
+character, are the sermons of a layman, expressed in the most lucid
+style and in the purest English. His tales, like his allegories, have
+lost much of their flavour, but the humorous essays, in which he depicts
+the manners of the time, as well as the numbers devoted to the Spectator
+Club and to Addison's beloved Sir Roger, have a perennial charm. There
+is a felicity in the essayist's touch which is beyond imitation,
+although a reader might give, as Johnson suggested, days and nights to
+the study. The style is the man, and to write as Addison wrote it would
+be necessary to reach his moral and intellectual level, to see with his
+shrewd but kindly eyes, and to have his fine sense of humour. His
+faults, too, must be shared by his imitator--the somewhat too delicate
+refinement of a nature that never yields to impulse--the feminine
+sensitiveness that is allied to jealousy. Addison, in the judgment of
+his admirers, comes very near to perfection, and that is an irritating
+quality in a fellow mortal. It is, if it be not paradoxical to say so,
+the defect of his essays. There is nothing definite to find fault with
+in them, but we feel that strength is wanting. The clear and silent
+stream is a beautiful object, but after awhile it becomes monotonous,
+and we long for the swift and impetuous movement of a mountain torrent.
+It would be a thankless task, however, to dwell insistently on the
+deficiencies of a writer who has done so much for literature, and so
+much, too, for what is better than literature. We may wish that he had
+more warmth in him, somewhat more of energy and passion, yet such merits
+would be scarcely consonant with the graceful charm which gives to the
+prose writings of Addison an unrivalled position in Pope's age, and, it
+might be added, in the eighteenth century, were it not for the priceless
+literary gift bestowed upon Oliver Goldsmith.
+
+Steele's fame as a writer has been overshadowed by the more exquisite
+genius of Addison, and his reputation has suffered partly from his own
+frailties and partly from the contemptuous way in which he has been
+treated by the panegyrists and critics of Addison. Pity is closely
+allied to contempt, and Sir Richard has come to be regarded as a
+scapegrace whose chief honour in life was the friendship of the
+accomplished essayist. Yet it was Steele who created the form of
+literature in which Addison earned his laurels, and without which he
+would in the present day be utterly forgotten. Steele was the discoverer
+of a new country, and if Addison took possession of its fairest portion,
+it was after his friend had pointed out the path and made the way easy.
+It would be very unjust, however, to treat of Steele solely as a
+pioneer. His own work, though less perfect than that of Addison, a
+consummate master of composition, is rich in variety and spirit, in
+pathos and in knowledge of the world. Steele is often careless, but he
+is never dull, and writes with a glow of enthusiasm that excites the
+reader's sympathy. Truly does Mr. Dobson say that while Addison's essays
+are faultless in their art and beyond the range of his friend's more
+impulsive nature, 'for words which the heart finds when the head is
+seeking; for phrases glowing with the white heat of a generous emotion;
+for sentences which throb and tingle with manly pity or courageous
+indignation, we must go to the essays of Steele.'[42]
+
+Sir Richard's pathetic touches and artless turns of expression come
+from the heart. He is the most natural of writers, but does not seem to
+be aware that nature, in order to be converted into good literature,
+needs a little clothing. His essays have often a looseness or negligence
+of aim unpardonable in a man who can write so well. A conspicuous
+illustration of this defect may be seen in No. 181 of the _Tatler_, one
+of the most beautiful pieces from Steele's pen.
+
+'The first sense of sorrow,' he writes, 'I ever knew was upon the death
+of my father, at which time I was not quite five years of age; but was
+rather amazed at what all the house meant, than possessed with a real
+understanding why nobody was willing to play with me. I remember I went
+into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping alone by it.
+I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a-beating the coffin and
+calling "Papa," for, I know not how, I had some slight idea that he was
+locked up there. My mother catched me in her arms, and transported
+beyond all patience of the silent grief she was before in, she almost
+smothered me in her embraces; and told me in a flood of tears, "Papa
+could not hear me, and would play with me no more, for they were going
+to put him under ground, whence he could never come to us again." She
+was a very beautiful woman of a noble spirit, and there was a dignity in
+her grief amidst all the wildness of her transport, which, methought,
+struck me with an instinct of sorrow, that before I was sensible of what
+it was to grieve, seized my very soul, and has made pity the weakness of
+my heart ever since.'
+
+Later on in the essay, and still looking back on the past, Steele
+recalls the untimely death of the first object his eyes ever beheld with
+love, and then abruptly dismissing his regrets he carelessly finishes
+the paper with this characteristic passage: 'A large train of disasters
+were coming on to my memory when my servant knocked at my closet door,
+and interrupted me with a letter, attended with a hamper of wine of the
+same sort with that which is to be put to sale on Thursday next at
+Garraway's Coffee-house. Upon the receipt of it I sent for three of my
+friends. We are so intimate that we can be company in whatever state of
+mind we meet, and can entertain each other without expecting always to
+rejoice. The wine we found to be generous and warming, but with such a
+heat as moved us rather to be cheerful than frolicsome. It revived the
+spirits, without firing the blood. We commended it until two of the
+clock this morning, and having to-day met a little before dinner, we
+found that though we drank two bottles a man, we had much more reason to
+recollect than forget what had passed the night before.'
+
+Steele, to quote Johnson's phrase, was 'the most agreeable rake that
+ever trod the rounds of indulgence,' but he had many a fine quality that
+does not harmonize with the character of a rake; and although he hurt
+himself by his follies, he did his best to help others by his genial
+wisdom. If he did not sufficiently regard his own interests, his
+thoughts, as Addison said, 'teemed with projects for his country's
+good.' Savage Landor, with an impulse of somewhat extravagant eulogy,
+exclaimed, 'What a good critic Steele was! I doubt if he has ever been
+surpassed.' This is one of the sayings that will not bear examination.
+Steele had doubtless the fine perception of what is noble in art and
+literature, which some men possess instinctively. He felt what was good,
+but does not appear either to have reached or strengthened his
+conclusions by any process of study.
+
+As an essayist Steele is careless, rapid, emotional, and disposed to be
+on the best terms with himself and with his readers. He makes them sure
+that if they could have met him in his rollicking mood at Will's
+Coffee-house, he would have treated them all round, even if, like
+Goldsmith, he had been forced to borrow the money to do it. But he was
+not always in this reckless humour. His heart was expansive in its
+sympathies and tender as a woman's; his mind was open to all kindly
+influences, and his essays have in them the rich blood and vivid
+utterances of a man who has 'warmed both hands before the fire of life.'
+
+Between Steele's _Guardian_ (1713) and the _Rambler_ of Johnson (1750),
+a period of thirty-seven years, a swarm of periodicals testify to the
+fame of Steele and Addison. The reader curious on the subject will find
+in Dr. Drake's essays a minute account of the numerous essayists who
+flourished, or who made an effort to live, between the close of the
+eighth volume of the _Spectator_ and the beginning of the present
+century. Of these a few have still a place on our shelves, but for the
+most part they enjoyed a butterfly existence, and serve but to prove the
+immeasurable superiority of the writers who created the English Essay.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[36] Cibber's _Apology_, p. 386.
+
+[37] Courthope's _Addison_, p. 150.
+
+[38] _English Dramatic Literature_, vol. ii., p. 603.
+
+[39] 'It is a strange thing,' he writes, 'that you will not behave
+yourself with the obedience people of worse features do, but that I must
+be always giving you an account of every trifle and minute of my time.'
+
+[40] Steele had been previously married to Mrs. Stretch, a widow, who
+possessed an estate in the West Indies; but the lady did not long
+survive the marriage.
+
+[41] Victor's _Original Letters, Dramatic Pieces, and Poems_, vol. i.,
+p. 330.
+
+[42] _Selections from Steele_, by Austin Dobson. Introduction, p. xxx.
+Clarendon Press.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+JONATHAN SWIFT--JOHN ARBUTHNOT.
+
+
+The booksellers who employed the most famous man of letters then living
+(1777), to write the _Lives of the Poets_, selected the authors whose
+biographies were to accompany the poems they proposed to publish. They
+did not know the difference between versemakers and poets; but they
+probably did know what authors of the rhyming tribe were likely to prove
+the most popular. Dr. Johnson, who was then in his sixty-ninth year, was
+willing to write the _Lives_ to order. He added, indeed, three or four
+names to the list which had been given him; but he made no protest, and
+contented himself, as he told Boswell, in saying that a man was a dunce
+when he thought that he was one.
+
+Among the biographies included by Johnson in the _Lives_, appears the
+illustrious name of Swift. He was far indeed from being a dunce; but
+just as certainly he was not a poet, unless the title be given to him by
+courtesy. On the other hand, Swift ranks among the most distinguished
+prose writers of his time--many critics consider him the greatest--and
+he therefore finds his natural place in the prose section of this
+volume.
+
+[Sidenote: Jonathan Swift (1667-1745).]
+
+Swift's life is an extraordinary psychological study, but it will
+suffice to state here the bare outline of his career. He was a
+posthumous child, and born in Dublin of English parents, November 30th,
+1667. When a year old he was kidnapped by his nurse out of pure
+affection, and carried off to Whitehaven, where she remained with the
+child for three years. At the age of six the boy was sent to Kilkenny
+school, and there he had William Congreve (1670-1729), the future
+dramatist, for a schoolfellow. Neither at school nor at Trinity College,
+Dublin, which he entered as a boy of fifteen, did Swift distinguish
+himself, and he left the University in disgrace. At the Revolution he
+found a refuge with his mother at Leicester, and she, through a family
+relationship, obtained a position for her boy in the house of Sir
+William Temple (1628-1698), who was accounted a great man in his own
+day, and was famous alike for statecraft and literature. By many readers
+he will be best remembered as the husband of the charming Dorothy
+Osborne, whose innocently sweet love-letters have not lost their
+freshness in the lapse of two centuries.
+
+There was a degree of servitude in Swift's position of secretary, which
+galled his proud spirit. But Temple, so far from treating him unkindly,
+introduced him to the King, and employed him in 'affairs of great
+importance.' In 1694 he left Temple, went to Dublin, took holy orders,
+and lived as prebend of Kilroot on L100 a year. In 1696 he resigned the
+office and returned to Moor Park, where he remained until Sir William
+Temple's death, in 1699. There he studied hard, ran up a steep hill
+daily for exercise, and cultivated the acquaintance of Esther Johnson,
+the 'Stella' destined to take a strange part in Swift's history, then a
+mere girl, and a companion of Temple's sister, who lived with him after
+his wife's death.
+
+Swift began his literary career by writing Pindaric odes, one of which
+led Dryden to say, and the prediction was amply verified, 'Cousin Swift,
+you will never be a poet.' Probably no man of genius ever wrote worse
+poetry than is to be found in these portentous efforts.
+
+Here is one fair illustration of his flights as an ode writer, and the
+reader will not ask for more:
+
+    'Were I to form a regular thought of Fame,
+      Which is perhaps, as hard to imagine right
+      As to paint Echo to the sight,
+    I would not draw the idea from an empty name;
+      Because, alas! when we all die,
+      Careless and ignorant posterity,
+    Although they praise the learning and the wit,
+      And though the title seems to show
+    The name and man by whom the book was writ,
+      Yet how shall they be brought to know
+    Whether that very name was he, or you, or I?
+      Less should I daub it o'er with transitory praise,
+      And water-colours of these days:
+    These days! where e'en th' extravagance of poetry
+      Is at a loss for figures to express
+    Men's folly, whimsies, and inconstancy,
+      And by a faint description makes them less.
+    Then tell us what is Fame, where shall we search for it?
+    Look where exalted Virtue and Religion sit,
+    Enthroned with heavenly Wit!
+      Look where you see
+      The greatest scorn of learned Vanity!
+      (And then how much a nothing is mankind!
+    Whose reason is weighed down by popular air.
+      Who, by that, vainly talks of baffling death,
+      And hopes to lengthen life by a transfusion of breath,
+      Which yet whoe'er examines right will find
+      To be an art as vain as bottling up of wind!)
+    And when you find out these, believe true Fame is there,
+      Far above all reward, yet to which all is due;
+      And this, ye great unknown! is only known in you.'
+
+It is remarkable that at the very time Swift was perpetrating these
+lyrical atrocities, he was at work on the _Tale of a Tub_, which is
+generally regarded as the most masterly effort of his genius. A critic
+has said that Swift's poetry 'lacks one quality only--imagination,' but
+verse without imagination is like a body without a soul, like a house
+without windows, like a landscape-painting without atmosphere, and no
+license of language will allow us to call Swift a poet. Enough that he
+became a master of rhyme, and used it with extraordinary facility. Dr.
+Johnson's estimate of Swift's powers in this respect is a just one:
+
+'In the poetical works of Dr. Swift there is not much upon which the
+critic can exercise his powers. They are often humorous, almost always
+light, and have the qualities which recommend such compositions, ease
+and gaiety. They are, for the most part, what their author intended. The
+diction is correct, the numbers are smooth, and the rhymes exact. There
+seldom occurs a hard-laboured expression, or a redundant epithet; all
+his verses exemplify his own definition of a good style; they consist of
+proper words in proper places.'
+
+The merits with which Swift's verse is credited are, therefore, not
+poetical merits, unless we accept what Schlegel calls the miserable
+doctrine of Boileau, that the essence of poetry consists in diction and
+versification.
+
+The great bulk of Swift's verse is suggested by the incidents of the
+hour. No subject is too trivial for his pen; but the poems which are
+addressed to Stella, and others which, like _Cadenus and Vanessa_, and
+_On the Death of Dr. Swift_, have a personal interest, are by far the
+most attractive. We see the best side of Swift when he addresses Stella,
+whether in verse or prose. The birthday rhymes he delighted to write in
+her praise have the mark of sincerity, and there is true feeling in the
+lines which describe her as a ministering angel in his sickness:
+
+    'When on my sickly couch I lay,
+    Impatient both of night and day,
+    Lamenting in unmanly strains,
+    Called every power to ease my pains;
+    Then Stella ran to my relief
+    With cheerful face and inward grief;
+    And though by Heaven's severe decree
+    She suffers hourly more than me,
+    No cruel master could require
+    From slaves employed for daily hire,
+    What Stella, by her friendship warmed,
+    With vigour and delight performed;
+    My sinking spirits now supplies
+    With cordials in her hands and eyes,
+    Now with a soft and silent tread
+    Unheard she moves about my bed.
+    I see her taste each nauseous draught
+    And so obligingly am caught,
+    I bless the hand from whence they came,
+    Nor dare distort my face for shame.'
+
+The poem in which Swift imagines what will take place upon his death, is
+full of satiric humour, combined with that vein of bitterness that is
+never long absent from his writings. His humour is always allied to
+sadness; his mirth often sounds like a cry of misery. In this poem he
+pictures his gradual decay, and how his special friends, anticipating
+the end, will show their tenderness by adding largely to his years:
+
+    'He's older than he would be reckoned,
+    And well remembers Charles the Second.
+    He hardly drinks a pint of wine,
+    And that I doubt is no good sign.
+    His stomach too begins to fail,
+    Last year we thought him strong and hale,
+    But now he's quite another thing,
+    I wish he may hold out till Spring.'
+
+No enemy can match a friend, Swift adds, in portending a great
+misfortune:
+
+    'He'd rather choose that I should die
+    Than his prediction prove a lie,
+    No one foretells I shall recover,
+    But all agree to give me over.'
+
+So he dies, and the first question asked is, 'What has he left and who's
+his heir?' and when these questions are answered, the Dean is blamed for
+his bequests. The news spreads to London and is told at Court:
+
+    'Kind Lady Suffolk, in the spleen,
+    Runs laughing up to tell the Queen.
+    The Queen so gracious, mild, and good,
+    Cries, "Is he gone? 'tis time he should."'
+
+But the loss of the Dean will cause a brief regret to his most intimate
+friends:
+
+    'Poor Pope will grieve a month; and Gay
+    A week; and Arbuthnot a day.
+    St. John himself will scarce forbear
+    To bite his pen and drop a tear.
+    The rest will give a shrug, and cry,
+    "I'm sorry--but we all must die."'
+
+Why grieve, indeed, at the death of friends, since no loss is more easy
+to supply, and in a year the Dean will be forgotten, and his wit be out
+of date.
+
+    'Some country squire to Lintot goes,
+    Inquires for "Swift in Verse and Prose."
+    Says Lintot, "I have heard the name;
+    He died a year ago." "The same."
+    He searches all the shop in vain.
+    "Sir, you may find them in Duck Lane,
+    I sent them with a load of books
+    Last Monday to the pastrycook's.
+    To fancy they could live a year!
+    I find you're but a stranger here.
+    The Dean was famous in his time,
+    And had a kind of knack at rhyme.
+    His way of writing now is past,
+    The town has got a better taste."'
+
+Enough has been transcribed to show Swift's art in this poem, which is
+of considerable, but not of wearisome length. Perhaps ten or twelve
+pieces, in addition to those already mentioned, will repay the student's
+attention. One of the worthiest is a _Rhapsody on Poetry_. _Baucis and
+Philemon_, too, is a lively piece that pleased Goldsmith, and will
+please every reader. It was much altered from the original draught at
+Addison's suggestion; but the alterations are not improvements.[43] _The
+City Shower_ is a piece of Dutch painting, reminding us of Crabbe. _Mrs.
+Harris's Petition_ is an admirable bit of fooling; _Mary the Cook-Maid's
+Letter_, is in its way inimitable; and so, too, is the amusing talk of
+'my lady's waiting-woman' in _The Grand Question Debated_.
+
+It is difficult, unhappily, to pursue one's way through Swift's poems,
+without being repelled again and again by the filth in which it pleases
+him to wade. _The Beast's Confession_, which has been reprinted in the
+_Selections from Swift_ (Clarendon Press), is not obscene, like _The
+Lady's Dressing-Room_, _Strephon and Chloe_, and other poems of the
+class; but it has the inhumanity which deforms the description of the
+Houyhnhnms. Strange to say, in private life Swift appears to have been
+not only moral in conduct, but refined in conversation, and he is even
+said to have rebuked Stella on one occasion for a slightly coarse
+remark. His imagination was diseased, and he was himself always
+apprehensive of the calamity under which he became at last 'a driveller
+and a show.' 'I shall be like that tree,' he said once to the poet
+Young, 'I shall die at the top.'
+
+It has been already said that _The Tale of a Tub_ was written at Moor
+Park. It appeared in 1704, and although published anonymously and never
+owned, the book effectually stood in the way of Swift's high preferment
+in the Church. Queen Anne declined, and not without reason, to make its
+author a bishop.
+
+It is a satire of amazing power, written by a man who takes, as Swift
+took throughout life, a misanthropical view of human nature, and who
+agrees with the cynical judgment of Carlyle, that men are mostly fools.
+Swift, however, did not consider fools useless, but observes that they
+'are as necessary for a good writer as pen, ink, and paper.' Never was
+volume written which betrayed in larger characters the opinions and
+disposition of its author. Swift was consistent in defending the
+National Church as a political institution; but in the _Tale of a Tub_
+he does so with weapons an atheist might use if he possessed the skill.
+The author maintains that in his ridicule of the Church of Rome and of
+Protestant dissenters, he is only displaying the abuses which deform the
+Christian Church; but no defence can be urged for his wild and
+irreverent method of turning subjects into ridicule which by a vast
+number of people are regarded as sacred. In judging of Swift's satire
+from a moral standing-point, one test, as Mr. Leslie Stephen observes,
+may be supposed to guide our decision. 'Imagine the _Tale of a Tub_ to
+be read by Bishop Butler and by Voltaire, who called Swift a _Rabelais
+perfectionne_. Can anyone doubt that the believer would be scandalized,
+and the scoffer find himself in a thoroughly congenial element? Would
+not any believer shrink from the use of such weapons, even though
+directed against his enemies?'[44]
+
+Although the wit poured out with such profusion in the _Tale of a Tub_,
+in so far as it offends the moral sense, fails to give pleasure, the
+reader is astonished, as Swift in later life was himself, at the genius
+displayed in this allegory, the argument of which may be told in a few
+words.
+
+A man is supposed to have three sons by one wife, and all at a birth. On
+his deathbed he leaves to each of them a new coat, which he says will
+grow with their growth, and last as long as they live. In his will he
+leaves directions, saying how the coats are to be used, and warning them
+against neglecting his instructions. For some years all goes well, the
+will is studied and followed, and the brothers, Peter (the Church of
+Rome), Martin (the Church of England), and Jack (the Calvinist), live in
+unity. How by degrees they misinterpret their father's will, how Peter
+begins by adding topknots to his coat, and afterwards grows so
+scandalous that his brothers resolve to leave him, and then fall out
+between themselves, is told with abundant wit. A great part of the
+volume consists of digressions written in Swift's most vigorous style,
+and with the cynical humour in which he has no competitor.
+
+It is always interesting to observe the influence of a work of genius on
+other minds, and in connection with the _Tale of a Tub_ a story told of
+his boyhood by William Cobbett is worth recording:
+
+'I was trudging through Richmond,' he writes, 'in my blue smock-frock,
+and my red garters tied under my knees, when, staring about me, my eyes
+fell upon a little book in a bookseller's window, on the outside of
+which was written, "_Tale of a Tub_, price threepence." The title was so
+odd that my curiosity was excited.... It was something so new to my mind
+that though I could not at all understand some of it, it delighted me
+beyond description; and it produced what I have always considered a sort
+of birth of intellect. I read on till it was dark, without any thought
+of supper or bed.' Cobbett adds, that having read till he could see no
+longer, he put the volume in his pocket, and 'tumbled down' by the side
+of a haystack, 'where I slept till the birds in Kew Gardens awakened me
+in the morning; when off I started to Kew, reading my little book.'
+
+One of the greatest masters of prose in the language has also recorded
+the impression made upon him by this wonderful book. At the age of
+eighty-three Landor wrote: 'I am reading once more the work I have read
+oftener than any other prose work in our language.... What a writer! Not
+the most imaginative or the most simple, not Bacon or Goldsmith had the
+power of saying more forcibly or completely whatever he meant to say.'
+'Simplicity,' said Swift, 'is the best and truest ornament of most
+things in human life;' and Landor, commenting on Swift's style, observes
+that 'he never attempted to round his sentences by redundant words,
+aware that from the simplest and the fewest arise the secret springs of
+genuine harmony.'
+
+The volume containing the _Tale of a Tub_ had also within its covers the
+_Battle of the Books_, which was suggested by a controversy that
+originated in France, and had been carried on by Sir W. Temple in
+England, as to the relative merits of the Ancients and the Moderns. Out
+of this, too, arose a discussion by some _savants_, with Richard Bentley
+(1662-1742), the greatest scholar of the age, at their head, with regard
+to the genuineness of the _Epistles of Phalaris_, a subject discussed in
+Macaulay's essay on Temple in his usually brilliant style. Swift, in the
+_Battle of the Books_ sides with Temple and with Charles Boyle, the
+nominal editor of the _Epistles_, who, in the famous _Reply to Bentley_,
+fought behind the shield of Atterbury. In a combat, which takes place in
+the Homeric style, the enemies of the Ancients, Bentley and Wotton, are
+slain by one lance upon the field. The mighty deed was achieved by
+Boyle. 'As when a slender cook has trussed a brace of woodcocks, he with
+iron skewer pierces the tender sides of both, their legs and wings close
+pinioned to their ribs, so was this pair of friends transfixed, till
+down they fell joined in their lives, joined in their deaths; so closely
+joined, that Charon would mistake them both for one, and waft them over
+Styx for half his fare.' The humour of the piece is delightful, and it
+matters not a whit for the enjoyment of it, that the wrong heroes gain
+the victory.
+
+In 1708 Swift produced several pamphlets or tracts, and in one of them,
+the _Argument against Abolishing Christianity_, he found ample scope for
+the irony of which he was so consummate a master.
+
+'Great wits,' he writes, 'love to be free with the highest objects; and
+if they cannot be allowed a God to revile or renounce, they will speak
+evil of dignities, abuse the Government, and reflect upon the ministry;
+which I am sure few will deny to be of much more pernicious
+consequence;' and he observes, in concluding the argument: 'Whatever
+some may think of the great advantages to trade by this favourite
+scheme, I do very much apprehend that in six months' time the Bank and
+East India Stock may fall at least one _per cent._ And since that is
+fifty times more than ever the wisdom of our age thought fit to venture
+for the preservation of Christianity, there is no reason we should be at
+so great a loss merely for the sake of destroying it.'
+
+An amusing piece which appeared also at this time from Swift's pen, is
+of literary interest. Under the name of Isaac Bickerstaff he predicted
+the death, upon a certain day, of Partridge, a notorious astrologer and
+almanac maker. When the day arrived his decease was announced, and he
+was afterwards decently buried by Swift, despite a loud protest from the
+poor man that he was not only alive, but well and hearty. The town took
+up the joke, all the wits joined in it, and Steele, who started the
+_Tatler_ in the following year (1709), found it of advantage to assume
+the name of Bickerstaff, which these squibs had made so popular. Swift
+loved practical jokes, and sometimes yielded to a license that bordered
+on buffoonery. He was now in London, charged with a mission from the
+Irish Church, and hoping for Church preferment himself. With the latter
+object in view he published the _Sentiments of a Church of England Man_
+(1708). Two years later, vexed at heart at being unable to gain for the
+Irish clergy privileges enjoyed by their English brethren, and foiled,
+too, in his ambition, Swift forsook the Whig party, which he had never
+loved, and going over to the Tories, fought their battle for some years
+with so masterly a pen, as to become a great power in the country.
+
+Some time before his return to London in 1710, a weekly Tory paper had
+been started by Bolingbroke and Prior called _The Examiner_, and in
+opposition to it, upon September 14th in that year, Addison produced the
+_Whig Examiner_ which lived a brief life of five numbers and died on the
+8th of October. Three weeks later, on the 2nd November, after thirteen
+numbers of the _Examiner_ had been published, Swift took up the pen, and
+from that date to June 14th, 1711, every paper was from his hand. Never
+before had a political journal exercised such power. In his change of
+party Swift was sincere in purpose, but unscrupulous in his methods of
+pursuing it, and to gain his ends told lies with a vigour that has
+rarely been surpassed. He is never delicate in his treatment of
+opponents, and when finer weapons would be useless, strikes with a
+sledge hammer. That such a writer, a master of every method most
+effective in controversy, should have been valued by the statesmen of
+the day is not surprising. When he forsook the Whig camp there was no
+opponent to pit against him, for neither Addison with his delicate
+humour, nor Steele with his brightness and versatility, could grapple
+with an enemy like this.
+
+Swift's arrogance in these days of his power was that of a despot. He
+was doing great things for ministers, and took care that they should
+know it. He was proud of his self-assertion, proud of being rude. Great
+men, and great ladies too, who wished for his acquaintance, had to make
+the first advances. He caused Lady Burlington to burst into tears by
+rudely ordering her to sing. 'She should sing or he would make her.' 'I
+was at court and church to-day,' he tells Stella, 'I generally am
+acquainted with about thirty in the drawing-room, and am so proud I make
+all the lords come up to me.' On one occasion he sent the Lord Treasurer
+into the House of Commons to call out the principal Secretary of State
+in order to say that he would not dine with him if he intended to dine
+late. He relates, too, how he warned St. John not to appear cold to him,
+for he would not be treated like a school-boy, and if he heard or saw
+anything to his disadvantage to let him know in plain words, and not to
+put him in pain by the change of his behaviour, for it was what he would
+hardly bear from a crowned head. 'If we let these great ministers
+pretend too much,' he says, 'there will be no governing them.' And in a
+letter to Pope he makes the following confession: 'All my endeavours
+from a boy to distinguish myself were only for want of a great title and
+fortune that I might be treated like a lord ... whether right or wrong
+it is no great matter; and so the reputation of great learning does the
+work of a blue ribbon, and of a coach and six horses.'
+
+It would be out of place in this volume to dwell on Swift's feats as a
+political writer; for us the most interesting fact connected with the
+years 1710-14 is that during that eventful period of Swift's life, in
+which he was hobnobbing with Ministers of State and doing them infinite
+service by his pen, he was writing at odd moments his inimitable
+_Journal to Stella_, and gaining the love which ended so tragically, of
+Hester Vanhomrigh. This strange chapter in Swift's life is closely bound
+up with his literary history, and must therefore be briefly noticed.
+
+At Moor Park Swift, who was more than twenty years her senior, had seen
+Esther Johnson growing up into womanhood. He had been to her as a
+master, a position he always liked to assume towards women.[45] When he
+settled in Ireland it was arranged that Esther and her companion, Mrs.
+Dingley, should also live there. Her preceptor, in his regard for
+propriety, appears never to have seen Esther apart from the useful
+Dingley, and his letters are apparently addressed to both of them, but
+Esther knew, as we know, that all the tenderness and affectionate humour
+they contain was meant for her alone. Swift never writes as a lover, but
+the kind of love he gave to 'Stella' sufficed to bind her to him for
+life. If there were moments when she wished to escape from his power,
+the wish was hopeless. Having once submitted to his fascination, she was
+held by it to the end. Hester Vanhomrigh, who was about ten years
+younger than Stella, felt the same spell, and having a far less
+restrained nature than Miss Johnson, gave free expression to the passion
+which devoured her. Between his two admirers, for such they were, Swift
+had a difficult course to steer. To Stella he was linked by strong ties
+of companionship, and to her, according to some authorities, he was
+secretly married. Whether this were the case or not she had the larger
+claims upon him, and if one of the twain had to be sacrificed, Vanessa
+must be the victim.
+
+In _Cadenus and Vanessa_ (1713) a poem which every student of Swift will
+read, the author strove to achieve an impossibility. His aim was to
+ignore the lover and to assume the character of a master to an
+intelligent and favourite pupil, or of a father to a daughter. His
+dignity and age, he says, forbade the thought of warmer feelings.
+
+    'But friendship in its greatest height,
+    A constant rational delight,
+    On Virtue's basis fixed to last
+    When love's allurements long are past,
+    Which gently warms but cannot burn,
+    He gladly offers in return;
+    His want of passion will redeem
+    With gratitude, respect, esteem;
+    With that devotion we bestow
+    When goddesses appear below.'
+
+And this was Swift's method of dealing with a woman who confessed the
+'inexpressible passion' she had for him, and that his 'dear image' was
+always before her eyes. 'Sometimes,' she wrote, 'you strike me with that
+prodigious awe, I tremble with fear; at other times a charming
+compassion shines through your countenance which moves my soul.' Swift
+had acted far more than indiscreetly in encouraging a friendship with
+Vanessa, and when she followed him to Dublin, in the neighbourhood of
+which she had some property, he knew not how to escape from the snare
+his own folly had laid. To Stella he had given 'friendship and esteem,'
+but, as he is careful to add, 'ne'er admitted love a guest;' the same
+cold gift was offered to Vanessa, but in vain. According to a report,
+the authority of which is doubtful, Miss Vanhomrigh wrote to Stella, in
+1723, asking if she was Swift's wife. She replied that she was, and sent
+the letter she had received to Swift. In a towering passion he rode to
+Vanessa's house, threw the letter on the table, and left again without
+saying a word. The blow was fatal, and Vanessa died soon afterwards,
+revoking her will in Swift's favour and leaving to him the legacy of
+remorse. Having told in outline this episode in Swift's story, I return
+to the _Journal to Stella_, which dates from September 2nd, 1710, to
+June 6th, 1713.
+
+Little did Swift imagine that the chit-chat he was writing every day for
+Esther Johnson's sake would be read and enjoyed by thousands who care
+little or nothing for the party questions upon which the strenuous
+efforts of his intellect were expended. The early years of the
+eighteenth century contain nothing more delightful than this _Journal_.
+Its gossip, its nonsense, its freshness and ease of style, the
+tenderness concealed, or half-revealed, in its 'little language,' and
+the illustrations it supplies incidentally of the manners of the court
+and town, these are some of the charms that make us turn again and again
+to its pages with ever-increasing pleasure. We enjoy Swift's egotism and
+trivialities, as we enjoy the egotism of Pepys or Montaigne, and can
+imagine the eagerness with which the _Letters_ were read by the lovely
+woman whose destiny it was to receive everything from Swift save the
+love which has its consummation in marriage. The style of the _Journal_
+is not that of an author composing, but of a companion talking; and it
+is all the more interesting since it reveals Swift's character under a
+pleasanter aspect than any of his formal writings. We see in it what a
+warm heart he had for the friends whom he had once learnt to love, and
+with what zeal he exerted himself in assisting brother-authors, while
+receiving little beyond empty praise from ministers himself.
+
+In the winter of 1713-14 Swift joined the Scriblerus Club, an
+association of such wits as Pope, Parnell, Arbuthnot, and Gay, and it
+was about this time that his friendship with Pope began. The members
+proposed writing a satire between them, and when Swift was exiled to
+Dublin as Dean of St. Patrick's, he pursued indirectly the suggestion of
+the Scriblerus wits by writing _Gulliver's Travels_ (1726), a book that
+has made his name known throughout Europe, and in all the lands where
+English literature is read. Although Swift did not hesitate to make use
+of hints and descriptions which he had met with in the course of his
+reading, this is one of the most original works of fiction ever written,
+and one of the wittiest. Yet like almost everything that Swift wrote, it
+is deformed by grossness of expression, and in the latter portion by a
+malignant contempt for human nature which betrays a diseased
+imagination. The stories of the Lilliputians and Brobdingnags, purified
+from coarse allusions, are the delight of children; but the description
+of the Houyhnhnms and Yahoos excites disgust and indignation. He said
+that his object in writing the satire was to vex the world, and he has
+succeeded.
+
+'It cannot be denied,' says Sir Walter Scott, one of the sanest and
+healthiest of imaginative writers, 'that even a moral purpose will not
+justify the nakedness with which Swift has sketched this horrible
+outline of mankind degraded to a bestial state; since a moralist ought
+to hold with the Romans that crimes of atrocity should be exposed when
+punished, but those of flagitious impurity concealed. In point of
+probability, too--for there are degrees of probability, proper even to
+the wildest fiction--the fourth part of _Gulliver_ is inferior to the
+three others.... The mind rejects, as utterly impossible, the
+supposition of a nation of horses, placed in houses which they could not
+build, fed with corn which they could neither sow, reap, nor save,
+possessing cows which they could not milk, depositing that milk in
+vessels which they could not make, and, in short, performing a hundred
+purposes of rational and social life for which their external structure
+altogether unfits them.'[46]
+
+Neither morality, nor a regard for probability are so outraged in the
+story of the Lilliputians and Brobdingnags.
+
+Having once accepted Swift's assumption of the existence of little
+people not six inches high, and of a country in which the inhabitants
+'appeared as tall as an ordinary spire-steeple,' the exactness and
+verisimilitude of the narrative, with its minute geographical details,
+make it appear so reasonable that a young reader may feel inclined to
+resent the criticism of an Irish bishop who said that 'the book was full
+of improbable lies, and for his part he hardly believed a word of it.'
+It is curious to note that Swift, who made a strange vow in early life
+'not to be fond of children, or let them come near me hardly,' should
+have done more to delight them than any author of his century, with the
+exception, perhaps, of Defoe. Gay and Pope wrote a joint letter to Swift
+on the appearance of the _Travels_, pretending that they did not know
+the author, and advising him to get the book if it had not yet reached
+Ireland. 'From the highest to the lowest,' they declare, 'it is
+universally read, from the cabinet council to the nursery.... It has
+passed Lords and Commons _nemine contradicente_, and the whole town,
+men, women, and children, are quite full of it.' A book which attained
+in the author's lifetime a wellnigh unprecedented popularity should
+have yielded him a large profit. What it did yield we do not know, but
+in a letter dated 1735, in which, perhaps, he alludes to the _Travels_,
+Swift says, 'I never got a farthing for anything I writ, except once,
+about eight years ago, and that by Mr. Pope's prudent management for
+me.'
+
+The injustice done to Ireland in the last century, as short-sighted as
+it was cruel, is described at large in the second volume of Mr. Lecky's
+_History_. Swift, who hated Ireland, felt a righteous indignation at the
+misgovernment which threatened the country with ruin, and some of his
+most powerful phillipics were secretly written in her defence.
+
+In 1720 he issued a pamphlet urging the Irish to use only Irish
+manufactures: 'I heard the late Archbishop of Tuam,' he writes, 'mention
+a pleasant observation of somebody's, that Ireland would never be happy
+till a law were made for burning everything that came from England,
+except their people and their coals. I must confess, that as to the
+former, I should not be sorry if they would stay at home; and for the
+latter, I hope, in a little time we shall have no occasion for them
+
+    "Non tanti mitra est, non tanti judicis ostrum--"
+
+but I should rejoice to see a staylace from England be thought
+scandalous, and become a topic for censure at visits and tea-tables.'
+
+The pamphlet is a forcible attack on the oppression under which Ireland
+laboured, and the Government answered it by prosecuting the printer.
+Nine times the jury were sent back by the Chief Justice before they
+consented to bring in a 'special verdict,' and ultimately the
+prosecution was dropped.
+
+Two years later the English Government granted a patent to a man of the
+name of Wood to issue a new copper coinage for Ireland to an
+extravagant amount, out of which, in return for bribes to the Duchess of
+Kendal, it was supposed that the speculator would make a considerable
+profit at Ireland's expense. The country was aroused, and Swift, by the
+issue of the _Drapier's Letters_, purporting to come from a Dublin
+draper, roused the passions of the people to a white heat. It was known
+perfectly well from whom the _Letters_ came, but no one would betray
+Swift, and when the printer was thrown into prison the jury refused to
+convict. The battle was fought with vigour, Swift conquered, and the
+patent was withdrawn. A brief passage from the fourth and final letter
+'To the Whole People of Ireland' shall be quoted. It will be seen that
+the writer is not afraid of plain speaking. After saying that the king
+cannot compel the subject to take any money except it be sterling gold
+or silver, he adds:
+
+    'Now here you may see that the vile accusation of Wood and his
+    accomplices, charging us with disputing the King's prerogative
+    by refusing his brass, can have no place--because compelling the
+    subject to take any coin which is not sterling is no part of the
+    King's prerogative, and I am very confident, if it were so, we
+    should be the last of his people to dispute it, as well from
+    that inviolable loyalty we have always paid to his Majesty, as
+    from the treatment we might in such a case justly expect from
+    some, who seem to think we have neither common sense nor common
+    senses. But, God be thanked, the best of them are only our
+    fellow-subjects, and not our masters. One great merit I am sure
+    we have which those of English birth can have no pretence
+    to--that our ancestors reduced this kingdom to the obedience of
+    England; for which we have been rewarded with a worse
+    climate--the privilege of being governed by laws to which we do
+    not consent--a ruined trade--a House of Peers without
+    jurisdiction--almost an incapacity for all employments--and the
+    dread of Wood's halfpence. But we are so far from disputing the
+    king's prerogative in coining, that we own he has power to give
+    a patent to any man for setting his royal image and
+    superscription upon whatever materials he pleases, and liberty
+    to the patentee to offer them in any country from England to
+    Japan; only attended with one small limitation--that nobody
+    alive is obliged to take them.'
+
+With much humour, in the last paragraph of the letter, Swift undertakes
+to show that Walpole is against Wood's project 'by this one invincible
+argument, that he has the universal opinion of being a wise man, an able
+minister, and in all his proceedings pursuing the true interest of the
+King his master; and that as his integrity is above all corruption, so
+is his fortune above all temptation.'
+
+Swift's arguments in the _Drapier's Letters_ are sophistical, his
+statements grossly exaggerated, and his advice sometimes shameless, as,
+for instance, in recommending what is now but too well known as
+'boycotting.' The end, however, was gained, and the Dean was treated
+with the honours of a conqueror. On his return from England in 1726, a
+guard of honour conducted him through the streets, and the city bells
+sounded a joyful peal. Wherever he went he was received with something
+like royal honours, and when Walpole talked of arresting him, he was
+told that 10,000 soldiers would be needed to make the attempt
+successful. The Dean's hatred of oppression and injustice had its
+limits. He defended the Test Act, and assailed all dissenters with
+ungovernable fury. It was his aim to exclude them from every kind of
+power.
+
+In 1729, with a passion outwardly calm and in a moderate style, which
+makes his amazing satire the more appalling, Swift published _A Modest
+Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from
+being a Burden to their Parents or Country and for making them
+Beneficial to the Public_. A more hideous piece of irony was never
+written; it is the fruit of an indignation that tore his heart. The
+_Proposal_ is, that considering the great misery of Ireland, young
+children should be used for food. 'I grant,' he says,'this food will be
+somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they
+have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title
+to the children. 'A very worthy person, he says, considers that young
+lads and maidens over twelve would supply the want of venison, but 'it
+is not improbable that some scrupulous people might be apt to censure
+such a practice (although, indeed, very unjustly), as a little bordering
+upon cruelty; which I confess has always been with me the strongest
+objection against any project, how well soever intended.' The
+business-like way in which the argument is conducted throughout, adds
+greatly to its force. Swift has written nothing so terrible as this
+satire, and nothing that surpasses it in power.
+
+The Dean was fretting away his life when he wrote this pamphlet. Two
+years before he had paid his last visit to the country where, as he said
+in a letter to Gay, he had made his friendships and left his desires. On
+the death of George I. he visited England, vainly hoping to gain some
+preferment there through the aid of Mrs. Howard, the mistress of George
+II., and returned to 'wretched Dublin,' to lose the woman he had loved
+so well and treated so strangely, and to 'die in a rage like a poisoned
+rat in a hole.' After Stella's death, in 1728, Swift's burden of
+misanthropy was never destined to be lightened. His rage and gloom
+increased as the years moved on, and in penning his lines of savage
+invective against the Irish House of Commons, the Dean had a fit and
+wrote no more verse. Here is a specimen of his _saeva indignatio_:
+
+    'Could I from the building's top
+    Hear the rattling thunder drop,
+    While the devil upon the roof
+    (If the devil be thunder-proof)
+    Should with poker fiery red
+    Crack the stones and melt the lead;
+    Drive them down on every skull,
+    While the den of thieves is full;
+    Quite destroy that harpies' nest,
+    How might then our isle be blest!'
+
+It should be observed at the same time that even in his declining days,
+when his heart was heavy with bitterness, Swift indulged in practical
+jokes and in the most trivial pursuits. _Vive la bagatelle_ was his cry,
+but it was the cry of a man who had as deep a contempt for the wiser
+pursuits of life as for its frivolities. Of the mirth that is the
+natural outcome of a cheerful nature, the Dean knew nothing. His
+hilarity was but a vain attempt to escape from despair. In 1740 he
+writes of being very miserable, extremely deaf, and full of pain.
+Sometimes he gave way to furious bursts of temper, and for several years
+before the end came, he fell into a state resembling idiocy. Swift died
+on October 19th, 1745, leaving his money to a hospital for lunatics,
+
+    'And showed by one satiric touch
+    No nation needed it so much.'
+
+A brilliant writer, who has undertaken to prove the 'glaring injustice'
+of the popular estimate of Swift, and by his forcible epithets has
+strengthened the grounds on which that estimate is built, observes that
+Swift's 'philosophy of life is ignoble, base, and false,' that 'his
+impious mockery extends even to the Deity,' and that 'a large portion of
+his works exhibit, and in intense activity, all the worst attributes of
+our nature--revenge, spite, malignity, uncleanness.'[47]
+
+This harsh judgment is essentially a true one; but Swift's was a
+many-sided character. He was a misanthrope, with deep, though very
+limited affections, a man frugal to eccentricity, with a benevolence at
+once active and extensive. His powerful intellect compels our
+admiration, if not our sympathy. His irony, his genius for satire and
+humour, his argumentative skill, his language, which is never wanting in
+strength, and is as clear as the most pellucid of mountain
+streams--these gifts are of so rare an order, that Swift's place in the
+literary history of his age must be always one of high eminence.
+Doubtless, as a master of style, he has been sometimes over-praised. If
+we regard the writer's end, it must be admitted that his language is
+admirably fitted for that end. What more then, it may be asked, can be
+needed? The reply is, that in composition, as in other things, there are
+different orders of excellence. The kind, although perfect, may be a low
+kind, and Swift's style wants the 'sweetness and light,' to quote a
+phrase of his own, which distinguish our greatest prose writers. It
+lacks also the elevation which inspires, and the persuasiveness that
+convinces while it charms. With infinitely more vigour than Addison,
+Swift, apart from his _Letters_, has none of Addison's attractiveness.
+No style, perhaps, is better fitted to exhibit scorn and contempt; but
+its author cannot express, because he does not possess, the sense of
+beauty.
+
+Unlike Pope, Swift was a man of affairs rather than of letters. He wrote
+neither for literary fame nor for money. His ambition was to be a ruler
+of men, and in imperious will he was strong enough to make a second
+Strafford. 'When people ask me,' said Lord Carteret, 'how I governed
+Ireland, I say that I pleased Dr. Swift, "_quaesitam meritis sume
+superbiam_."' As a political pamphleteer he succeeded, because he was
+savagely in earnest, and had the special genius of a combatant. If
+argument was against him he used satire; if satire failed he tried
+invective; his armoury was full of weapons, and there was not one of
+them he could not wield. He loved power, and exercised it on the
+ministers who needed the services of his pen. And, as we have already
+said, he dispensed his favours like a king! Swift's commanding genius
+gives even to his most trivial productions a measure of vitality. The
+student of our eighteenth century literature is arrested by the man and
+his works, and to treat either him or them with indifference would be to
+neglect a significant chapter in the history of the time.
+
+[Sidenote: John Arbuthnot (1667-1735).]
+
+John Arbuthnot, one of the most prominent of the Queen Anne wits, and
+the warm friend of Swift and Pope, was born at Arbuthnot, near Montrose,
+in 1667. He studied medicine at Aberdeen, and having taken his doctor's
+degree at St. Andrews, came, after the wont of ambitious Scotchmen, to
+seek his fortune in London, where in 1700 he published an _Essay on the
+Usefulness of Mathematical Learning_, and having won high reputation as
+a man of science, was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. A few years
+later he was made Physician Extraordinary to Queen Anne; and it was not
+long before he had as high a repute among men of letters as with men of
+science. He suffered frequently from illness; but no pain, it has been
+said, could extinguish his gaiety of mind. In the last century Hampstead
+was a favourite resort of invalids. Arbuthnot had sent Gay there on one
+occasion, and thither in 1734 he went himself, so ill that he 'could
+neither sleep, breathe, eat, nor move.' Contrary to his expectation he
+regained a little strength, and lived until the following spring. 'Pope
+and I were with him,' Lord Chesterfield wrote, 'the evening before he
+died, when he suffered racking pains.... He took leave of us with
+tenderness, without weakness, and told us that he died not only with the
+comfort, but even the devout assurance of a Christian.'
+
+There is not one of Pope's circle who holds a more enviable position
+than Arbuthnot. In strength of intellect and readiness of wit Swift only
+was his equal, and in classical learning he was Swift's superior. Like
+Othello, Arbuthnot was of a free and open nature, and his friends clung
+to him with an affection that was almost womanly. He had the fine
+impulses of Goldsmith combined with the manliness and practical sagacity
+of Dr. Johnson, and Johnson recognized in this celebrated physician a
+kindred spirit. 'I think Dr. Arbuthnot,' he said, 'the first man among
+the wits of the age. He was the most universal genius, being an
+excellent physician, a man of deep learning, and a man of much humour.'
+His genius and generous qualities were amply acknowledged by his
+contemporaries, Pope calls Arbuthnot 'as good a doctor as any man for
+one that is ill, and a better doctor for one that is well;' Swift said
+he had every virtue which could make a man amiable; Berkeley wrote of
+him as a great philosopher who was reckoned the first mathematician of
+the age and had the character 'of uncommon virtue and probity,' and
+Chesterfield, who declared that his knowledge and 'almost inexhaustible
+imagination' were at every one's service, added that 'charity,
+benevolence, and a love of mankind appeared unaffectedly in all he said
+and did.'
+
+Strange to say we know little of Arbuthnot but what is to be gleaned
+from the correspondence of his friends, and it is only of late years
+that an attempt has been made to write the doctor's biography, and to
+collect his works.[48] To edit these works satisfactorily is a difficult
+and a doubtful task--several of Arbuthnot's writings having been
+produced in connection with Swift, Pope, and Gay. So indifferent was he
+to literary fame, that his children are said to have made kites of
+papers in which he had jotted down hints that would have furnished good
+matter for folios. His most famous work is _The History of John Bull_
+(1713), which Macaulay considered the most humorous political satire in
+the language. It was designed to help the Tory party at the expense of
+the Duke of Marlborough, whose genius as a military leader was probably
+equal to that of Wellington, while he fell far below the 'Great Duke' in
+the virtues which form a noble character. The irony and dry humour of
+the satire remind one of Swift, and, like Arbuthnot's _Art of Political
+Lying_, is so much in Swift's vein throughout that M. Taine may be
+excused for attributing both of these pieces to the Dean of St.
+Patrick's.
+
+The _History of John Bull_ is not fitted to attain lasting popularity.
+It will be read from curiosity and for information; but the keen
+excitement, the amusement, and the irritation caused by a brilliant
+satire of living men and passing events can be but vaguely imagined by
+readers whose interest in the statecraft of the age is historical and
+not personal. Arbuthnot, like Swift, belonged to the Tory camp, and both
+did their utmost to depreciate the great General who never knew defeat,
+and to promote the designs of Harley. When Arbuthnot produced his
+satire, all the town laughed at the representation of Marlborough as an
+old smooth-tongued attorney who loved money, and was said by his
+neighbours to be hen-pecked, 'which was impossible by such a
+mild-spirited woman as his wife was.' That an 'honest plain-dealing
+fellow' like John Bull the Clothier, should be deceived by such wily men
+of business as Lewis Baboon of France, and Lord Strutt of Spain, and
+also that other tradesmen should be willing to join John and Nic Frog,
+the linen-draper of Holland, in the lawsuit, provided that Bull and
+Frog, or Bull alone, would bear the law charges, is made to appear
+likely enough; and Scott says truly that 'it was scarce possible so
+effectually to dim the lustre of Marlborough's splendid achievements as
+by parodying them under the history of a suit conducted by a wily
+attorney who made every advantage gained over the defendant a reason for
+protracting law procedure, and enhancing the expense of his client.' In
+this long lawsuit everybody is represented as gaining something except
+_John Bull_, whose ready money, book debts, bonds, and mortgages go into
+the lawyer's pockets. Whether the nickname of _John Bull_ originated
+with Arbuthnot or was merely adopted by him is not known.
+
+Arbuthnot was an active member of the Scriblerus Club, and wrote the
+larger portion of the _Memoirs of Martin Scriblerus_ (1741), the design
+of which was, as Pope said, to ridicule false tastes in learning, in the
+character of a man 'that had dipped into every art and science, but
+injudiciously in each.' Dr. Johnson says of this work that no man can be
+wiser, better, or merrier for remembering it. Perhaps he is right; but
+the _Memoirs_ contain some humorous points which, if they do not create
+merriment, may yield some slight amusement. The pedant's endeavours to
+make a philosopher of his child are sufficiently ludicrous. He is
+delighted to find that the infant has the wart of Cicero and the very
+neck of Alexander, and hopes that he may come to stammer like
+Demosthenes, 'and in time arrive at many other defects of famous men.'
+As the boy grows up his father invents for him a geographical suit of
+clothes, and stamps his gingerbread with the letters of the Greek
+alphabet, which proved so successful a mode of teaching the language,
+that on the very first day the child 'ate as far as iota.' He also
+taught him as a diversion 'an odd and secret manner of stealing,
+according to the custom of the Lacedemonians, wherein he succeeded so
+well that he practised it till the day of his death.' Martin studies
+logic, philosophy, and medicine, and discovers that the seat of the soul
+is not confined to one place in all persons, but resides in the stomach
+of epicures, in the brain of philosophers, in the fingers of fiddlers,
+and in the toes of rope-dancers. His discoveries, it may be added, are
+made 'without the trivial help of experiments or observations.'
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[43] _Life of Jonathan Swift_, by John Forster, vol. i., pp. 164-174.
+Mr. Forster did not live to produce more than one volume of a work to
+which for many years he had given 'much labour and time.'
+
+[44] _English Men of Letters--Jonathan Swift_, by Leslie Stephen, p. 43.
+
+[45] Mrs. Pendarves writes (1733) 'The day before we came out of town we
+dined at Doctor Delany's, and met the usual company. The Dean of St.
+Patrick's was there _in very good humour_, he calls himself "_my
+master_," and corrects me when I speak bad English or do not pronounce
+my words distinctly. I wish he lived in England, I should not only have
+a great deal of entertainment from him, but improvement.'--_Life and
+Correspondence of Mrs Delany_, vol. i., p. 407.
+
+[46] _Life of Swift_, p. 299.
+
+[47] _Jonathan Swift, a Biographical and Critical Study_, by J. Churton
+Collins, p. 267.
+
+[48] See _The Life and Works of Dr. Arbuthnot_, by George A. Aitken.
+Oxford, Clarendon Press.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+DANIEL DEFOE--JOHN DENNIS--COLLEY CIBBER--LADY MARY WORTLEY
+    MONTAGU--EARL OF CHESTERFIELD--LORD LYTTELTON--JOSEPH SPENCE.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Daniel Defoe (1661-1731).]
+
+The most voluminous writer of his century is popularly remembered as the
+author of one book, published in old age. Everybody has read _Robinson
+Crusoe_, and knows the name of its author; but few readers outside the
+narrow circle of literary students are aware of Defoe's exhaustless
+labours as a politician, social reformer, projector, pamphleteer, and
+novelist.
+
+It would be well for the author's reputation if we knew less about him
+than we do. There was a time when he was regarded as a noble sufferer in
+the cause of civil and religious liberty. His faults were credited to
+his age while his virtues were supposed to place him on an eminence far
+above the time-servers who despised him. He has been praised as a man
+courageously living for great aims, who was maligned by the malice of
+party, and to whose memory scant justice has been done. 'No one,' says
+Henry Kingsley, 'could come up to the standard of his absolute
+precision,' and his 'inexorable honesty alienated everyone.' These words
+were written in 1868. Four years previously, however, the discovery of
+six letters in the State Paper Office, in Defoe's own hand, had entirely
+destroyed his character for inexorable honesty, and the researches of
+his latest and most exhaustive biographer,[49] who regards his hero's
+vices as virtues, do but serve to give greater prominence to the
+baseness of his conduct. Defoe, by his own confession, was for many
+years in the pay of the Government for secret services, taking shares in
+Tory papers and supervising them as editor, in order to defeat the aims
+of the party to which he professed to be allied, and of the proprietors
+with whom he was in partnership. Thus in 1718, he writes as a plea that
+his labours should be remembered: 'I am, Sir, for this service, posted
+among Papists, Jacobites, and enraged High Tories--a generation who I
+profess my very soul abhors; I am obliged to hear traitorous expressions
+and outrageous words against his majesty's person and government, and
+his most faithful servants, and smile at it all as if I approved it; I
+am obliged to take all the scandalous and indeed villainous papers that
+come, and keep them by me as if I would gather materials from them to
+put them into the _News_; nay, I often venture to let things pass which
+are a little shocking that I may not render myself suspected. Thus I bow
+in the House of _Rimmon_, and must humbly recommend myself to his
+lordship's protection, or I may be undone the sooner, by how much the
+more faithfully I execute the commands I am under.' It would not be fair
+to judge Defoe altogether by the moral standard of our own day, but the
+part he played as a servant and spy of the government would have been an
+act of baseness in any age, and of this he seems to have been conscious.
+
+Daniel Foe, who about 1703 assumed the prefix of De, for no assignable
+reason, was the son of a butcher and Nonconformist in Cripplegate, who
+had the youth educated for the ministry. Daniel, however, preferred a
+more exciting occupation, and took part in the unfortunate expedition of
+the Duke of Monmouth. Escaping from that peril he began business as a
+hose factor in Cornhill, and carried it on until he failed about the
+year 1692. Already he had learnt to use the pen, and a loyal pamphlet
+secured for him a public appointment which lasted for some years. He was
+also connected with a brick manufactory at Tilbury. Meanwhile he wrote
+for the press, and showed himself the possessor of a clear and masculine
+style, which could be 'understanded of the people.'
+
+In 1698 Defoe published his _Essay on Projects_, 'which perhaps,'
+Benjamin Franklin says, 'gave me a turn of thinking that had an
+influence on some of the principal future events of my life.'
+
+One of the most interesting projects in the book is the proposal to form
+an Academy on the French model. In 1712 Swift wrote a pamphlet (the only
+piece he published with his name) entitled _A proposal for correcting,
+improving, and ascertaining the English tongue_, in which he suggests
+the foundation of an Academy under the protection of the Queen and her
+ministers. The idea it will be seen had been anticipated fifteen years
+before.
+
+    'The peculiar study of the Academy of France,' Defoe writes,
+    'has been to refine and correct their own language, which they
+    have done to that happy degree that we see it now spoken in all
+    the courts of Christendom as the language allowed to be most
+    universal. I had the honour once to be a member of a small
+    society who seemed to offer at this noble design in England; but
+    the greatness of the work and the modesty of the gentlemen
+    concerned prevailed with them to desist from an enterprise which
+    appeared too great for private hands to undertake. We want
+    indeed a Richelieu to commence such a work, for I am persuaded
+    were there such a genius in our kingdom to lead the way, there
+    would not want capacities who could carry on the work to a
+    glory equal to all that has gone before them. The English tongue
+    is a subject not at all less worthy the labours of such a
+    society than the French, and capable of a much greater
+    perfection. The learned among the French will own that the
+    comprehensiveness of expression is a glory in which the English
+    tongue not only equals, but excels its neighbours.... It is a
+    great pity that a subject so noble should not have some as noble
+    to attempt it; and for a method what greater can be set before
+    us than the Academy of Paris, which, to give the French their
+    due, stands foremost among all the great attempts in the learned
+    part of the world.'
+
+Defoe also projected a Royal Military Academy, and an academy for women
+which should have only one entrance and a large moat round it. With
+these precautions, spies, he observes, would be unnecessary, since, in
+his opinion, 'there needs no other care to prevent intriguing than to
+keep the men effectually away.' He had the Eastern notion of guarding
+women from danger by preventing the access to it, yet he could write:
+
+    'A woman of sense and manners is the finest and most delicate
+    part of God's creation; the glory of her Maker, and the great
+    instance of His singular regard to man, His darling creature, to
+    whom He gave the best gift either God could bestow or man
+    receive. And it is the sordidest piece of folly and ingratitude
+    in the world to withhold from the sex the due lustre which the
+    advantages of education gives to the natural beauty of their
+    minds. A woman well bred and well taught, furnished with the
+    additional accomplishments of knowledge and behaviour, is a
+    creature without comparison; her society is the emblem of
+    sublime enjoyments; her person is angelic and her conversation
+    heavenly.... She is every way suitable to the sublimest wish,
+    and the man that has such a one to his portion has nothing to do
+    but to rejoice in her and be thankful.'
+
+In verse Defoe published the _True Born Englishman_ (1701), in defence
+of King William and his Dutch followers:
+
+    'William's the name that's spoke by every tongue,
+    William's the darling subject of my song;
+    Listen, ye virgins, to the charming sound,
+    And in eternal dances hand it round.
+    Your early offerings to this altar bring,
+    Make him at once a lover and a king.'
+
+The nonsense deepens as the rhyme goes on. For William every tender vow
+is to be made, he is to be the first thought in the morning, and his
+name will act as a charm, affrighting the infernal powers and guarding
+from the terror of the night.
+
+The poem proved very popular, and Defoe writes that had he been able to
+enjoy the profit of his own labour he would have gained above L1,000. He
+printed nine editions at the price of one shilling a copy, but meanwhile
+twelve surreptitious editions were published and sold for a few pence, a
+fraud for which he says he had no remedy but patience. Throughout his
+busy life of authorship he was indeed continually victimized by pirates.
+
+While in verse Defoe extolled the king as if he were a demi-god, he did
+William good service by his pamphlets, and was in some degree admitted
+into his confidence.
+
+Up to the king's death in 1702 his course appears to have been
+straightforward; after the accession of Anne he acted a less honourable
+part. No fault can be found with his design that year in writing _The
+Shortest Way with the Dissenters_, a piece of irony unsurpassed in that
+age until the publication of Swift's _Modest Proposal_, twenty-seven
+years later. The satire was at first accepted as a serious argument. The
+Dissenters were alarmed, and the most bigoted of High Churchmen
+delighted. Then, Defoe's aim being discovered, both parties joined in
+the cry for vengeance. He was condemned to stand for three days in the
+pillory, and was afterwards imprisoned in Newgate. To the 'hieroglyphic
+state machine, contrived to punish Fancy in,' the undaunted man
+addressed a hymn which was hawked about the streets, and the mob instead
+of pelting him with offensive missiles, covered him with flowers.
+'Earless on high stood unabashed Defoe,' says Pope. He was unabashed,
+but he was not earless.
+
+In Newgate he remained until 1704, when he was released by Harley. In
+prison he wrote a minutely circumstantial account of the great storm
+commemorated in Addison's _Campaign_. How much of Defoe's narrative is
+truth and how much invention it is impossible to say. The fact that he
+solemnly vouches for the accuracy of his statements inclines one to
+believe that they are not to be trusted, for this was always Defoe's
+_role_ as a writer of fiction. His first and most deliberate effort is
+to impose upon his readers, and in this art he is without a rival.
+
+While in Newgate he began his _Review_, a political journal of great
+ability. The first number was published in February, 1704, and it
+existed, though not in its original form, for more than nine years.
+
+'When it is remembered that no other pen was ever employed than that of
+Defoe, upon a work appearing at such frequent intervals, extending over
+more than nine years, and embracing, in more than five thousand printed
+pages, essays on almost every branch of human knowledge, the achievement
+must be pronounced a great one, even if he had written nothing else. If
+we add that between the dates of the first and last numbers of the
+_Review_ he wrote and published no less than eighty other distinct
+works, containing 4,727 pages, and perhaps more not now known, the
+fertility of his genius must appear as astonishing as the greatness of
+his capacity for labour.'[50]
+
+Defoe was permitted to leave his prison upon condition that he should
+act in the secret service of the Government, and his work was that of an
+hireling writer unburdened by principle. When Harley was ejected he made
+himself useful to Godolphin; when Godolphin was dismissed he went back
+to Harley, and 'the spirit of the _Review_ changed abruptly.' A more
+useful man for the work he had undertaken could not be found. His
+dexterity, his boldness, his knowledge of men and of affairs, his
+readiness as a writer, and it must be added his unscrupulousness, fitted
+him admirably for services which had to be done in secret.
+
+Much that he did openly was deserving of high praise. He was tolerant in
+an intolerant age, he did his best to forward the Union of England and
+Scotland, his patriotic spirit was not feigned, his words are often
+weighty with wisdom, and it has been truly said, that 'his powerful
+advocacy was enlisted in favour of almost every practicable scheme of
+social improvement that came to the front in his time.'[51]
+
+With equal truth the writer adds that Defoe was 'a wonderful mixture of
+knave and patriot.' The knavery is seen to some extent in his method of
+workmanship as a man of letters. In _A True Relation of the Apparition
+of one Mrs. Veal[52] the next day after her Death to one Mrs. Bargrave
+at Canterbury, 8th September, 1705_ (1706) Defoe's art of mystification
+is skilfully practised.
+
+'This relation,' he says in the Preface, 'is matter of fact, and
+attended with such circumstances as may induce any reasonable man to
+believe it. It was sent by a gentleman, a Justice of Peace at Maidstone,
+in Kent, and a very intelligent person, to his friend in London as it is
+here worded; which discourse is here attested by a very sober and
+understanding gentleman, who had it from his kinswoman who lives in
+Canterbury, within a few doors of the house in which the within-named
+Mrs. Bargrave lives ... and who positively assured him that the whole
+matter as it is related and laid down is really true, and what she
+herself had in the same words, as near as may be, from Mrs. Bargrave's
+own mouth.'
+
+In addition to this circumstantial statement, the veritable appearance
+of the ghostly lady is confirmed by the fact that she wore a scoured
+silk gown, newly made up, which, as Mrs. Bargrave told a friend, she
+felt and commended. 'Then Mrs. Watson cried out, "you have seen her
+indeed, for none knew but Mrs. Veal and myself that the gown was
+scoured."' The ghost came chiefly for the purpose of recommending
+Drelincourt's volume, _A Christian's Defence Against the Fear of Death_,
+then in its third edition. The fourth edition contained Mrs. Bargrave's
+story. 'I am unable to say,' Mr. Lee writes, 'when Defoe's "Apparition"
+became a necessary appendage to the book; but think, that since the
+eleventh edition, to the present time, Drelincourt has never been
+published without it.'
+
+When in 1719, at the age of fifty-nine, he produced his first and
+greatest work of fiction, _Robinson Crusoe_, he aimed by the constant
+reiteration of commonplace details to give a matter-of-fact aspect to
+the narrative, and in most of his later novels, with the exception of
+_Colonel Jack_ (1722), which he allows to be in part a 'moral romance,'
+Defoe boldly maintains that his relations are in every respect true to
+biography and to history. To make this more probable he overloads his
+pages with a number of business-like statements, and with affairs so
+insignificant and sordid that only his genius can save the narrative
+from being wearisome. To inculcate morality he carries his readers into
+the worst dens of vice--his heroes being pickpockets, pirates, and
+convicts, and his heroines depraved women of the lowest order. The
+interest felt in _Captain Singleton_ (1720), in _Moll Flanders_ (1722),
+in _Colonel Jack_ (1722), and in _Roxana_ (1724), is to be found in the
+minute record of their shameless adventures, their miseries and vices.
+When the characters reform, Defoe's occupation is gone. The atmosphere
+the reader is forced to breathe in these tales is indeed so oppressive
+that he will be glad to escape from it into the pure and exhilarating
+air of a Shakespeare or a Scott.
+
+A critic has asserted that as models of fictitious narrative these tales
+are supreme, but it is impossible to agree with this judgment. The
+highest imaginative art is not deceptive art. The fact that Lord Chatham
+thought the _Memoirs of a Cavalier_[53] (1720) a true history, is not to
+the credit of the work as fiction. As well, it has been said, might you
+claim the highest genius for the painter, whose fruit and flowers were
+so deceptively painted as to tempt birds to peck at the canvas.
+
+Whatever interest the reader feels in Defoe's 'secondary novels,' of
+which _Roxana_ is the most powerful, is due to scenes which disgust as
+much as they impress. The vividness with which they are depicted is
+undeniable, but one does not desire to inspect filth with a microscope.
+Happily _Robinson Crusoe_, on which the author's fame rests, is a
+thoroughly healthy book that still holds its place as the best, or one
+of the best, volumes ever written for boys. There is genius as well as
+extraordinary skill in the way this admirable story is told, but it is
+not among the fictions which are read with as much pleasure in old age
+as in youth. Defoe's amazing gift of invention does not compensate for
+the want of a creative and elevating imagination.
+
+_The History of the Plague in London_ (1722) stands next to _Robinson
+Crusoe_ in literary merit. Had Defoe been a witness, as he pretends to
+have been, of the scenes which he describes, the record could not be
+more vivid. It professes to have been 'written by a citizen who
+continued all the while in London,' and 'lived without Aldgate Church
+and Whitechapel Bars, on the left hand or north side of the street.' In
+this case, as in others, the circumstantial character of the narrative
+led readers to regard it as a true history, and Dr. Mead, in his
+_Discourse on the Plague_ (1744), quotes the book as an authority.
+
+Highly characteristic of Defoe's style, and of his art as a moralist is
+the _Religious Courtship_, also published in 1722. It is the fictitious
+history of a family told partly in dialogue, and so written as to
+attract the reader in spite of repetitions and of reflections as
+praiseworthy as they are commonplace. It appeals to a class whose
+attention would not be won by fine literature, and has not appealed in
+vain, for the book, after passing through a large number of editions,
+has not yet lost its popularity. Morally the work is unobjectionable,
+though not a little narrow, and it is strange that it should have
+appeared about the same time as a story so offensively coarse as _Moll
+Flanders_.
+
+The most veracious book written by Defoe is _A Tour through the Whole
+Island of Great Britain, By a Gentleman_, 1724, in three volumes. The
+full title of the work is too long to quote, but it may be observed that
+the promises it holds out under five headings are satisfactorily
+fulfilled. The _Tour_ bears the marks of having been written with great
+care and from personal observation throughout. Defoe states that before
+publishing the book he had made seventeen large circuits or separate
+journeys, and three general tours through the whole island. It contains
+curious information as to the state of England and Scotland one hundred
+and seventy years ago, and readers interested in our social progress and
+the industrial life of the country will find much to interest them in
+the traveller's shrewd observations and careful details. The love of
+mountain and lake scenery felt by Gray more than forty years later was a
+passion unknown to Defoe and to most of his contemporaries. In the
+_Tour_ Westmoreland is described as the wildest, most barbarous and
+frightful country of any which the author had passed over. He observes
+that it is 'of no advantage to represent horror,' and the impassable
+hills with their snow-covered tops 'seemed,' he says, 'to tell us all
+the pleasant part of England was at an end.' The _Tour_ exhibits Defoe's
+literary gift of expressing what he has to say in the clearest language.
+A homely style which fulfils its purpose has a merit deserving of
+recognition. For steady work upon the road the sober hackney is of more
+service than the race-horse.
+
+Defoe was a husband and father and a man of affairs, yet, like his own
+Crusoe, he lived a lonely life, and in 1731, owing to some strange
+circumstance of which there is no record, died a lonely death at a
+lodging-house at Moorfields. He has been called the father of the
+English novel, and deserves the title, although on a slighter scale
+Steele and Addison preceded him as writers of fiction. As a novelist he
+is without refinement, without ideality, without passion; he looks at
+life from a low level, but in the narrow territory of which he is
+master--the art of realistic invention--his power of insight is
+incontestible. Defoe adopted a method dear in our day to some of the
+least worthy of French novelists, who while aiming to copy Nature debase
+her. For Nature must be interpreted by Art, since only thus can we
+obtain a likeness that shall be both beautiful and true. Defoe,
+nevertheless, has contributed one book of lasting value to the
+literature of his country, and such a gift, in the eyes of the literary
+chronicler, hides a multitude of faults.
+
+[Sidenote: John Dennis (1657-1733-4).]
+
+John Dennis was born in London and educated at Harrow and Caius College,
+Cambridge. His relations with Pope give him a more prominent position
+among men of letters than he would otherwise deserve, and mark with
+unpleasing distinctness the coarse methods of literary warfare adopted
+in Pope's day. The poet began the attack in his _Essay on Criticism_.
+Dennis had written a tragedy called _Appius and Virginia_, and Pope, who
+had a grudge against him for not admiring his _Pastorals_, showed his
+spite in the following lines:
+
+    'But Appius reddens at each word you speak,
+    And stares tremendous, with a threatening eye,
+    Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.'
+
+It was perilous in Pope to allude to the personal defects of an
+antagonist, and Dennis attacked him coarsely in return as a 'young,
+squab, short gentleman, an eternal writer of amorous pastoral madrigals,
+and the very bow of the god of Love.' 'He has reason,' he adds, 'to
+thank the good gods that he was born a modern; for had he been born of
+Grecian parents, and his father by consequence had by law the absolute
+disposal of him, his life had been no longer than one of his poems--the
+life of half a day.'
+
+Dennis's pamphlet on the _Essay_ caused Pope some pain when he heard of
+it, 'But it was quite over,' he told Spence, 'as soon as I came to look
+into his book and found he was in such a passion.'
+
+The critic, however, was a thorn in Pope's flesh for many a year, and
+the poet showed his irritation by assaulting him in prose and verse.
+Dennis was equally ready, although not equally capable of returning the
+poet's blows, and when free from the impotence of anger, made several
+shrewd critical thrusts which his antagonist felt keenly.
+
+Dennis aspired to be a poet and dramatist. He wrote a bombastic poem in
+blank verse called _The Monument_, sacred to the immortal memory of 'the
+good, the great, the god-like, William III.'; a poem, also in blank
+verse, and still more 'tremendous,' to quote his favourite word, on the
+_Battle of Blenheim_, in which he frequently invokes his soul to say and
+sing a thousand things far beyond his soul's reach--and a poem equally
+laboured and grandiloquent, on the Battle of Ramillies, in which there
+are passages that read like a burlesque of Milton. Dennis observes in
+his _Grounds of Criticism in Poetry_ (1704) that 'poetry unless it
+pleases, nay, and pleases to a height, is the most contemptible thing in
+the world.' This is just criticism, but the writer did not recognize
+that his own verse was contemptible. In this essay, which contains many
+sound critical remarks and an appreciation of Milton seldom felt at that
+time, he has the bad taste to quote as an illustration of the sublime, a
+passage from his own paraphrase of the Te Deum:
+
+    'Where'er at utmost stretch we cast our eyes
+    Through the vast frightful spaces of the skies,
+    Ev'n there we find Thy glory, there we gaze
+    On Thy bright Majesty's unbounded blaze;
+    Ten thousand suns prodigious globes of light
+    At once in broad dimensions strike our sight;
+    Millions behind, in the remoter skies,
+    Appear but spangles to our wearied eyes;
+    And when our wearied eyes want farther strength
+    To pierce the void's immeasurable length
+    Our vigorous towering thoughts still further fly,
+    And still remoter flaming worlds descry;
+    But even an Angel's comprehensive thought
+    Cannot extend so far as Thou hast wrought;
+    Our vast conceptions are by swelling, brought,
+    Swallowed and lost in Infinite, to nought.'
+
+It is significant of Dennis's judgment of his own verse that these
+inflated lines follow one of the loveliest passages contained in
+_Paradise Lost_. Milton describes the moon unveiling her peerless light;
+and the poet-critic exhibits in juxtaposition his 'vigorous towering
+thoughts' about the stars. The comparison forced upon the reader is
+unfortunate.
+
+His tragedies, _Iphigenia_ (1704), _Liberty Asserted_ (1704), _Appius
+and Virginia_ (1709), and a comedy called _A Plot and No Plot_ (1697)
+were brought upon the stage. _Liberty Asserted_, which was received with
+applause due to the violence of its attacks upon the French, although
+called a tragedy, does not end tragically. The heroine's patriotism is
+so fervid that she professes herself willing, while loving one man, to
+marry another whom she does not love, if her country deems him the more
+worthy.
+
+Among other poetical attempts, Dennis addressed a Pindaric Ode to
+Dryden, and the great poet, with the flattery which he was always ready
+to lavish on his well-wishers, called him 'one of the greatest masters'
+in that kind of verse. 'You have the sublimity of sense as well as
+sound,' he wrote, 'and know how far the boldness of a poet may lawfully
+extend.'
+
+It may be added that Dennis on one occasion successfully opposed one of
+the ablest controversialists of the age. In _The Absolute Unlawfulness
+of Stage Entertainments fully demonstrated_, William Law attacked
+dramatic representations, not on account of the evils at that time
+associated with them, but as 'in their own nature grossly sinful.' 'To
+suppose an innocent play,' Law says, 'is like supposing innocent lust,
+sober rant, or harmless profaneness,' and throughout the pamphlet this
+strain of fierce hostility is maintained.
+
+'Law,' says his biographer,'measured his strength with some of the very
+ablest men of his day, with men like Hoadly and Warburton, and Tindal
+and Wesley; and it may safely be said that he never came forth from the
+contest defeated. But, absurd as it may sound, it is perfectly true that
+what neither Hoadly nor Warburton, nor Tindal, nor Wesley could do, was
+done by John Dennis.... "Plays," wrote Law, "are contrary to Scripture
+as the devil is to God, as the worship of images is to the second
+commandment." To this Dennis gave the obvious and unanswerable retort
+that "when St. Paul was at Athens, the very source of dramatic poetry,
+he said a great deal publicly against the idolatry of the Athenians, but
+not one word against their stage. At Corinth he said as little against
+theirs. He quoted on one occasion an Athenian dramatic poet, and on
+others Aratus and Epimenides. He was educated in all the learning of the
+Grecians, and could not but have read their dramatic poems; and yet, so
+far from speaking a word against them, he makes use of them for the
+instruction and conversion of mankind."'
+
+Dennis's pamphlet, _The Stage defended from Scripture, Reason,
+Experience, and the Common Sense of Mankind for Two Thousand Years_, was
+published in 1726. In his latter days he suffered from two grievous
+calamities, poverty and blindness. In 1733 Vanbrugh's play, _The
+Provoked Husband_, was acted for his benefit, and his old enemy Pope
+wrote the prologue, of which the sarcasm is more conspicuous than the
+kindness. There is a story, to which allusion is made in the _Dunciad_,
+that Dennis had invented some kind of theatrical thunder, and how, being
+once present at a tragedy, he fell into a great passion because his art
+had been appropriated, and cried out ''Sdeath! that is _my_ thunder.'
+The critic was also known to have an intense hatred of the French and of
+the Pope, and these peculiarities are not forgotten in the prologue.
+
+After saying that Dennis lay pressed by want and weakness, his doubtful
+friend adds:
+
+    'How changed from him who made the boxes groan,
+    And shook the stage with thunders all his own!
+    Stood up to dash each vain Pretender's hope,
+    Maul the French tyrant, or pull down the Pope!
+    If there's a Briton then, true bred and born,
+    Who holds Dragoons and wooden shoes in scorn;
+    If there's a critic of distinguished rage;
+    If there's a senior who contemns this age;
+    Let him to-night his just assistance lend,
+    And be the Critic's, Briton's, Old Man's friend.'
+
+Dennis got L100 by this benefit, but had little time in which to spend
+it, for he died about a fortnight afterwards at the age of
+seventy-seven. Upon his death Aaron Hill wrote some memorial verses, in
+which he prophesies that, while the critic's frailties will be no longer
+remembered,
+
+    'The rising ages shall redeem his name,
+    And nations read him into lasting fame.'
+
+It will be seen that the poets did not all treat Dennis unkindly. If
+praise were substantial food, he would have had enough to sustain him
+from 'glorious John' alone.
+
+[Sidenote: Colley Cibber (1671-1757).]
+
+Colley Cibber holds a more prominent place than Dennis in the list of
+men whom Pope selected for attack. He could not have chosen one more
+impervious to assault. The poet's anger excited Cibber's mirth, his
+satire contributed to his content. The comedian's unbounded
+self-satisfaction and good humour, his vivacity and spirits, were proof
+against Pope's malice. Graceless he may have been, but a dullard the
+mercurial 'King Colley' was not.
+
+Born in 1671, he disappointed the hopes of his father, the famous
+sculptor, and at the age of eighteen made his first appearance on the
+stage. As actor and as dramatist, the theatre throughout his life was
+Cibber's all-absorbing interest. His first play, _Love's Last Shift_
+(1696), kept possession of the stage for forty years, and his best play,
+_The Careless Husband_ (1704), received a like welcome. As an actor he
+was also successful, and played for L50 a night, the highest sum ever
+given at that time to any English player. His career was as long as it
+was prosperous. 'Old Cibber plays to-night,' Horace Walpole wrote in
+1741, 'and all the world will be there.'
+
+It was only as Poet Laureate, for he could not write poetry, that Cibber
+displayed his inferiority. The honour was conferred in 1730, two years
+after Gay had produced the _Beggar's Opera_, when Pope was in the height
+of his fame, when Thomson had published his _Seasons_ and Young _The
+Universal Passion_. Pope, as a Roman Catholic, was out of the running,
+but there were poets living who would have saved the office from the
+disgrace brought upon it by Cibber. 'As to Cibber,' Swift wrote to Pope,
+'if I had any inclination to excuse the Court, I would allege that the
+Laureate's place is entirely in the Lord Chamberlain's gift; but who
+makes Lord Chamberlains is another question.' The sole result of the
+appointment that deserves to be recorded is an epigram by Johnson, as
+just as it is severe:
+
+    'Augustus still survives in Maro's strain,
+    And Spenser's verse prolongs Eliza's reign;
+    Great George's acts let tuneful Cibber sing,
+    For Nature formed the Poet for the King!'
+
+Of poetry there is no trace in the five volumes of his dramatic works;
+there are few touches of nature, and little genuine wit, but these
+defects are to some extent supplied by sparkling dialogue and lively
+badinage. Cibber is often sentimental, and when he is sentimental he is
+odious. His attempts to express strong emotion and honourable feeling
+excite laughter instead of sympathy, and on this account it is difficult
+to accept without some deduction Mr. Ward's favourable judgment of _The
+Careless Husband_,[54] which, if it be one of the cleverest of Cibber's
+dramas, is also one of the most conspicuous for this defect. Here, as
+elsewhere, Cibber should have left sentiment alone. Imagine a lover
+exclaiming to a relenting mistress, 'Oh, let my soul thus bending to
+your power, adore this soft descending goodness!' or a man conversing in
+the following strain with a wife who has discovered and forgiven his
+infidelities:
+
+    '_Sir Charles._ Come, I will not shock your softness by any
+    untimely blush for what is past, but rather soothe you to a
+    pleasure at my sense of joy for my recovered happiness to come.
+    Give then to my new-born love what name you please, it cannot,
+    shall not be too kind. Oh! it cannot be too soft for what my
+    soul swells up with emulation to deserve. Receive me then entire
+    at last, and take what yet no woman ever truly had, my conquered
+    heart.
+
+    '_Lady Easy._ Oh, the soft treasure! Oh, the dear reward of
+    long-desiring love--thus, thus to have you mine is something
+    more than happiness, 'tis double life and madness of abounding
+    joy....
+
+    '_Sir Charles._ Oh, thou engaging virtue! But I'm too slow in
+    doing justice to thy love. I know thy softness will refuse me;
+    but remember, I insist upon it--let thy woman be discharged this
+    minute.'
+
+It has been said that Cibber wrote genteel comedy because he lived in
+the best society. If this assertion be true, the reader of his plays
+will decide that the best society of those days was unrefined and
+immoral, and that genteel comedy can be extremely vulgar. Cibber's
+dramas are coarse in incident, and often offensive in suggestion. The
+language is frequently gross, and even when he writes, or professes to
+write, with a moral purpose, his method may justly offend a rigid
+moralist. Moreover his comedy, like that of the dramatists of the
+Restoration, is of a wholly artificial type. Human nature has
+comparatively little place in it, and the fine ladies and gentlemen, the
+fops and fools who play their parts in his scenes, belong to a world
+which has no existence off the boards of the theatre.
+
+His one work which is still read by all students of the drama, and by
+many who are not students, is the _Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley
+Cibber_ (1740), which Dr. Johnson, who sneered at actors, allowed to be
+very entertaining. It is that, and something more, for it contains much
+just and generous criticism. Cibber was the author or adapter of about
+thirty plays, and in the latter vocation did not spare Shakespeare.
+
+[Sidenote: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762).]
+
+Letter writing, a delightful branch of literature, attained its highest
+excellence in the eighteenth century. It is an art which gains most, if
+the paradox may be allowed, by being artless. The carefully studied
+epistle, written with a view to publication, may have its value, but it
+cannot have the charm of a letter written in the familiar intercourse of
+friendship. It is the correspondence prompted by the heart which reaches
+the heart of the reader. The humour, the gaiety, the tenderness, and the
+chatty details that make a letter attractive, should be prompted by the
+feelings and events of the hour. Carefully constructed sentences and
+rhetorical flourishes ring hollow; to write for effect is to write
+badly, and to make a display of knowledge is to reveal an ignorance of
+the art.
+
+For letter writing, although the most natural of literary gifts, is not
+wholly due to nature. It is the outcome of many qualities which need
+cultivation; the soil that produces such fruit must have been carefully
+tilled. In our day epistolary correspondence has been in great measure
+destroyed by the penny post and by rapidity of communication. In the
+last century postage was costly: and although the burden was frequently
+and unjustly lightened by franks, the transmission of letters was slow
+and uncertain. Letters, therefore, were seldom written unless the writer
+had something definite to say, and had leisure in which to say it. Much
+time was spent in the occupation, letters were carefully preserved as
+family heirlooms, and thus it has come to pass that much of our
+knowledge of the age, and very much of the pleasure to be gained from a
+study of the period, is due to its letter writers. The list of them is a
+striking one, for it includes the names of Swift and Steele, of Pope and
+Gay, of Bolingbroke and Chesterfield, of Mrs. Delany and Mrs. Thrale,
+and of the three gifted rivals in the art, Gray, Horace Walpole, and
+Cowper.
+
+In the band of authors famous for their correspondence, Lady Mary
+Wortley Montagu holds a conspicuous place. Reference has been already
+made to the Pope correspondence, large in bulk and large too in
+interest. To this Lady Mary contributed slightly, and the greater
+portion of her letters were addressed to her husband, to her sister,
+Lady Mar, and to her daughter, the Countess of Bute. She was shrewd
+enough to know their value: 'Keep my letters,' she wrote, 'they will be
+as good as Madame de Sevigne's forty years hence;' and they are,
+perhaps, as good as letters can be which are written with a sense of
+their value, which Madame de Sevigne's were not. Lady Mary, who may be
+said to have belonged to the wits from her infancy, for in her eighth
+year she was made the toast of the Kit Kat Club, was not only a beauty,
+but a woman of some learning and of the keenest intelligence. At twenty
+she translated the _Encheiridion_ of Epictetus. She was a great reader
+and a good critic, unless, which often happened, political prejudices
+warped her judgment. She had considerable facility in rhyming, and both
+with tongue and pen cultivated many enmities, the deadliest of her foes
+being the poet who was at one time her most ardent admirer. The story of
+Lady Mary's career, with its vicissitudes and singularities, may be read
+in Lord Wharncliffe's edition of her _Life and Letters_. She is a
+prominent figure in the literature of the period, and made several
+passing contributions to it, but apart from a few facile and far from
+decent verses her letters are the sole legacy she has left behind her
+for the literary student. Some of them, and especially those addressed
+to her sister the Countess of Mar, are often coarse; those to her
+daughter the Countess of Bute exhibit good sense, and all abound in
+lively sallies, interesting anecdotes, and the personal allusions which
+give a charm to correspondence. The section containing the letters
+written during her husband's embassy to Constantinople (1716-1718) is
+perhaps the best known.
+
+Among the strangest of Lady Mary's letters are those addressed to her
+future husband, whom she requests to settle an annuity upon her in
+order to propitiate her friends. In one of them she describes her
+father's purpose to marry her as he thought fit without regarding her
+inclinations, and observes that having declined to marry 'where it is
+impossible to love,' she is bidden to consult her relatives: 'I told my
+intention to all my nearest relations. I was surprised at their blaming
+it to the greatest degree. I was told they were sorry I would ruin
+myself; but if I was so unreasonable they could not blame my F. [father]
+whatever he inflicted on me. I objected I did not love him. They made
+answer they found no necessity of loving; if I lived well with him that
+was all was required of me; and that if I considered this town I should
+find very few women in love with their husbands and yet a many happy. It
+was in vain to dispute with such prudent people.'
+
+This incident is characteristic of the period, but Lady Mary's letters
+to Wortley Montagu are more characteristic of the woman who had her own
+views of female propriety, and of the right method of love-making. To
+escape from the man she hated, she eloped with Wortley, and if, in
+story-book phrase, the curiously-matched couple 'lived happily ever
+afterwards,' it was probably because for more than twenty years they
+lived apart.
+
+Of the following letter, written in her old age, it has been aptly said
+that 'the graceful cynicism of Horace and Pope has perhaps never been
+more successfully reproduced in prose.'[55]
+
+    'Daughter, daughter! Don't call names; You are always abusing my
+    pleasures, which is what no mortal will bear. Trash, lumber and
+    stuff are the titles you give to my favourite amusement. If I
+    called a white staff a stick of wood, a gold key gilded brass,
+    and the ensigns of illustrious orders coloured strings, this
+    may be philosophically true, but would be very ill received. We
+    have all our playthings; happy are they that can be contented
+    with those they can obtain; those hours are spent in the wisest
+    manner that can easiest shade the ills of life, and are the
+    least productive of ill-consequences.... The active scenes are
+    over at my age. I indulge with all the art I can my taste for
+    reading. If I would confine it to valuable books, they are
+    almost as rare as valuable men. I must be content with what I
+    can find. As I approach a second childhood, I endeavour to enter
+    into the pleasures of it. Your youngest son is perhaps at this
+    very moment riding on a poker with great delight, not at all
+    regretting that it is not a gold one, and much less wishing it
+    an Arabian horse which he would not know how to manage. I am
+    reading an idle tale, not expecting wit or truth in it, and am
+    very glad it is not metaphysics to puzzle my judgment, or
+    history to mislead my opinion. He fortifies his health by
+    exercise; I calm my cares by oblivion. The methods may appear
+    low to busy people; but if he improves his strength, and I
+    forget my infirmities, we both attain very desirable ends.'
+
+Lady Mary, it may be added, deserves to be remembered for her courage in
+trying inoculation on her own children, and then introducing it into
+this country. This was in 1721, seventy-eight years before Jenner
+discovered a more excellent way of grappling with the small pox.
+
+[Sidenote: Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773).]
+
+Lord Chesterfield's position in the literature of the period is also
+among the letter writers. He was emphatically a man of affairs, and as
+Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1745, gained a high reputation. He entered
+upon his labours with the resolution to be independent of party, and
+during his brief administration did all that man could do for the
+benefit of the country. In his public career, Chesterfield has the
+reputation of an orator who spoke 'most exquisitely well;' he was an
+able diplomatist, and probably no man of the time took a wider interest
+in public affairs. In a corrupt age, too, he appears to have been
+politically incorruptible: 'I call corruption,' he writes, 'the taking
+of a sixpence more than the just and known salary of your employment
+under any pretence whatsoever.' The reform of the Calendar, in which he
+was assisted by two great mathematicians, Bradley and the Earl of
+Macclesfield, is also one of his honourable claims to remembrance.
+
+On the other hand, Chesterfield, whom George II. called 'a tea-table
+scoundrel,' was an inveterate gambler, he mistook vice for virtue,
+practised dissimulation as an art, and studied men's weaknesses in order
+that he might flatter them. One of the chief ends of man, in the Earl's
+opinion, was to shine in society; we need not therefore wonder that
+Johnson, with his sturdy honesty, revolted from Chesterfield's
+insincerity, and we have to thank the Earl's character for, perhaps, the
+noblest piece of invective in the language. If, however, he neglected
+Johnson at the time when his help would have been of service, he
+appreciated the society of men of letters, and took his part among the
+wits of the age. 'I used,' he tells his son, 'to think myself in company
+as much above me when I was with Mr. Addison and Mr. Pope as if I had
+been with all the princes in Europe.'
+
+As an essayist, although Chesterfield cannot compete with Addison or
+Steele, he is far from contemptible, and his twenty-three papers in the
+_World_ (1753-1756) may still be read with pleasure. His literary
+reputation is based upon the _Letters_ (1774)[56] to his illegitimate
+son written for the purpose of making him a fine gentleman, but the
+young man had no aptitude for the part. His father offered him 'a
+present of the Graces,' and he despised the gift. The _Letters_, which
+Johnson denounced in language better fitted for his day than for ours,
+abound in worldly sagacity and wise counsels; the best that can be said
+of them from a moral point of view is that they show the extremely low
+standpoint of the writer. He is honestly desirous of benefiting his son
+and advancing his interest in life, and so far as morality will do this
+it is earnestly inculcated. 'A real man of fashion,' he says, 'observes
+decency; at least neither borrows nor affects vices; and, if he
+unfortunately has any, he gratifies them with choice, delicacy and
+secrecy.' He observes that an intrigue with a woman of fashion is an
+amusement which a man of sense and decency may pursue with a proper
+regard for his character; gallantry without debauchery being 'the
+elegant pleasure of a rational being.'
+
+Chesterfield's son, who was educated for a diplomatist, is told that the
+art of pleasing is more necessary in his profession than perhaps in any
+other. 'Make your court particularly, and show distinguished attentions
+to such men and women as are best at Court, highest in the fashion and
+in the opinion of the public; speak advantageously of them behind their
+backs, in companies who you have reason to believe will tell them
+again.'
+
+The necessity for dissimulation, constantly enjoined by his father was
+not forgotten by Philip Stanhope. So effectually did he conceal his
+marriage that the Earl was not aware of it until after his son's death.
+
+[Sidenote: George Lyttelton (1708-1773).]
+
+George Lyttelton, afterwards Lord Lyttelton, has a place among the poets
+in the collections of Anderson and Chalmers. Some of his best verses
+were written when a school-boy at Eton, and are worthy of a clever
+school-boy. The _Monody_ on his wife's death has the merit of sincere
+feeling, expressed in one or two passages poetically. In 1747 he
+published his _Dissertation on the Conversion of St. Paul_, 'a
+treatise,' says Dr. Johnson, 'to which infidelity has never been able to
+fabricate a specious answer.' He made himself conspicuous in parliament
+as an opponent of Walpole, and after the fall of that minister was
+appointed one of the Lords of the Treasury. In 1760 Lyttelton published
+his _Dialogues of the Dead_, a volume for which he owes much to Fenelon.
+This was followed a few years later by a History of Henry II. in three
+volumes, upon which great labour was expended. He is said to have had
+the whole history printed twice over, and many sheets four or five
+times, an amusement which cost him L1,000. The work is praised by Mr. J.
+R. Green as 'a full and sober account of the time.'
+
+Lyttelton died at Hagley Park in his sixty-fourth year. Close to Hagley,
+Shenstone had his little estate of the Leasowes, and the poet is said to
+have cherished the absurd fancy that Lord Lyttelton was envious of its
+beauty. He is now chiefly remembered as the patron of Thomson, whom he
+called 'one of the best and most beloved' of his friends.
+
+[Sidenote: Joseph Spence (1698-1768).]
+
+Joseph Spence, a warm friend and admirer of Pope in the poet's later
+life, had the happy peculiarity of keeping free from the party
+animosities of the time. His course throughout was that of a gentleman,
+and to him we owe the little volume of _Anecdotes_ which every student
+of Pope has learnt to value. Spence had much of Boswell's curiosity and
+hero-worship, but there is neither insight into character in his pages,
+nor any trace of the dramatic skill which makes Boswell's narrative so
+delightful. At the same time there is every indication that he strove
+to give the sayings of the poet, as far as possible, in his own words.
+Johnson and Warton saw the _Anecdotes_ in manuscript, but strange to
+say, the collection was not published until 1820, when two separate
+editions appeared simultaneously. The publication by Spence in 1727 of
+_An Essay on Pope's Translation of Homer's Odyssey_ led to an
+acquaintance which soon became intimate between the poet and his critic.
+Apart from literature, they had more than one point of interest in
+common. Like Pope, Spence was devoted to his mother, and like Pope he
+had a passion for landscape gardening. His mild virtues and engaging
+disposition are said to be portrayed in the _Tales of the Genii_, under
+the character of Fincal the Dervise of the Groves. In 1747 he published
+his _Polymetis, an Enquiry into the agreement between the Works of the
+Roman Poets and the Remains of Ancient Artists_. Under the _nom de
+plume_ of Sir Harry Beaumont, Spence produced a volume of _Moralities or
+Essays, Letters, Fables and Translations_ (1753), and in the following
+year an account of the blind poet Blacklock. For a learned tailor,
+Thomas Hill by name, he also performed a similarly kind office,
+comparing him in _A Parallel in the Manner of Plutarch_ with the famous
+linguist Magliabecchi. Spence was made Professor of Poetry at Oxford in
+1728, and held the post for ten years. His end was a sad one. He was
+accidentally drowned in a canal in the garden which he had loved so
+well.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[49] _Daniel Defoe: his Life and recently discovered Writings, extending
+from 1716 to 1729._ By William Lee. 3 vols.
+
+[50] Lee's _Defoe_, vol. i., p. 85. Of Defoe's fertility and capacity
+for work there cannot be a question; but the biographer's stupendous
+catalogue of his publications--254 in number--contains many which are
+ascribed to him solely on what Mr. Lee regards as internal evidence.
+
+[51] _English Men of Letters--Daniel Defoe._ By William Minto. P. 170.
+
+[52] See note on page 248.
+
+[53] There can be no doubt, I think, despite Mr. Lee's arguments, that
+the work is as much a fiction as any other historical novel. That it may
+be based upon some authentic document is highly probable, although it is
+not necessary to agree with his biographer, that 'to claim for Defoe the
+authorship of the _Cavalier_, as a work of pure fiction, would be
+equivalent to a claim of almost superhuman genius.'
+
+[54] Ward's _History of English Dramatic Literature_, vol. ii., p. 597.
+
+[55] _Four Centuries of English Letters_, edited and arranged by W.
+Baptiste Scoones, p. 214.
+
+[56] These _Letters_ were not published until after the earl's death,
+but many of them belong, chronologically, to our period. The first
+letter of the series was written in 1738.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+FRANCIS ATTERBURY--LORD SHAFTESBURY--BERNARD DE MANDEVILLE--LORD
+    BOLINGBROKE--BISHOP BERKELEY--WILLIAM LAW--BISHOP
+    BUTLER--BISHOP WARBURTON.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Francis Atterbury (1662-1732).]
+
+During the first half of the eighteenth century the position held by
+Bishop Atterbury was one of high eminence. Addison ranked him with the
+most illustrious geniuses of his age; Pope said he was one of the
+greatest men in polite learning the nation ever possessed; Doddridge
+called him the glory of English orators; and Johnson said that for style
+his sermons are among the best.
+
+Unfortunately Atterbury's literary gifts, like his oratory, lack the
+merit of permanence, and his sermons, more conspicuous for eloquence
+than for weightiness of matter, although extremely popular at the time,
+have long ceased to be read. His prominence among the Queen Anne
+wits,--and he was admired by them all,--is a sufficient reason for
+saying a few words about him in these pages.
+
+He was born in 1662, and, like Prior, educated at Westminster under the
+famous Dr. Busby. Thence he went to Christ Church, Oxford, where he
+gained a good reputation. He undertook the tutorship of the Hon. C.
+Boyle, a young man of more spirit than judgment, who had the audacity to
+enter the lists with Bentley in a matter of scholarship. For this rash
+deed Atterbury must be held responsible. Sir William Temple had
+published a foolish but eloquently written essay in defence of the
+ancient writers in comparison with the modern. In this essay he praises
+warmly the _Letters of Phalaris_. Of these letters Boyle, with the help
+of Atterbury and other members of Christ Church, published a new edition
+to satisfy the demand caused by Temple's essay. Bentley, roused to reply
+by a remark of Boyle in his preface, proved that the _Letters_ were not
+only spurious but contemptible. Under his pupil's name Atterbury replied
+to Bentley's _Dissertations_, and to the discussion, as the reader will
+remember, Swift added wit if not argument.
+
+For the moment Boyle's, or rather Atterbury's success, was great, for
+wit and rhetoric are powerful persuasives. The authors, too, had the
+Christ Church men to back them, the arch-critic having treated them with
+contempt. Atterbury's share in the work, as he tells Boyle, "consisted
+in writing more than half the book, in reviewing a great part of the
+rest, and in transcribing the whole." His _Examination of Dr. Bentley's
+Dissertations_ (1698) is a brilliant piece of work, and 'deserves the
+praise,' says Macaulay, 'whatever that praise may be worth, of being the
+best book ever written by any man on the wrong side of a question of
+which he was profoundly ignorant.' Having taken holy orders, Atterbury
+became a court preacher, and ample clerical honours fell to his share.
+In 1700 he published a book entitled, _The Rights, Powers, and
+Privileges of an English Convocation Stated and Vindicated_, which was
+warmly applauded by High Churchmen. In 1701 he was appointed Archdeacon
+of Totness, and afterwards Prebend of Exeter. He became the favourite
+chaplain of Queen Anne, and when Prince George died proved the power of
+his eloquence by representing 'his unassuming virtues in such high
+relief that his widow could not help feeling her irreparable loss.'
+
+Atterbury was made successively Dean of Carlisle and of Christ Church,
+and in 1713 succeeded Sprat as Dean of Westminster and Bishop of
+Rochester. Before making Swift's acquaintance he recommended his friend
+Trelawney, Bishop of Exeter, to read the _Tale of a Tub_, a book which
+is to be valued, 'in spite of its profaneness,' as 'an original in its
+kind, full of wit, humour, good sense, and learning.' Atterbury's taste
+for literature was not always so discriminative. He advised Pope, as has
+been already stated, to 'polish' _Samson Agonistes_, declared that all
+verses should have instruction at the bottom of them, and told the poet,
+as though he had discovered a merit, that his poetry was 'all over
+morality from the beginning to the end of it.' He ventured occasionally
+into the verse-making field himself, and wrote a song to Silvia, in
+which, after admitting that he had loved before as men worship strange
+deities, he adds:
+
+    'My heart, 'tis true, has often ranged,
+      Like bees on gaudy flowers,
+    And many a thousand loves has changed,
+      Till it was fixed on yours.
+
+    'But, Silvia, when I saw those eyes,
+      'Twas soon determined there;
+    Stars might as well forsake the skies,
+      And vanish into air.
+
+    'When I from this great rule do err,
+      New beauties to adore,
+    May I again turn wanderer,
+      And never settle more.'
+
+The close friendship between Atterbury and Pope did honour to both men,
+and when Pope went to London he would 'lie at the deanery.' There,
+unknown to his friend, the bishop carried on his Jacobite intrigues,
+and there may still be seen, in a residence made famous by more than one
+great name, a secret room in which Atterbury concealed his treasonable
+correspondence. The poet did not believe that his friend was guilty, but
+it has been well known since the publication of the Stuart papers, more
+than forty years ago, that the splendid defence made by Atterbury at his
+trial in the House of Lords was based upon a falsehood. For years the
+bishop appears to have corresponded, under feigned names and by the help
+of ciphers, with 'the king over the water;' but the plot which led to
+his imprisonment and ultimate exile was not discovered until 1722, when
+he was arrested for high treason. At his trial he called God to witness
+his innocence; and when Pope took leave of him in the Tower he told the
+poet he would allow him to call his sentence a just one if he should
+ever find that he had dealings with the Pretender in his exile. Pope
+gave evidence at his trial, and, as he told Spence, lost his
+self-possession and made two or three blunders.
+
+Atterbury was exiled in June, 1723. On reaching Calais he heard that
+Bolingbroke had just arrived there on his way to England, having had a
+royal pardon. 'Then I am exchanged,' he said.
+
+The pathetic story of his banishment, and of his devoted daughter's
+illness and voyage to the south of France, where after a union of a few
+hours, she died in her father's arms, is full of the most touching
+details, and may be read in Atterbury's correspondence. 'She is gone,'
+the bishop wrote, 'and I must follow her. When I do, may my latter end
+be like hers! It was my business to have taught her to die; instead of
+it, she has taught me.' Like Fielding's account of his _Voyage to
+Lisbon_, the letters give a picture of the time, and of travelling
+discomforts and difficulties of which we, in these more fortunate days,
+know nothing. The bishop, who did not long survive his daughter, died in
+1732, but before the end came he defended himself admirably from the
+accusation of Oldmixon, a libeller who stands in the pillory of the
+_Dunciad_, that he had helped to garble Clarendon's _History_. The body
+was carried to England and privately buried by the side of his daughter
+in Westminster Abbey. The eloquence of Atterbury's sermons--there are
+four volumes of them in print--has not secured to them a lasting place
+in literature, but they are distinguished by purity of style, and have
+enough of _unction_ to make them highly effective as pulpit discourses.
+In book form, too, they were for a long time popular, and reached an
+eighth edition about thirty years after the bishop's death. The eloquent
+sermon on the death of Lady Cutts endows the lady with such an array of
+virtues, that one is inclined to wonder how so many rare qualities could
+have been exhibited in so brief a life:
+
+    'She excelled in all the characters that belonged to her, and
+    was in a great measure equal to all the obligations that she lay
+    under. She was devout without superstition; strict, without ill
+    humour; good-natured, without weakness; cheerful, without
+    levity; regular, without affectation. She was to her husband the
+    best of wives, the most agreeable of companions, and most
+    faithful of friends; to her servants the best of mistresses; to
+    her relations extremely respectful; to her inferiors very
+    obliging; and by all that knew her, either nearly or at a
+    distance, she was reckoned and confessed to be one of the best
+    of women. And yet all this goodness and all this excellence was
+    bounded within the compass of eighteen years and as many days;
+    for no longer was she allowed to live among us. She was snatched
+    out of the world as soon almost as she had made her appearance
+    in it, like a jewel of high price just shown a little, and then
+    put up again, and we were deprived of her by that time we had
+    learnt to value her. But circles may be complete though small;
+    the perfection of life doth not consist in the length of it.'
+
+As a friend of literature and of men of letters, Atterbury claims the
+student's recognition, and the five volumes of his correspondence
+deserve to be consulted.
+
+[Sidenote: Anthony, third Lord Shaftesbury (1671-1713).]
+
+'I will tell you,' writes the poet Gray, 'how Lord Shaftesbury came to
+be a philosopher in vogue: first, he was a lord; secondly, he was as
+vain as any of his readers; thirdly, men are very prone to believe what
+they do not understand; fourthly, they will believe anything at all
+provided they are under no obligation to believe it; fifthly, they love
+to take a new road, even when that road leads nowhere; sixthly, he was
+reckoned a fine writer, and seemed always to mean more than he said.
+Would you have any more reasons? An interval of above forty years has
+pretty well destroyed the charm.'
+
+One hundred and thirty-five years have gone by since Gray wrote his
+estimate of Lord Shaftesbury, whose _Characteristics of Men, Manners,
+Opinions, Times_ (1711) passed through several editions in the last
+century. The first volume consists of: _A Letter concerning Enthusiasm_,
+_An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour_ and _Advice to an Author_;
+Vol. ii. contains _An Inquiry concerning Virtue and Merit_ (1699), and
+_The Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody_ (1709), and Vol. iii. contains
+_Miscellaneous Reflections_ and the _Judgments of Hercules_.
+
+Shaftesbury was a Deist, and while professing to honour the Christian
+faith, which he terms 'our holy religion,' exercises his wit and
+casuistry and command of English to undermine it. Pope, who shows in the
+_Essay on Man_ that he had read the _Characteristics_, said that to his
+knowledge 'the work had done more harm to revealed religion in England
+than all the works of infidelity,' a judgment which may seem
+extravagant, for Shaftesbury is too vague and rhetorical greatly to
+influence thoughtful readers, and too much of a 'virtuoso,' to use his
+own words, for readers of another class; yet the fact that the work
+passed, as we have said, through several editions, shows that the author
+had a considerable public to whom he could appeal. Moreover, it is clear
+that what Mr. Balfour calls 'the shallow optimism' of his creed was not
+deemed so inconsiderable then as it now appears, or Berkeley would not
+have deemed it necessary to controvert his arguments in the third
+Dialogue of his _Alciphron_. Like Berkeley, Shaftesbury occasionally
+makes use of the dialogue very effectively, but he has not the bishop's
+incisiveness. His style, though often faulty, and giving one the
+impression that the author is affected, and wishes to say fine things,
+is at its best fresh and lucid. The reader will observe that whatever be
+the topic Shaftesbury professes to discuss, his one aim is to assert his
+principles as a free-thinking and free-speaking philosopher. His
+inferences, his illustrations, his criticisms, and exaltation of the
+'moral sense,' are all so many underhanded blows at the faith which he
+never openly opposes.
+
+Thus his essay on the _Freedom of Wit and Humour_ is chiefly written in
+defence of raillery in the discussion of serious subjects, when managed
+'with good breeding,' and for 'a liberty in decent language to question
+everything' amongst gentlemen and friends. He regards ridicule as the
+antidote to enthusiasm, believes in the harmony and perfection of
+nature, and considers that evil only exists in our ignorance. Mr. Leslie
+Stephen, whose impartiality in estimating an author like Shaftesbury
+will not be questioned, calls him a wearisome and perplexed writer,
+whose rhetoric is flimsy, but who has 'a true vigour and originality
+which redeems him from contempt.'
+
+Judged by his influence on the age Shaftesbury's place in the history of
+literature and of philosophy is an important one. Seed springs up
+quickly when the soil is prepared for it, and Shaftesbury by his belief
+in the perfectibility of human nature through the aid of culture,
+appealed, as Mandeville also did from a lower and opposite platform, to
+the views current in polite society. According to Shaftesbury men have a
+natural instinct for virtue, and the sense of what is beautiful enables
+the virtuoso to reject what is evil and to cleave to what is good. Let a
+man once see that to be wicked is to be miserable, and virtue will be
+dear for its own sake apart from the fear of punishment or the hope of
+reward. He found salvation for the world in a cultivated taste, but had
+no gospel for the men whose tastes were not cultivated.
+
+Voltaire sneered at the optimism of the _Essay on Man_ and of the
+_Characteristics_. 'Shaftesbury,' he says, 'who made the fable
+fashionable, was a very unhappy man. I have seen Bolingbroke a prey to
+vexation and rage, and Pope, whom he induced to put this sorry jest into
+verse, was as much to be pitied as any man I have ever known; mis-shapen
+in body, dissatisfied in mind, always ill, always a burden to himself,
+and harassed by a hundred enemies to his very last moment.'
+
+[Sidenote: Bernard de Mandeville (1670?-1733).]
+
+Bernard de Mandeville gained much notoriety by his _Fable of the Bees,
+or Private Vices, Public Benefits_ (1723). The book opens with a poem in
+doggrel verse called _The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves turned honest_, the
+purport of which is to show that as the bees became virtuous, they
+ceased to be successful. He closes with the moral that
+
+    'To enjoy the world's conveniences,
+    Be famed in war, yet live in ease,
+    Without great vices is a vain
+    Utopia, seated in the brain.
+    Fraud, Luxury, and Pride must live,
+    While we the benefits receive.'
+
+In the prose which follows the fable, Mandeville may at least claim the
+credit of being outspoken, and he does not scruple to say that modesty
+is a sham and that what seems like virtue is nothing but self-love. 'I
+often,' he says, 'compare the virtues of good men to your large china
+jars; they make a fine show, but look into a thousand of them, and you
+will find nothing in them but dust and cobwebs.'
+
+While declaring that he is far from encouraging vice, he regards it as
+essential to the well-being of society. The degradation of the race
+excites his amusement, and the fact that he cannot see a way of escape
+from it, causes no regret. Shaftesbury's arguments excited the mirth of
+a man who believed neither in present nor future good 'Two systems,' he
+says, 'cannot be more opposite than his lordship's and mine. His
+notions, I confess, are generous and refined. They are a high compliment
+to human kind, and capable, by the help of a little enthusiasm, of
+inspiring us with the most noble sentiments concerning the dignity of
+our exalted nature. What pity it is that they are not true.'
+
+The author of the _Fable of the Bees_ writes coarsely for coarse
+readers, and the arguments by which he supports his graceless theory
+merit the infamy generally awarded to them.[57] The book was attacked by
+Warburton and Law, and with much force and humour by Berkeley, in the
+second Dialogue of _Alciphron_. But the bishop, to use a homely phrase,
+does not hit the right nail on the head. Instead of arguing that virtue
+and goodness are realities, while evil, being unreal and antagonistic to
+man's nature, is an enemy to be fought against and conquered, Berkeley
+takes a lower ground, and is content to show in his reply to Mandeville
+that virtue is more profitable to a state than vice. He annihilates many
+of Mandeville's arguments in a masterly style, but it was left to the
+author of the _Serious Call_ to strike at the root of Mandeville's
+fallacy, and to show how the seat of virtue, if I may apply Hooker's
+noble words with regard to law, 'is the bosom of God, her voice the
+harmony of the world; all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the
+very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from
+her power.'
+
+[Sidenote: Lord Bolingbroke (1678-1751).]
+
+The life of Henry St. John was a mass of contradictions. He was a
+brilliant politician who affected to be a wise statesman, a traitor to
+his country while pretending to be a patriot, an orator whose lips
+distilled honied phrases which his actions belied, a man of insatiable
+ambition who masked as a philosopher, a profligate without shame, a
+faithless friend, and an unscrupulous opponent. Blessed with every charm
+of manner, features, and voice, with a taste for literature and a large
+faculty of acquisition, he was a slave to the meanest vices. A Secretary
+of State at thirty-two, no man probably ever entered upon public life
+with brighter prospects, and the secret of all his failures was due to
+the want of character. 'Few people,' says Lord Hervey, 'ever believed
+him without being deceived or trusted him without being betrayed; he was
+one to whom prosperity was no advantage, and adversity no instruction.'
+
+It is said that his genius as an orator was of a high order and this we
+can believe the more readily since the style of his works is distinctly
+oratorical. In speech so much depends upon voice and manner that it is
+possible for a shallow thinker to be an extremely attractive speaker;
+Bolingbroke's speeches have not been preserved, and we may therefore
+continue, if we please, to hold with Pitt, that they are the most
+desirable of all the lost fragments of literature; his writings, far
+more showy than solid, do not convey a lofty impression of intellectual
+power. Obvious truths and well-worn truisms are uttered in high-sounding
+words, but in no department of thought can it be said that Bolingbroke
+breaks new ground. Much that he wrote was for the day and died with it,
+and if his more ambitious efforts, written with an eye to posterity,
+cannot justly be described as unreadable, they contain comparatively
+little which makes them worthy to be read.
+
+His defence of his conduct in _A Letter to Sir William Windham_, written
+in 1717, but not published until after the author's death, though
+worthless as a defence, is a fine piece of special pleading in
+Bolingbroke's best style. It could deceive no one acquainted with the
+part played by the author before the death of Queen Anne, and afterwards
+in exile, but it afforded him an opportunity for attacking his former
+colleague, Oxford, with all the weapons available by an unscrupulous and
+powerful assailant. He declares in this letter that he preferred exile
+rather than to make common cause with the man whom he abhorred. Writing
+of Oxford as a colleague in the government of the country he observes in
+a skilfully turned passage:
+
+    'The ocean which environs us is an emblem of our government; and
+    the pilot and the minister are in similar circumstances. It
+    seldom happens that either of them can steer a direct course,
+    and they both arrive at their port by means which frequently
+    seem to carry them from it. But as the work advances the conduct
+    of him who leads it on with real abilities clears up, the
+    appearing inconsistencies are reconciled, and when it is once
+    consummated, the whole shows itself so uniform, so plain, and so
+    natural, that every dabbler in politics will be apt to think he
+    could have done the same. But on the other hand the man who
+    proposes no such object, who substitutes artifice in the place
+    of ability, who, instead of leading parties and governing
+    accidents, is eternally agitated backwards and forwards by both,
+    who begins every day something new, and carries nothing on to
+    perfection, may impose awhile on the world: but a little sooner
+    or a little later the mystery will be revealed, and nothing will
+    be found to be couched under it but a thread of pitiful
+    expedients, the ultimate end of which never extended farther
+    than living from day to day. Which of these pictures resembles
+    Oxford most you will determine.'
+
+It has been said with somewhat daring exaggeration, that Burke never
+produced anything nobler than this passage, and the writer regards the
+whole composition of the _Letter to Windham_ as almost faultless.[58]
+
+That it is Bolingbroke's masterpiece may be readily admitted, but in
+this _Letter_, as elsewhere, the merits of Bolingbroke's style are those
+of the popular orator who conceals repetitions, contradictory
+statements, and emptiness of thought under a dazzling display of
+rhetoric. That he had splendid gifts and exhibited an extraordinary
+ingenuity of resource was acknowledged by friend and foe. At one time
+taking a distinguished part in European affairs, at another artfully
+intriguing, sometimes posing as a moralist and philosopher while a slave
+to debauchery, and at other times affecting a love of retirement while a
+slave to ambition--Bolingbroke acted a part which made him one of the
+most conspicuous figures of the time. He knew how to fascinate men of
+greater genius than he possessed, and how to guide men intellectually
+his superiors. The witchcraft of his wit and the charm of his manners no
+longer disturb the judgment. As a statesman Bolingbroke is now
+comparatively despised, as a man of letters he is generally regarded as
+a brilliant pretender, and if his name survives in the history of
+literature it is chiefly due to the friendship of Pope. Unfortunately
+the memory of this celebrated friendship is associated with one of the
+most ignoble acts of Bolingbroke's life. When Pope lay dying,
+Bolingbroke wept over his friend exclaiming, 'O great God, what is man!'
+and Spence relates that upon telling his lordship how Pope whenever he
+was sensible said something kindly of his friends as if his humanity
+outlasted his understanding, Bolingbroke replied, '"It has so! I never
+in my life knew a man that had so tender a heart for his particular
+friends or a more general friendship for mankind. I have known him these
+thirty years, and value myself more for that man's love than"--sinking
+his head and losing himself in tears.' His sorrow was speedily changed
+to anger. Pope, no doubt in admiration of his friend's genius, had
+privately printed 1,500 copies of his _Patriot King_, one of
+Bolingbroke's ablest but most sophistical works. The philosopher had
+only allowed a few copies to be printed for his friends, and the
+discovery of Pope's conduct roused his indignation. In 1749 he put a
+corrected copy of the work into Mallet's hands for publication with an
+advertisement in which Pope is treated with contempt. He had not the
+courage to assail the memory of his friend openly, and hired an
+unprincipled man to do it. The poet had acted trickily, after his wonted
+habit, though in all likelihood with the design of doing Bolingbroke a
+service. It was a fault to be forgiven by a friend, but Bolingbroke,
+after nursing his anger for five years, gave vent to it in this
+contemptible and underhand way. He died two years afterwards, and in
+1754 the posthumous publication of Bolingbroke's _Philosophical
+Writings_ by Mallet, aroused a storm of indignation in the country,
+which his debauchery and political immorality had failed to excite.
+Johnson's saying on the occasion is well-known:
+
+'Sir, he was a scoundrel and a coward; a scoundrel for charging a
+blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward because he had not
+resolution to fire it off himself, but left half-a-crown to a beggarly
+Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death.'
+
+The most noteworthy estimate of Bolingbroke's character made in our day
+comes from the pen of Mr. John Morley,[59] who describes as follows his
+position as a man of letters. 'He handled the great and difficult
+instrument of written language with such freedom and copiousness, such
+vivacity and ease, that in spite of much literary foppery and falsetto,
+he ranks in all that musicians call execution, only below the three or
+four highest masters of English prose. Yet of all the characters in our
+history Bolingbroke must be pronounced to be most of a charlatan; of all
+the writing in our literature, his is the hollowest, the flashiest, the
+most insincere.' This is true. By his 'execution,' consummate though it
+be, he is unable to conceal his insincerity and shallowness.
+'Bolingbroke,' said Lord Shelburne, was 'all surface,' and in that
+sentence his character is written.
+
+'People seem to think,' said Carlyle, 'that a style can be put off or
+put on, not like a skin, but like a coat. Is not a skin verily a product
+and close kinsfellow of all that lies under it,--exact type of the
+nature of the beast, not to be plucked off without flaying and death?'
+
+Two years after the publication of the _Philosophical Writings_, Edmund
+Burke, then a young man of twenty-four, published _A Vindication of
+Natural Society_, in a _Letter to Lord----. By a late noble writer_, in
+which Lord Bolingbroke's style is imitated, and his arguments against
+revealed religion applied to exhibit 'the miseries and evils arising to
+mankind from every species of Artificial Society.' So close is the
+imitation of Bolingbroke's style and mode of argument in this piece of
+irony, that it was for a time believed to be a genuine production, and
+Mallet found it necessary to disavow it publicly.
+
+Of Bolingbroke's Works, the _Dissertation on Parties_ appeared in 1735.
+_Letters on Patriotism_, and _Idea of a Patriot King_, in 1749; _Letters
+on the Study of History_, in 1752; _Letter to Sir W. Windham_, 1753, and
+the _Philosophical Writings_, as already stated, in 1754.
+Chronologically, therefore, he would belong to the Handbook which deals
+with the latter half of the century, were it not that his most important
+works were posthumous, and that Bolingbroke's intimate relations with
+Pope place him among the most conspicuous figures belonging to Pope's
+age.
+
+[Sidenote: George Berkeley (1685-1753).]
+
+Among the men of high intellect who flourished in the age of Pope,
+George Berkeley is one of the most distinguished. Born in 1685 of poor
+parents, in a cottage near Dysert Castle, in Kilkenny, he went up to
+Trinity College, Dublin, in 1700, and there, first as student, and
+afterwards as tutor, he remained for thirteen years. In the course of
+them he was ordained, and gained a fellowship. In 1709 he published his
+_Essay on Vision_, and in the following year the _Principles of Human
+Knowledge_, works which thus early made him famous as a philosopher, and
+a puzzle to many who failed to understand his 'new principle' with
+regard to the existence of matter.
+
+In 1712 Berkeley visited England, probably for the first time, and was
+introduced to the London wits. Already in these youthful days there was
+in him much of that magic power which some men exercise unconsciously
+and irresistibly. Swift felt the spell, called Berkeley a great
+philosopher, and spoke of him to all the Ministers; while Atterbury,
+upon being asked what he thought of him, exclaimed: 'So much
+understanding, so much knowledge, so much innocence, and such humility,
+I did not think had been the portion of any but angels till I saw this
+gentleman.' An incident occurred, it is conjectured during the course of
+this visit, which led to memorable results. He dined once with Swift at
+Mrs. Vanhomrigh's, and met her daughter Hester. Many years later,
+_Vanessa_ destroyed the will she had made in Swift's favour, and left
+half of her property to Berkeley. While in London the future bishop was
+warmly welcomed by Steele, and wrote several essays for him in the
+_Guardian_ against the Freethinkers, and especially against Anthony
+Collins (1676-1729), whose arguments in his _Discourse on Freethinking_
+(1713) are ridiculed in the _Scriblerus Memoirs_. Collins, it may be
+observed here, wrote a treatise several years later on the _Grounds of
+the Christian Religion_ (1724) which called forth thirty-five answers.
+During this visit Berkeley also published one of his most original
+works, _Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous_, a book marked by that
+consummate beauty of style for which he is distinguished.
+
+In November, 1713, the Earl of Peterborough was sent on an embassage to
+the King of Sicily, and on Swift's recommendation took Berkeley with him
+as his chaplain and secretary. Ten months were spent on this occasion in
+France and Italy. Another continental tour followed, in the course of
+which Berkeley wrote to Arbuthnot of his ascent of Vesuvius, and to Pope
+of his life at Naples. Five years were spent abroad, and he returned to
+England to learn of the failure of the South Sea Scheme. In his _Essay
+towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain_ (1721), the main argument
+is the obvious one, that national salvation is only to be secured by
+individual uprightness. He deplores 'the trifling vanity of apparel'
+which we have learned from France, advocates the revival of sumptuary
+laws, considers that we are 'doomed to be undone' by luxury, and by the
+want of public spirit, and declares that 'neither Venice nor Paris, nor
+any other town in any part of the world ever knew such an expensive
+ruinous folly as our masquerade.'
+
+In the summer of this year he was again in London, and Pope asked him to
+spend a week in his 'Tusculum.' One promotion followed another until
+Berkeley became Dean of Derry, with an income of from L1,500 to L2,000 a
+year. He did not hold this dignified position long, having conceived the
+magnificent but Utopian idea of founding a Missionary College in the
+Bermudas--the 'Summer Isles' celebrated in the verse of Waller and of
+Marvell--for the conversion of America.
+
+And now Berkeley exhibited his amazing power of influencing other men.
+The members of the Scriblerus Club laughed at the Dean's project, but so
+powerful was his eloquence, that 'those who came to scoff remained to
+subscribe.' Moreover, with Sir Robert Walpole as Prime Minister, he
+actually obtained a grant from the State of L20,000 in order to carry
+out the project, the king gave a charter, and to crown all, Sir Robert
+put his own name down for L200 on the list of subscribers. 'The scheme,'
+says Mr. Balfour, 'seems now so impracticable that we may well wonder
+how any single person, let alone the representatives of a whole nation,
+could be found to support it. In order that religion and learning might
+flourish in America, the seeds of them were to be cast in some rocky
+islets severed from America by nearly six hundred miles of stormy ocean.
+In order that the inhabitants of the mainland and of the West Indian
+colonies might equally benefit by the new university, it was to be
+placed in such a position that neither could conveniently reach it.'[60]
+Berkeley, who had recently married, left England for Rhode Island, where
+he stayed for about three years and wrote _Alciphron_ (1732), in which
+he attacks the freethinkers under the title of _Minute Philosophers_.
+Then on learning from Walpole that the promised money 'would most
+undoubtedly be paid as soon as suits public convenience' which would be
+never, he returned to England, and through the Queen's influence was
+made Bishop of Cloyne. In that diocese eighteen years of his life were
+spent. In the course of them he published the _Querist_ (1735-1737), an
+_Essay on the Social State of Ireland_ (1744), and, in the same year,
+_Siris_, which contains the bishop's famous recipe for the use of tar
+water followed by much philosophical disquisition. The remedy, which was
+afterwards praised by the poet Dyer in _The Fleece_, became instantly
+popular. 'We are now mad about the water,' Horace Walpole wrote; 'the
+book contains every subject from tar water to the Trinity; however, all
+the women read it, and understand it no more than if it were
+intelligible.' Editions of _Siris_ followed each other in rapid
+succession, and it was translated into French and German. The work is
+that of an enthusiast, and it should be read not for its argument, but
+for its wealth of suggestiveness, and for what Mr. Balfour calls 'a
+certain quality of moral elevation and speculative diffidence alien both
+to the literature and the life of the eighteenth century.' Berkeley had
+himself the profoundest faith in the panacea which he advocated. 'From
+my representing tar water,' he writes, 'as good for so many things,
+some, perhaps, many conclude it is good for nothing. But charity
+obligeth me to say what I know, and what I think, howsoever it may be
+taken. Men may conjecture and object as they please, but I appeal to
+time and experience.'
+
+In his latter days Berkeley, feeling his health failing, desired to
+resign his bishopric and retire to Oxford, and there--while still bishop
+of Cloyne, for the king would not accept his resignation--the
+philosopher, who was blest, to use Shakespeare's fine epithet, with a
+'tender-hefted nature,' passed away in 1753, leaving behind him one of
+the most fragrant of memories.
+
+That Berkeley was a philosophical thinker from his earliest manhood is
+evident from his _Commonplace Book_ published for the first time in the
+Clarendon Press edition of his works (vol. iv., pp. 419-502).
+
+He delighted in recondite thought as much as most young men delight in
+action, and as a philosopher he is said to have commenced his studies
+with Locke, whose famous _Essay_ appeared in 1690. Of Plato, too,
+Berkeley was an ardent admirer, and the spirit of Plato pervades his
+works. His _Essay towards a New Theory of Vision_ contains some
+intimations of the famous metaphysical theory which was developed a
+little later in the _Treatise on Human Knowledge_.
+
+A good deal of foolish ridicule was excited by this book. Berkeley was
+supposed to maintain the absurd paradox that sensible things do not
+exist at all. The reader will remember how Dr. Johnson undertook to
+refute the postulate by striking his foot against a stone, while James
+Beattie (1735-1803), the poet and moral philosopher, in a volume for
+which he was rewarded with a pension of L200 a year, denounced
+Berkeley's philosophy as 'scandalously absurd.' 'If,' he writes, 'I
+were permitted to propose one clownish question, I would fain ask ...
+Where is the harm of my believing that if I were to fall down yonder
+precipice and break my neck, I should be no more a man of this world? My
+neck, Sir, may be an idea to you, but to me it is a reality, and a very
+important one too. Where is the harm of my believing that if in this
+severe weather I were to neglect to throw (what you call) the idea of a
+coat over the ideas of my shoulders, the idea of cold would produce the
+idea of such pain and disorder as might possibly terminate in my real
+death? What great offence shall I commit against God or man, church or
+state, philosophy or common sense if I continue to believe that material
+food will nourish me, though the idea of it will not, that the real sun
+will warm and enlighten me, though the liveliest idea of him will do
+neither; and that if I would obtain here peace of mind and
+self-approbation, I must not only form ideas of compassion, justice and
+generosity, but also really exert those virtues in external
+performance?'[61]
+
+Beattie continues in this foolish strain to throw contempt upon a system
+which he had not taken the trouble to understand, and upon one of the
+sanest and noblest of English philosophers, and he does so without a
+thought that the absurdity is due to his own ignorance and not to the
+theory of Berkeley. The author of the _Minstrel_ was an honest man and a
+respectable poet, but he prided himself too much on what he called
+common sense, and failed to see that in the search after truth other and
+even higher faculties may be also needed. Moreover, Berkeley, so far
+from being an enemy to common sense, endeavours, as he says, to
+vindicate it, although in so doing, he 'may perhaps be obliged to use
+some _ambages_ and ways of speech not common.' A significant passage may
+be quoted from the _Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous_ (1713)
+in illustration of his method and style so far indeed as a short extract
+can illustrate an argument sustained by a long course of reasoning.
+
+    '_Phil._ As I am no sceptic with regard to the nature of things,
+    so neither am I as to their existence. That a thing should be
+    really perceived by my senses, and at the same time not really
+    exist is to me a plain contradiction; since I cannot prescind or
+    abstract even in thought, the existence of a sensible thing from
+    its being perceived. Wood, stones, fire, water, flesh, iron, and
+    the like things, which I name and discourse of, are things that
+    I know. And I should not have known them but that I perceived
+    them by my senses; and things perceived by the senses are
+    immediately perceived; and things immediately perceived are
+    ideas; and ideas cannot exist without the mind; their existence
+    therefore consists in being perceived; when therefore they are
+    actually perceived there can be no doubt of their existence....
+    I might as well doubt of my own being, as of the being of those
+    things I actually see and feel.
+
+    '_Hyl._ Not so fast, _Philonous_; you say you cannot conceive
+    how sensible things should exist without the mind. Do you not?
+
+    '_Phil._ I do.
+
+    '_Hyl._ Supposing you were annihilated, cannot you conceive it
+    possible that things perceivable by sense may still exist?
+
+    '_Phil._ I can; but then it must be in another mind. When I deny
+    sensible things an existence out of the mind, I do not mean my
+    mind in particular, but all minds. Now, it is plain they have an
+    existence exterior to my mind; since I find them by experience
+    to be independent of it. There is therefore some other mind
+    wherein they exist, during the intervals between the times of my
+    perceiving them; as likewise they did before my birth, and
+    would do after my supposed annihilation. And as the same is true
+    with regard to all other finite created spirits, it necessarily
+    follows there is an _omnipresent, eternal Mind_, which knows and
+    comprehends all things, and exhibits them to our view in such a
+    manner, and according to such rules, as He Himself hath
+    ordained, and are by us termed the _Laws of Nature_.'
+
+    'Truth is the cry of all,' says Berkeley in the final paragraph
+    of _Siris_, 'but the game of a few. Certainly, where it is the
+    chief passion, it doth not give way to vulgar cares and views,
+    nor is it contented with a little ardour, active perhaps to
+    pursue, but not so fit to weigh and revise. He that would make a
+    real progress in knowledge, must dedicate his age as well as
+    youth, the latter growth as well as firstfruits at the altar of
+    truth.'
+
+Elsewhere in this famous treatise he writes:
+
+    'It cannot be denied that with respect to the universe of things
+    we in this mortal state are like men educated in Plato's cave,
+    looking on shadows with our backs turned to the light. But
+    though our light be dim and our situation bad, yet if the best
+    use be made of both, perhaps something may be seen. Proclus, in
+    his commentary on the theology of Plato, observes there are two
+    sorts of philosophers. The one placed body first in the order of
+    beings, and made the faculty of thinking depend thereupon,
+    supposing that the principles of all things are corporeal; that
+    body most really or principally exists, and all other things in
+    a secondary sense and by virtue of that. Others making all
+    corporeal things to be dependent upon soul or mind, think this
+    to exist in the first place, and primary senses and the being of
+    bodies to be altogether derived from, and presuppose that of the
+    mind.'
+
+This was Berkeley's creed, and his great aim throughout is to prove the
+phenomenal nature of the things of sense, or in other words the
+non-existence of independent matter. He makes, he says, not the least
+question that the things we see and touch really exist, but what he does
+question is the existence of matter apart from its perception to the
+mind. Hobbes said that the body accounted for the mind, and that matter
+was the deepest thing in the universe, while to Berkeley the only true
+reality consists in what is spiritual and eternal.
+
+'The great idealist,' says an able writer, 'certainly never denied the
+existence of matter in the sense in which Johnson understood it. As the
+touched, the seen, the heard, the smelled, the tasted, he admitted and
+maintained its existence as readily and completely as the most
+illiterate and unsophisticated of mankind,' and he adds that the
+peculiar endowment for which Berkeley was distinguished 'far beyond his
+predecessors and contemporaries, and far beyond almost every philosopher
+who has succeeded him, was the eye he had _for facts_, and the singular
+pertinacity with which he refused to be dislodged from his hold upon
+them.'[62]
+
+Pope's age produced a few great masters of style, and among them
+Berkeley holds an undisputed place. He succeeded, too, in the most
+difficult department of intellectual labour, since to express abstruse
+thought in language as beautiful as it is clear is the rarest of gifts.
+
+'His works are beyond dispute the finest models of philosophic style
+since Cicero. Perhaps they surpass those of the orator, in the wonderful
+art by which the fullest light is thrown on the most minute and
+evanescent parts of the most subtle of human conceptions.'[63]
+
+[Sidenote: William Law (1686-1761).]
+
+William Law was born in 1686 at King's Cliffe in Northamptonshire, and
+entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge, as a Sizar in 1705. He obtained a
+Fellowship, and received holy orders in 1711, but having made a speech
+offensive to the heads of houses, he was degraded. Law believed in the
+divine right of kings, and on the death of Queen Anne, declared his
+principles as a non-juror. In 1717 he published his first controversial
+work, _Three Letters to the Bishop of Bangor_; Hoadly, the famous
+bishop, having, in his opponent's judgment, uttered lax and
+latitudinarian views with regard to the Church of which he was one of
+the chief pastors. These _Letters_ have been highly praised for wit as
+well as for argument, and Dean Hook, writing of the Bangorian
+Controversy in his _Church Dictionary_, states that 'Law's _Letters_
+have never been answered and may, indeed, be regarded as unanswerable.'
+Law was also the most powerful assailant of Warburton's _Divine
+Legation_, which he opposed with a burning zeal that was not always
+wise. But as a controversialist he was an infinitely stronger man than
+his opponent, and unlike Warburton, he never debased controversy by
+scurrility, which the bishop generally found a more potent weapon than
+argument.
+
+On the publication, in 1723, of Dr. Mandeville's _Fable of the Bees_, it
+was vigorously attacked by Law. In this masterly pamphlet, instead of
+attempting to refute the physician by showing that virtue is more
+profitable to the State than vice, and that, therefore, private vices
+are not public benefits, Law takes a higher ground, and asserts that
+morality is not a question of profit and loss, but of conscience.
+Mandeville maintains that man is a mere animal governed by his passions;
+his opponent, on the other hand, argues that man is created in the image
+of God, that virtue 'is a law to which even the divine nature is
+subject,' and that human nature is fitted to rise to the angels, while
+Mandeville would lower it to the brutes.
+
+John Sterling, writing to F. D. Maurice of the first section of Law's
+remarks, says: 'I have never seen in our language the elementary
+grounds of a rational ideal philosophy, as opposed to empiricism, stated
+with nearly the same clearness, simplicity, and force,' and it was at
+Sterling's suggestion that Maurice published a new edition of Law's
+argument with an introductory essay (1844).
+
+The following passage from the _Remarks on the Fable of the Bees_ will
+illustrate Law's method as a polemic:
+
+    'Deists and freethinkers are generally considered as
+    unbelievers; but upon examination they will appear to be men of
+    the most resigned and implicit faith in the world; they would
+    believe _transubstantiation_, but that it implies a believing in
+    God; for they never resign their reason, but when it is to yield
+    to something that opposes salvation. For the Deist's creed has
+    as many articles as the Christian's, and requires a much greater
+    suspension of our reason to believe them. So that if to believe
+    things upon no authority, or without any reason, be an argument
+    of credulity, the freethinker will appear to be the most easy,
+    credulous creature alive. In the first place, he is to believe
+    almost all the same articles to be false which the Christian
+    believes to be true.
+
+    'Now, it may easily be shown that it requires stronger acts of
+    faith to believe these articles to be false, than to believe
+    them to be true. For, taking faith to be an assent of the mind
+    to some proposition, of which we have no certain knowledge, it
+    will appear that the Deist's faith is much stronger, and has
+    more of credulity in it, than the Christian's. For instance, the
+    Christian believes the resurrection of the dead, because he
+    finds it supported by such evidence and authority as cannot
+    possibly be higher, supposing the thing was true; and he does no
+    more violence to his reason in believing it, than in supposing
+    that God may intend to do some things, which the reason of man
+    cannot conceive how they will be effected.
+
+    'On the contrary, the Deist believes there will be no
+    resurrection. And how great is his faith, for he pretends to no
+    evidence or authority to support it; it is a pure naked assent
+    of his mind to what he does not know to be true, and of which
+    nobody has, or can give him, any full assurance. So that the
+    difference between a Christian and a Deist does not consist in
+    this, that the one assents to things unknown, and the other does
+    not; but in this, that the Christian assents to things unknown
+    on account of evidence; the other assents to things unknown
+    without any evidence at all. Which shows that the Christian is
+    the rational believer and the Deist the blind bigot.'
+
+It is probable that Law, like other writers on the orthodox side, did
+not sufficiently take into account the service rendered by the Deists in
+arousing a spirit of inquiry. Free-thinking is right thinking, and 'it
+was a result of the Deistic controversy, which went far to make up many
+evils in it, that in the end it widened and enlarged Christian
+thought.'[64]
+
+The author's next and weakest work, _On the Unlawfulness of Stage
+Entertainments_ (1726), is mentioned elsewhere.[65]
+
+In the same year he published _Christian Perfection_, a profoundly
+earnest but puritanically narrow work, in which our earthly life is
+regarded simply as the road to another. 'There is nothing that deserves
+a serious thought,' he writes, 'but how to get out of the world and make
+it a right passage to our eternal state.' No man ever practised what he
+preached with more sincerity and persistency than William Law, but it
+can hardly be doubted that he narrowed the range of his influence by the
+views he expressed with regard to culture and to all human learning. He
+forgot that, without the logic, the wit, the irony, the singular force
+and lucidity of style displayed in his own writings, he would have
+lost the power as a religious teacher which he was so eager to exercise.
+
+Literature _qua_ literature Law regarded with contempt, and he is said
+to have looked upon the study even of Milton as waste of time. Yet his
+biographer states what seems likely enough, considering the fine
+qualities of Law's own writings, that 'no author was ever a favourite
+with him, unless he was a man of literary merit.'
+
+In 1727, and probably before that date, Law held the position of tutor
+to Edward Gibbon, whose famous son, the historian, in his
+_Autobiography_, gives to him the high praise of having left in the
+family 'the reputation of a worthy and pious man, who believed all that
+he professed, and practised all that he enjoined.'
+
+Law accompanied his pupil to Cambridge, and it is conjectured that
+during this residence at the university he wrote what Gibbon justly
+called his 'master work,' _A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life_
+(1729), the most impressive book of its class produced in the eighteenth
+century. The historian's father was a man of feeble character. He left
+Cambridge without a degree, and went on his travels, the tutor meanwhile
+remaining in the family house at Putney, where he seems to have gathered
+round him a number of disciples.
+
+The _Serious Call_ had an immediate and strong influence on many
+thoughtful men, and Law's book stimulated in no common measure the
+religious life of the country. John Wesley spoke of it as a treatise
+hardly to be excelled in the English tongue 'either for beauty of
+expression, or for justness and depth of thought.' Whitefield, Venn, and
+Thomas Scott, the commentator, acknowledged their indebtedness to the
+work, and Dr. Johnson, speaking of his youthful days, said: 'I became a
+sort of lax _talker_ against religion, for I did not much _think_
+against it; and this lasted till I went to Oxford, when I took up Law's
+_Serious Call to a Holy Life_, expecting to find it a dull book (as such
+books generally are), but I found Law quite an over-match for me; and
+this was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest.' The first Lord
+Lyttelton, the historian and friend of Thomson, is said to have taken up
+the book one night at bed-time, and to have read it through before he
+went to bed; but, perhaps, the most unimpeachable evidence in its favour
+comes from the pen of Gibbon, who writes: 'Mr. Law's precepts are rigid,
+but they are founded on the Gospel. His satire is sharp, but it is drawn
+from the knowledge of human life, and many of his portraits are not
+unworthy of the pen of La Bruyere. If he finds a spark of piety in his
+reader's mind he will soon kindle it to a flame.'
+
+Law's art as a portrait painter will be seen in the following sketch of
+Flavia:
+
+    '_Flavia_ would be a miracle of piety if she was but half so
+    careful of her soul as she is of her body. The rising of a
+    _pimple_ on her face, the sting of a gnat, will make her keep
+    her room two or three days, and she thinks they are very rash
+    people that do not take care of things in time. This makes her
+    so over careful of her health that she never thinks she is well
+    enough, and so over indulgent that she never can be really well.
+    So that it costs her a great deal in sleeping draughts and
+    waking draughts, in spirits for the head, in drops for the
+    nerves, in cordials for the stomach, and in saffron for her tea.
+
+    'If you visit _Flavia_ on the Sunday, you will always meet good
+    company, you will know what is doing in the world, you will hear
+    the last lampoon, be told who wrote it, and who is meant by
+    every name that is in it. You will hear what plays were acted
+    that week, which is the finest song in the opera, who was
+    intolerable at the last assembly, and what games are most in
+    fashion. _Flavia_ thinks they are atheists who play at cards on
+    the Sunday, but she will tell you the nicety of all the games,
+    what cards she held, how she played them, and the history of all
+    that happened at play, as soon as she comes from church. If you
+    would know who is rude and ill-natured, who is vain and foppish,
+    who lives too high and who is in debt; if you would know what is
+    the quarrel at a certain house, or who and who are in love; if
+    you would know how late Belinda comes home at night, what
+    clothes she has bought, how she loves compliments, and what a
+    long story she told at such a place; if you would know how cross
+    Lucius is to his wife, what ill-natured things he says to her,
+    when nobody hears him; if you would know how they hate one
+    another in their hearts though they appear so kind in public;
+    you must visit _Flavia_ on the Sunday. But still she has so
+    great a regard for the holiness of the Sunday, that she has
+    turned a poor old widow out of her house as a _profane wretch_,
+    for having been found once mending her clothes on the Sunday
+    night.'
+
+Between the years 1733-37, owing to his acquaintance with the writings
+of the famous mystic, Jacob Boehme, Law became a mystic himself. The
+'blessed Jacob' as he calls him exercised an influence which colours all
+his later writings and lasted till his death. In 1740 he retired to his
+native village and to solitude; but after a while two wealthy and devout
+ladies, one of them a widow, the other the historian's aunt, Miss Hester
+Gibbon, joined him in his retreat and devoted to charitable objects
+their labours and their fortunes. 'Out of a joint income of not less
+than three thousand pounds a year, only about three hundred pounds were
+spent upon the frugal expenses of the household and the simple personal
+wants of the three inhabitants. The whole of the remainder was spent
+upon the poor.'[66] Report says, let us hope it may be scandal, that
+after the master's death the love of earthly vanities revived in two of
+his pupils. His favourite niece had a new dress every month, and Miss
+Gibbon 'appeared resplendent in yellow stockings.' This is not the place
+to follow Law's self-denying career, neither are we concerned with the
+volumes which contain his later views. Admirably written though they be,
+these works do not belong to the field of literature. Law lived in
+vigour both of mind and body to a good old age, and died in 1761.
+
+[Sidenote: Joseph Butler (1692-1752).]
+
+Joseph Butler, whose _Sermons_ (1726), and _Analogy of Religion Natural
+and Revealed to the Constitution and Course of Nature_ (1736), are among
+the highest contributions to theology produced in the last century,
+called the imagination 'a forward, delusive faculty,' and he could have
+boasted that it was a faculty of which no trace is to be found in his
+works. Moreover, he is generally regarded as wholly destitute of style,
+and in a sense this is true, for Butler is so intent upon what he has to
+say that he cares little how he says it. His sense of beauty if he
+possessed it, was absorbed in a supreme allegiance to truth, and his
+life was that of a Christian philosopher intent upon one object. His
+sermons, preached at the Rolls Chapel, which contain the germ of his
+philosophy, are too closely packed with argument and too recondite in
+thought to fit them for pulpit discourses. The _Analogy_, which occupied
+seven years of Butler's life, is better known and more generally
+interesting. 'There is,' he says, 'a much more exact correspondence
+between the natural and the moral world than we are apt to take notice
+of.' His aim is to show that the difficulties which meet us in
+Revelation are to be found also in nature, that as our happiness or
+misery in this world largely depends upon conduct, so it is reasonable
+to suppose, apart from what Revelation teaches, that we are also in a
+state of probation with regard to a future life. As youth is an
+education for mature age, so may the whole of our earthly life be an
+education for a future existence.
+
+    'And if we were not able at all to discern how or in what way
+    the present life could be our preparation for another, this
+    would be no objection against the credibility of its being so.
+    For we do not discern how food and sleep contribute to the
+    growth of the body; nor could have any thought that they would
+    before we had experience. Nor do children at all think on the
+    one hand that the sports and exercises, to which they are so
+    much addicted, contribute to their health and growth; nor, on
+    the other, of the necessity which there is for their being
+    restrained in them; nor are they capable of understanding the
+    use of many parts of discipline, which, nevertheless, they must
+    be made to go through in order to qualify them for the business
+    of mature age. Were we not able, then, to discover in what
+    respects the present life could form us for a future one, yet
+    nothing would be more supposable than that it might, in some
+    respects or other, from the general analogy of Providence. And
+    this, for aught I see, might reasonably be said, even though we
+    should not take in the consideration of God's moral government
+    over the world. But, take in this consideration, and
+    consequently, that the character of virtue and piety is a
+    necessary qualification for the future state, and then we may
+    distinctly see how and in what respects the present life may be
+    a preparation for it.
+
+Butler's style is uniform throughout, and if it have no other merit, may
+be praised for honesty. It is wholly free from the artifices of the
+rhetorician; if it is wanting in charm, it is never weak; if it is
+sometimes obscure, it must be remembered that the author does not write
+for readers who find it a trouble to think. The bishop's obscurity was
+not due to negligence. 'Confusion and perplexity in writing,' he says,
+'is indeed without excuse; because anyone may, if he pleases, know
+whether he understands and sees through what he is about; and it is
+unpardonable for a man to lay his thoughts before others when he is
+conscious that he himself does not know whereabouts he is, or how the
+matter before him stands. It is coming abroad in disorder, which he
+ought to be dissatisfied to find himself in at home.'
+
+Butler weighed his thoughts rather than his words in an age when many
+distinguished writers were tempted to regard form as of more consequence
+than substance. It must be admitted, however, that if the ideal of fine
+literature be the expression of beautiful and richly suggestive thoughts
+in a style elevated by the imagination, and by a sense of rhythmical
+harmony, Bishop Butler's place is not among men of letters. His profound
+sense of the seriousness of life limited his range; but as a thinker,
+what he lost in versatility he probably gained in depth. The _Analogy_
+is a striking instance of a great work wholly without imagination, while
+full of the intellectual life which sustains the student's attention.
+There is not a dull page in the book, or one in which the author's
+meaning cannot be grasped by thoughtful readers. The work is full of
+weighty sayings on the power of conscience, the rule of right which a
+man has within him, the force of habit, the necessity of action in
+relation to belief, and the uselessness of passive impressions. It has
+been said that the defect of the eighteenth century theology 'was not in
+having too much good sense, but in having nothing besides,' and the
+straining after good sense, so prominent in Pope's age, affected alike,
+men of letters, philosophers, and theologians. The virtue was carried to
+excess and is conspicuous in Butler. He has his weaknesses both as a
+philosopher and a theologian, but the reader of the _Analogy_ and of the
+three sermons on Human Nature, will be conscious that he is in the
+presence of a great mind.
+
+[Sidenote: William Warburton (1698-1779).]
+
+William Warburton, Pope's commentator, was born at Newark-upon-Trent in
+1698, and died as Bishop of Gloucester in 1779. The main argument of his
+principal work, _The Divine Legation of Moses_ (1738-41), is based upon
+the astounding paradox that the legation of Moses must have been divine
+because he never invoked the promises or threatenings of a future state.
+The book is remarkable for its arrogance and lack of 'sweet
+reasonableness.' It claims no attention from the student of English
+literature, neither would Warburton himself were it not for his
+association with Pope. Allusion has been already made to Crousaz's
+hostile criticism of the _Essay on Man_ (1737) on the ground that it led
+to fatalism, and was destructive of the foundations of natural religion.
+Warburton, who had previously denounced the 'rank atheism' of the poem,
+now endeavoured to defend it, and how effectually he did so in Pope's
+judgment is seen in his grateful acknowledgment of the critic's labours.
+'I know I meant just what you explain,' he wrote, 'but I did not explain
+my own meaning as well as you. You understand me as well as I do myself,
+but you express me better than I could express myself.'
+
+Dr. Conyers Middleton's estimate of what Warburton had done for Pope is
+more accurate: 'You have evinced the orthodoxy of Mr. Pope's
+principles,' he says, 'but, like the old commentators on his _Homer_,
+will be thought, perhaps, in some places to have provided a meaning for
+him that he himself never dreamt of.'[67]
+
+The poet and Warburton met for the first time in 1740, and the
+bookseller, Dodsley, who was present at the interview, was astonished at
+the compliments which Pope lavished on his apologist. Henceforth,
+until the poet's death, Warburton, who, according to Bishop Hurd, 'found
+an image of himself in his new acquaintance,' became his counsellor and
+supporter, and among other achievements added, as Ricardus Aristarchus,
+to the confusion of the _Dunciad_. Ultimately, as Pope's annotator, he
+produced much laborious and comparatively worthless criticism, and
+contrived by his immense fighting qualities as a critic and polemic to
+make a considerable noise in the world. One incident in the friendship
+of the poet and of the divine is worth recording. In 1741 Pope and
+Warburton were at Oxford together, and while there the Vice-Chancellor
+offered to confer on the poet the degree of D.C.L., and on Warburton
+that of D.D. Some hesitation, however, on the part of the university
+having occurred with regard to the latter, Pope wrote to his friend
+saying, 'As for mine I will die before I receive one, in an art I am
+ignorant of, at a place where there remains any scruple of bestowing one
+on you, in a science of which you are so great a master. In short I will
+be doctored with you, or not at all.'
+
+Warburton's stupendous self-assertion concealed to some extent his heavy
+style and poverty of thought. His aim was to startle by paradoxes, since
+he could not convince by argument. No one could call an opponent names
+in the Billingsgate style more effectively, and every man who ventured
+to differ from him was either a knave or a fool. 'Warburton's stock
+argument,' it has been said, 'is a threat to cudgel anyone who disputes
+his opinion.' He was a laborious student, and the mass of work he
+accomplished exhibits his robust energy, but he has left nothing which
+lives in literature or in theology. He was, however, a man of various
+acquisitions, and won, for that reason, the praise of Dr. Johnson. 'The
+table is always full, sir. He brings things from the north and the
+south and from every quarter. In his _Divine Legation_ you are always
+entertained. He carries you round and round without carrying you forward
+to the point, but then you have no wish to be carried forward.'
+
+Bentley's more concise description of Warburton's attainments deserves
+to be recorded. He was, he says, 'a man of monstrous appetite, but bad
+digestion.'
+
+Warburton's _Shakespeare_ appeared in 1747, his _Pope_ in 1751. It
+cannot be said that either poet has cause to be grateful to his
+commentator. Of his _Shakespeare_ a few words may be appropriately said
+here. In this pretentious and untrustworthy edition, Warburton accuses
+Theobald of plagiarism, treats him with contempt, and then uses his text
+to print from. In his Preface he declares that his own Notes 'take in
+the whole compass of Criticism,' and he professes to restore the poet's
+genuine Text. Yet, as the editors of the _Cambridge Shakespeare_
+observe, there is no trace, so far as they have discovered, 'of his
+having collated for himself either the earlier Folios or any of the
+Quartos.' Warburton professed to observe the severe canons of literal
+criticism, and this suggested the title to Thomas Edwards of a volume in
+which the critic's editorial pretensions are attacked with some humour
+and much justice.[68]
+
+We may add that Bishop Hurd, Warburton's most intimate friend, edited
+his works in seven volumes (1788), and six years later, by way of
+preface to a new edition, published an _Account of the Life, Writings,
+and Character of the Author_.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[57] Readers who remember Mr. Browning's estimate of 'sage Mandeville'
+in his _Parleyings with Certain Persons_ may deem this criticism unjust;
+but the De Mandeville who speaks in that poem is the creation of the
+poet's imagination, or rather he is Mr. Browning himself.
+
+[58] _Bolingbroke: a Historical Study_, p. 133. By J. Churton Collins.
+
+[59] _Walpole_, p. 79. By John Morley. Macmillan.
+
+[60] _Works of George Berkeley._ Edited by George Sampson. With
+introduction by the Rt. Hon. Arthur J. Balfour, M.P. Vol. i., p. xxxi
+(London, 1897).
+
+[61] _An Essay on Truth_, 2nd edit., p. 298. 1771.
+
+[62] _Blackwood's Magazine_, June, 1842.
+
+[63] Sir James Macintosh, _Encyclopaedia Britannica_.
+
+[64] _The English Church and its Bishops._ By Charles J. Abbey. Vol. i.,
+p. 236.
+
+[65] See p. 194.
+
+[66] _The Life and Opinions of the Rev. William Law, M.A._ By J. H.
+Overton, M.A. P. 243.
+
+[67] Middleton's _Miscellaneous Works_, vol. i., p. 402.
+
+[68] The first edition of Edwards's work was entitled _Supplement_ to
+Mr. Warburton's edition of _Shakespeare_, 1747. The third edition (1750)
+was called _The Canons of Criticism and Glossary_ by Thomas Edwards. Of
+this volume seven editions were published. Edwards, who was born in
+1699, died in 1757.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX OF MINOR POETS AND PROSE WRITERS.
+
+
+JOHN ARMSTRONG (1709-1779), a Scotchman by birth, practised in London as
+a physician after some surgical experience in the navy. Believing any
+subject suitable for poetry, he wrote in blank verse, reminding one of
+Thomson, _The Art of Preserving Health_ (1744), a poem containing some
+powerful passages, and many which are better fitted for a medical
+treatise than for poetry. An earlier and licentious poem _The Economy of
+Love_, which injured him in his profession, was 'revised and corrected
+by the author' in 1768.
+
+If bulk were a sign of merit SIR RICHARD BLACKMORE (1650-1729) would not
+rank with the minor poets. He wrote several long and wearisome epics,
+his best work in Dr. Johnson's judgment being _The Creation_ (1712),
+which was praised by Addison in the _Spectator_ as 'one of the most
+useful and noble productions in our English verse,' a judgment the
+modern reader is not likely to endorse.
+
+HENRY BROOKE (1706-1783), an Irishman, was the author of a poem entitled
+_Universal Beauty_ (1735). Four years later he published _Gustavus
+Vasa_, a tragedy, which was not allowed to be acted, the sentiments
+being too liberal for the government. His _Fool of Quality_ (1766) a
+novel in five volumes, delighted John Wesley, and in our day, Charles
+Kingsley, who praises its 'broad and genial humanity.' Brooke was a
+follower of William Law, whose mysticism is to be seen in the story.
+
+WILLIAM BROOME (1689-1745) is chiefly known from his association with
+Pope in the translation of the _Odyssey_, of which enough has been said
+elsewhere (p. 38). His name suggested the following epigram to Henley:
+
+    'Pope came off clean with Homer; but they say
+    _Broome_ went before and kindly swept the way.'
+
+He entered holy orders, had two livings in Suffolk and one in Norfolk,
+and married a wealthy widow. His verses are mechanically correct, but
+are empty of poetry.
+
+JOHN BYROM (1691-1763), the friend and disciple of William Law, the
+author of the _Serious Call_, is best remembered for his system of
+shorthand. In a characteristic, copious, and not very attractive
+journal, he describes, for the consolation of his fellow mortals, how he
+makes resolutions and breaks them. Byrom wrote rhyme with ease and on
+subjects with which poetry has nothing to do. His most successful
+achievement was a pastoral, _Colin and Phoebe_, which appeared in the
+_Spectator_ (Vol. viii., No. 603). It was written in honour of the
+daughter of Dr. Bentley, Master of Trinity, 'not,' it has been said,
+'because he wished to win her affections, but because he desired to
+secure her father's interest for the Fellowship for which he was a
+candidate.' The plan was successful. The one verse of Byrom's that every
+one has read is the happy epigram:
+
+    'God bless the King!--I mean the faith's defender--
+    God bless (no harm in blessing!) the Pretender!
+    But who Pretender is, or who is King--
+    God bless us all!--that's quite another thing.'
+
+SAMUEL CLARKE (1675-1729), a man of large attainments in science and
+divinity, was the favourite theologian of Queen Caroline, who admired
+his latitudinarian views, and delighted in his conversation. His works,
+edited by Bishop Hoadly, were published in 1738 in four folio volumes.
+In 1704 he delivered the Boyle lectures on _The Being and Attributes of
+God_, and in 1705 _On Natural and Revealed Religion_. His _Scripture
+Doctrine of the Trinity_ (1712) was condemned by convocation. In defence
+of Sir Isaac Newton, Clarke had a controversy with Leibnitz, and having
+published the correspondence dedicated it to the Queen. His sermons, Mr.
+Leslie Stephen says, are 'for the most part not sermons at all, but
+lectures upon metaphysics.' In Addison's judgment Clarke was one of the
+most accurate, learned, and judicious writers the age had produced.
+
+ELIJAH FENTON (1683-1730) wrote poems and _Mariamne_ a tragedy, in
+which, according to his friend Broome, 'great Sophocles revives and
+reappears.' It was acted with applause, and brought nearly one thousand
+pounds to its author. His name is now chiefly known as having assisted
+Pope in his translation of the _Odyssey_.
+
+RICHARD GLOVER (1712-1785), the son of a London merchant, was himself a
+merchant of high reputation in the city. He also 'cultivated the Muses,'
+and his _Leonidas_ (1737), an elaborate poem in blank verse, preferred
+by some critics of the day to _Paradise Lost_, passed through several
+editions and was praised by Fielding and by Lord Chatham. Power is
+visible in this epic, which displays also a large amount of knowledge,
+but the salt of genius is wanting, and the poem, despite many estimable
+qualities, is now forgotten. _Leonidas_ was followed by _Boadicea_
+(1758), and _The Atheniad_, published after his death in 1788. Glover
+was a politician as well as a verseman. His party feeling probably
+inspired _Admiral Hosier's Ghost_ (1739), a ballad still remembered and
+preserved in anthologies.
+
+MATTHEW GREEN (1696-1737) is the author of _The Spleen_, an original and
+brightly written poem. _The Grotto_, printed but not published in 1732,
+is also marked by freshness of treatment. Green's poems, written in
+octosyllabic metre, were published after his death.
+
+JAMES HAMMOND (1710-1742) produced many forlorn elegies on a lady who
+appears to have scorned him, and who lived in 'maiden meditation' for
+nearly forty years after the poet's death. His love is said to have
+affected his mind for a time. 'Sure Hammond has no right,' says
+Shenstone, 'to the least inventive merit. I do not think that there is a
+single thought in his elegies of any eminence that is not literally
+translated.'
+
+NATHANIEL HOOKE (1690-1763), the author of a _Roman History_, is better
+known as the editor of _An Account of the conduct of the Dowager Duchess
+of Marlborough, from her first coming to Court in the year 1710, in a
+letter from herself to Lord ---- in 1742_. The duchess is said to have
+dictated this letter from her bed, and to have been so eager for its
+completion that she insisted on Hooke's not leaving the house till he
+had finished it. He was munificently rewarded for his labour by a
+present of L5,000. It was Hooke, a zealous Roman Catholic, who, when
+Pope was dying, asked him if he should not send for a priest, and
+received the poet's hearty thanks for putting him in mind of it.
+
+JOHN HUGHES (1677-1719) was the author of poems, an opera, a masque,
+several translations, and a tragedy, _The Siege of Damascus_, which was
+well received, and kept its place on the stage for some years. He died
+on the first night's performance of the play. Several articles in the
+_Tatler_ and _Spectator_ are from his pen. In 1715 he published an
+edition of Spenser in six volumes. Hughes received warm praise from
+Steele, and enjoyed also the friendship of Addison.
+
+CONYERS MIDDLETON (1683-1750) is now chiefly known for an extravagantly
+eulogistic life of _Cicero_ (1741), in which, as Macaulay observes, he
+'resorted to the most disingenuous shifts, to unpardonable distortions
+and suppressions of facts.' The book is written in a forcible and lively
+style. A man of considerable learning, Middleton was a violent
+controversialist, who liked better to attack and to defend than to dwell
+in the serene atmosphere of literature or of practical divinity. He
+assailed the famous Richard Bentley with such rancour that he had to
+apologize and was fined L50 by the Court of King's Bench. Middleton was
+a doctor of divinity, but his controversial works, while never directly
+attacking the chief tenets of the religion he professed, lean far more
+to the side of the Deists than to the orthodox creed, and, indeed, it
+would not be uncharitable to class him among them. He appears, like
+Swift, to have chiefly regarded the Christian religion as an institution
+of service to the stability of the State. Of the _Miscellaneous Works_
+which were published after his death in five volumes, the most elaborate
+and the most provocative of disputation is _A Free Inquiry into the
+Miraculous Powers which are supposed to have subsisted in the Christian
+Church through several successive centuries_ (1749). Middleton was
+educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1734 was elected
+librarian of the University.
+
+RICHARD SAVAGE (1698-1743), whose fate is one of the most melancholy in
+the annals of versemen, lives in the admirable though neither impartial
+nor wholly accurate biography of Dr. Johnson. In 1719 he produced _Love
+in a Veil_, a comedy from the Spanish; and in 1723 his tragedy _Sir
+Thomas Overbury_ was acted, but with little success. In the same year he
+published _The Bastard_, a poem which is said to have driven his mother
+out of society. _The Wanderer_, in five cantos, appeared in 1729, and
+was regarded by the author as his masterpiece. It has some vigorous
+lines and several descriptive passages that are not conventional. Savage
+died in prison at Bristol, a city which recalls the equally painful
+story of Chatterton.
+
+LEWIS THEOBALD (1688-1744), the original hero of the _Dunciad_, was a
+dramatist and translator, but is chiefly known as the author of
+_Shakespeare Restored; or specimens of blunders committed or unamended
+in Pope's edition of the poet_ (1726). This was followed two years later
+by _Proposals for Publishing Emendations and Remarks on Shakespeare_,
+and in 1733 by his edition of the dramatist in seven volumes. 'Theobald
+as an editor,' say the editors of the _Cambridge Shakespeare_, 'is
+incomparably superior to his predecessors and to his immediate successor
+Warburton, although the latter had the advantage of working on his
+materials. He was the first to recall a multitude of readings of the
+first Folio unquestionably right, but unnoticed by previous editors.
+Many most brilliant emendations ... are due to him.'
+
+WILLIAM WALSH (1663-1708) has chronologically little claim to be noticed
+here, for his poems were published before the beginning of the century,
+but he is to be remembered as the early friend and wise counsellor of
+Pope, and also as the author, I believe, of the only English sonnet
+between Milton's in 1658, and Gray's, on Richard West, in 1742.
+
+ANNE FINCH, Countess of Winchelsea (1660-1720), published a volume of
+verse in 1713 under the title of _Miscellany Poems on Several Occasions,
+Written by a Lady_. The book contains a _Nocturnal Reverie_, which has
+some lines showing a close and faithful observation of rural sounds and
+sights, as for example:
+
+    'When the loosed horse, now as his pasture leads,
+    Comes slowly grazing through the adjoining meads,
+    Whose stealing pace and lengthened shade we fear,
+    Till torn-up forage in his teeth we hear;
+    When nibbling sheep at large pursue their food,
+    And unmolested kine rechew the cud;
+    When curlews cry beneath the village walls,
+    And to her straggling brood the partridge calls.'
+
+The _Nocturnal Reverie_, however, is an exception to the general
+character of Lady Winchelsea's poems, which consist chiefly of odes
+(including the inevitable Pindaric), fables, songs, affectionate
+addresses to her husband, poetical epistles, and a tragedy,
+_Aristomenes; or the Royal Shepherd_. The _Petition for an Absolute
+Retreat_ is one of the best pieces in the volume. It displays great
+facility in versification, and a love of country delights.
+
+THOMAS YALDEN (1670-1736), born in Exeter, and educated at Magdalen
+College, Oxford, entered into holy orders (1711), and was appointed
+lecturer of moral philosophy. 'Of his poems,' writes Dr. Johnson, 'many
+are of that irregular kind which, when he formed his poetical character,
+was supposed to be Pindaric.' Pindarics were indeed the bane of the age.
+Every minor poet, no matter however feeble his poetical wings might be,
+endeavoured to fly with Pindar. Like Gay, Yalden tried his skill as a
+writer of fables.
+
+    NOTE.
+
+    _Mrs. Veal's Ghost_ (see pp. 186-187). A curious discovery, made
+    by Mr. G. A. Aitken (see _Nineteenth Century_, January, 1895),
+    makes it certain, he thinks, that 'the whole narrative is
+    literally true.' He even hopes that the receipt for scouring
+    Mrs. Veal's gown may some day be found. Mr. Aitken seems to
+    infer that Defoe's other tales will also turn out to be true
+    histories, but Defoe avers, with all the seriousness he expends
+    on Mrs. Veal, that he witnessed the great Plague of London,
+    which it is needless to say he did not.
+
+
+
+
+CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.
+
+
+=1667.=       =Swift born.=
+=1672.=       =Steele born.=
+=1672.=       =Addison born.=
+ 1674.        Milton died.
+=1688.=       =Gay born.=
+=1688.=       =Pope born.=
+ 1688.        Bunyan died.
+ 1690.        Locke's _Essay Concerning Human Understanding_.
+ 1694.        Voltaire born.
+ 1699.        Racine died.
+=1700.=       =Thomson born.=
+=1700.=       =Dryden died.=
+ 1700.        Fenelon's _Telemaque_.
+ 1703.        John Wesley born.
+ 1704.        Locke died.
+=1704.=       =Addison's= _Campaign_.
+=1704.=       =Swift's= _Tale of a Tub_ and _Battle of the Books_.
+ 1707.        Fielding born.
+ 1709.        Johnson born.
+=1709.=       =Pope's= _Pastorals_.
+=1709-1711.=  _The Tatler._
+=1710.=       =Berkeley's= _Principles of Human Knowledge_.
+=1711.=       =Pope's= _Essay on Criticism_.
+1711-1712,}   _The Spectator._
+and 1714. }
+ 1711.        Hume born.
+=1712.=       =Pope's= _Rape of the Lock_.
+ 1712.        Rousseau born.
+=1713.=       =Addison's= _Cato_.
+ 1713.        Sterne born.
+=1714.=       =Mandeville's= _Fable of the Bees_.
+=1715.=       =Gay's= _Trivia_.
+=1715-1720.=  =Pope's= _Translation of Homer's Iliad_.
+ 1715.        Wycherley died.
+=1718.=       =Prior's= _Poems on Several Occasions_ =(folio)=.
+=1719-1720.=  =Defoe's= _Robinson Crusoe_ =(first part)=.
+=1719.=       =Addison died.=
+=1721.=       =Prior died.=
+ 1721.        Smollett born.
+=1723-1725.=  =Pope's= _Translation of Homer's Odyssey_.
+=1724.=       =Swift's= _Drapier's Letters_.
+ 1724.        Kant born.
+ 1724.        Klopstock born.
+=1725-1730.=  =Thomson's= _Seasons_.
+=1725.=       =Ramsay's= _Gentle Shepherd_.
+=1725.=       =Young's= _Universal Passion_.
+=1726.=       =Swift's= _Gulliver's Travels_.
+=1727.=       =Gay's= _Fables_.
+=1728.=       =Pope's= _Dunciad_.
+=1728.=       =Gay's= _Beggar's Opera_.
+ 1728.        Goldsmith born.
+=1729.=       =Law's= _Serious Call_.
+ 1729.        Burke born.
+ 1729.        Lessing born.
+=1729.=       =Steele died.=
+=1731.=       =Defoe died.=
+ 1731.        Cowper born.
+=1732-1735.=  =Pope's= _Moral Essays_.
+=1732-1734.=  =Pope's= _Essay on Man_.
+=1732.=       =Gay died.=
+=1733-1737.=  =Pope's= _Imitations of Horace_.
+=1735.=       =Pope's= _Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot_.
+=1736.=       =Butler's= _Analogy of Religion_.
+ 1737.        Gibbon born.
+=1738.=       =Hume's= _Treatise of Human Nature_.
+=1740.=       =Cibber's= _Apology for his Life_.
+ 1740.        Richardson's _Pamela_.
+ 1742.        Fielding's _Joseph Andrews_.
+=1742.=       =Pope's= _Dunciad_ =(fourth book added)=.
+=1742.=       =Young's= _Night Thoughts_.
+=1743.=       =Blair's= _Grave_.
+=1744.=       =Akenside's= _Pleasures of Imagination_.
+=1744.=       =Pope died.=
+=1745.=       =Swift died.=
+=1748.=       =Thomson died.=
+ 1748.        Hume's _Inquiry concerning Human Understanding_.
+ 1748.        Richardson's _Clarissa Harlowe_.
+ 1748.        Smollett's _Roderick Random_.
+ 1749.        Goethe born.
+ 1749.        Fielding's _Tom Jones_.
+
+
+ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WRITERS
+
+ADDISON, JOSEPH                         1672-1719
+AKENSIDE, MARK                          1721-1770
+ARBUTHNOT, JOHN                         1667-1735
+ARMSTRONG, JOHN                         1709-1779
+ATTERBURY, FRANCIS                      1662-1732
+BENTLEY, RICHARD                        1662-1742
+BERKELEY, GEORGE                        1685-1753
+BINNING, LORD                           1696-1732
+BLACKMORE, SIR RICHARD                  1650-1729
+BLAIR, ROBERT                           1699-1746
+BOLINGBROKE, LORD                       1678-1751
+BOYLE, CHARLES                          1676-1731
+BROOKE, HENRY                           1706-1783
+BROOME, WILLIAM                         1689-1745
+BUTLER, JOSEPH                          1692-1752
+BYROM, JOHN                             1691-1763
+CHESTERFIELD, LORD                      1694-1773
+CIBBER, COLLEY                          1671-1757
+CLARKE, SAMUEL                          1675-1729
+COLLINS, ANTHONY                        1676-1729
+CRAWFORD, ROBERT                       1695?-1732
+DEFOE, DANIEL                           1661-1731
+DENNIS, JOHN                          1657-1733-4
+DORSET, EARL OF                       1637-1705-6
+DYER, JOHN                             1698?-1758
+EDWARDS, THOMAS                         1699-1757
+FENTON, ELIJAH                          1683-1730
+GARTH, SIR SAMUEL                    1660-1717-18
+GAY, JOHN                               1685-1732
+GLOVER, RICHARD                         1712-1785
+GREEN, MATTHEW                          1696-1737
+HALIFAX, CHARLES MONTAGUE, EARL OF      1661-1715
+HAMILTON, WILLIAM (OF BANGOUR)          1704-1754
+HAMMOND, JAMES                          1710-1742
+HILL, AARON                             1684-1749
+HOOKE, NATHANIEL                        1690-1763
+HUGHES, JOHN                            1677-1719
+KING, ARCHBISHOP                        1650-1729
+LAW, WILLIAM                            1686-1761
+LILLO, GEORGE                           1693-1739
+LYTTELTON, GEORGE, LORD                 1708-1773
+MALLET, DAVID                           1700-1765
+MANDEVILLE, BERNARD DE                 1670?-1733
+MIDDLETON, CONYERS                      1683-1750
+MONTAGU, LADY MARY WORTLEY              1689-1762
+PARNELL, THOMAS                         1679-1718
+PHILIPS, AMBROSE                        1671-1749
+PHILIPS, JOHN                           1676-1708
+POPE, ALEXANDER                         1688-1744
+PRIOR, MATTHEW                          1664-1721
+RAMSAY, ALLAN                           1686-1758
+ROWE, NICHOLAS                          1673-1718
+SAVAGE, RICHARD                         1698-1743
+SHAFTESBURY, LORD                       1671-1713
+SHENSTONE, WILLIAM                      1714-1764
+SOMERVILLE, WILLIAM                     1692-1742
+SPENCE, JOSEPH                          1698-1768
+STEELE, SIR RICHARD                     1672-1729
+SWIFT, JONATHAN                         1667-1745
+THEOBALD, LEWIS                         1688-1744
+THOMSON, JAMES                          1700-1748
+TICKELL, THOMAS                         1686-1740
+WALSH, WILLIAM                          1663-1708
+WARBURTON, WILLIAM                      1698-1779
+WARDLAW, LADY                           1677-1727
+WATTS, ISAAC                            1674-1748
+WESLEY, CHARLES                         1708-1788
+WINCHELSEA, COUNTESS OF                 1660-1720
+YALDEN, THOMAS                          1670-1736
+YOUNG, EDWARD                           1684-1765
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+Addison, Joseph, 4, 5, 15, 16, 19, 20, 35, 59, 62, 125-136, 145, 146.
+
+_Addison, Address to Mr._, 112.
+
+_Admiral Hosier's Ghost_, 244.
+
+_Agamemnon_, 88.
+
+Akenside, Mark, 117.
+
+_Alciphron_, 216, 224.
+
+_Alfred, Masque of_, 88, 119.
+
+_Alma_, 67, 71.
+
+_Ambitious Step-mother, the_, 103.
+
+_Amyntor and Theodora_, 119.
+
+_Analogy of Religion_, 236.
+
+_Appius and Virginia_, 191, 193.
+
+Arbuthnot, John, 45, 49, 175-179.
+
+_Arbuthnot, Epistle to Dr._, 59.
+
+Armstrong, John, 242.
+
+_Art of Political Lying, the_, 177.
+
+_Art of Preserving Health, the_, 242.
+
+_Atheniad, the_, 244.
+
+Atterbury, Bishop, 45, 70, 207-212.
+
+Atticus, character of, 59.
+
+Augustan Age, origin of the term, 10.
+
+
+_Baucis and Philemon_, 157.
+
+_Bangor, three Letters to the Bishop of_, 230.
+
+Bangorian Controversy, the, 9.
+
+_Bathos, treatise on the_, 39.
+
+Bathurst, Lord, 46, 49.
+
+_Battle of Blenheim, the_, 192.
+
+_Battle of the Books, the_, 160.
+
+_Beggar's Opera, the_, 73, 74.
+
+Bentley, Richard, 36, 48, 160, 207, 208, 243.
+
+_Bentley's Dissertations, Examination of_, 208.
+
+Berkeley, Bishop, 46, 215, 221-229.
+
+Bickerstaff, Isaac, 161;
+  _Lucubrations of_ 140, 141.
+
+Binning, Lord, 121.
+
+_Black-eyed Susan_, 74.
+
+Blackmore, Sir Richard, 47, 242.
+
+Blair, Robert, 84.
+
+_Blenheim_, 101.
+
+Blount, Martha and Teresa, 44, 56.
+
+_Boadicea_, 244.
+
+Boehme, Jacob, 235.
+
+Boileau and Pope compared, 4, 47;
+  his _Art Poetique_, 29.
+
+Bolingbroke, Lord, 8, 44, 51, 52, 59, 216-221.
+
+Boyle, Charles, 160, 207, 208.
+
+_Braes of Yarrow, the_, 121.
+
+Bribery, prevalence of, 19.
+
+_Britannia_ (Thomson's), 87;
+  (Mallet's), 119.
+
+Brooke, Henry, 242.
+
+Broome, William, 38, 243.
+
+_Brothers, the_, 79.
+
+Buckingham, Duke of, 57, 70.
+
+_Busiris_, 79.
+
+Butler, Bishop, 236.
+
+Byrom, John, 243.
+
+
+_Cadenus and Vanessa_, 154, 165.
+
+_Campaign, the_, 126.
+
+_Captain Singleton_, 188.
+
+_Careless Husband, the_, 196, 197.
+
+Caroline, Queen, 9.
+
+_Castle of Indolence, the_, 93.
+
+_Cato_, 128, _et seq._
+
+Chandos, Duke of, 57.
+
+_Characteristics of Men, Manners, etc._, 19, 52, 212.
+
+Charke, Mrs., _Narrative of her Life_, 11.
+
+_Chase, the_, 112.
+
+Chesterfield, Lord, 202-204.
+
+_Chit-Chat_, 144.
+
+_Christian Hero, the_, 137.
+
+_Christianity, argument against abolishing_, 161.
+
+_Christian Perfection_, 232.
+
+_Christian Religion, Grounds of the_, 222.
+
+Cibber, Colley, 48, 196-198;
+  _Apology for the Life of_, 198.
+
+_Cider_, 101.
+
+Clarke, Dr. Samuel, 9, 243.
+
+_Colin and Lucy_, 110.
+
+_Colin and Phoebe_, 243.
+
+Collier, Jeremy, 137.
+
+Collins, Anthony, 222.
+
+_Colonel Jack_, 187, 188.
+
+_Conscious Lovers, the_, 137.
+
+_Contentment, Hymn to_, 107.
+
+_Conversion of St. Paul, Dissertation on the_, 205.
+
+_Coriolanus_, 88.
+
+_Country Mouse and City Mouse, the_, 66.
+
+_Country Walk, the_, 114.
+
+Craggs, James, 45, 56.
+
+Crawford, Robert, 121.
+
+_Creation, the_, 242.
+
+_Crisis, the_, 143, 144.
+
+_Criticism, the Essay on_, 29, 191.
+
+_Criticism in Poetry, grounds of_, 192.
+
+Crousaz, M., 54, 238.
+
+Cruelty of the age, 18.
+
+Curll, Edmund, 42.
+
+
+Defoe, Daniel, 180-191.
+
+Delany, Mrs., _Life and Correspondence of_, 12, 164.
+
+Dennis, John, 191-196.
+
+_Dialogues of the Dead_, 205.
+
+_Dispensary, the_, 96.
+
+_Distrest Mother, the_, 98.
+
+_Divine Legation of Moses, the_, 230, 239.
+
+Dorset, Earl of, 65.
+
+_Drapier's Letters_, 170.
+
+Drelincourt's _Christian's Defence, etc._, 187.
+
+Dryden, John, death of, 1;
+  and Pope, 28, 58.
+
+_Dryden, Ode to_, 193.
+
+_Drummer, the_, 134.
+
+Drunkenness, prevalence of, 17.
+
+Duelling, 13.
+
+_Dunciad, the_, 39, 48, _et seq._, 240.
+
+Dyer, John, 113, 224.
+
+
+_Edward and Eleanora_, 88.
+
+Edwards, Thomas, 241.
+
+_Edwin and Emma_, 118.
+
+_Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady_, 33.
+
+_Eloisa to Abelard_, 33.
+
+_Elvira_, 119.
+
+_English Convocation, Rights, Powers and Privileges of_, 208.
+
+_Englishman, the_, 144.
+
+_English Poets, Account of the greatest_, 131.
+
+_Epistle to a Friend in Town_, 114.
+
+_Epistles of Phalaris, Dissertations on the_, 160, 208.
+
+_Essay on Man, the_, 51, 238.
+
+_Eurydice_, 119.
+
+Eusden, Lawrence, 47.
+
+_Evergreen, the_, 120.
+
+_Examiner, the_, 162.
+
+_Excursion, the_, 118.
+
+
+_Fable of the Bees, the_, 214, 230;
+  _Remarks on the_, 231.
+
+_Fables_ (Gay's), 73.
+
+_Fair Penitent, the_, 103.
+
+_Fatal Curiosity, the_, 138.
+
+Fenton, Elijah, 38, 244.
+
+_Fleece, the_, 113, 224.
+
+_Fool of Quality, the_, 243.
+
+_Force of Religion, the_, 78.
+
+_Freedom of Wit and Humour, the_, 213.
+
+_Freeholder, the_, 132.
+
+_Freethinking, Discourse on_, 222.
+
+French Literature, influence of, 3, 4, 5.
+
+French Customs, 14.
+
+_Funeral, the_, 137.
+
+
+Gambling, 21, 22.
+
+Garth, Sir Samuel, 96.
+
+Gay, John, 40, 49, 72-76.
+
+_Gentle Shepherd, the_, 120.
+
+_George Barnwell_, 138.
+
+_Gideon_, 104.
+
+Glover, Richard, 244.
+
+_God, the Being and Attributes of_, 244.
+
+Granville, George, Lord Lansdowne, 40.
+
+_Grave, the_, 84.
+
+Green, Matthew, 245.
+
+_Grongar Hill_, 113.
+
+_Grotto, the_, 244.
+
+_Grub Street Journal, the_, 51.
+
+_Grumbling Hive, the_, 214.
+
+_Guardian, the_, 125, 142.
+
+_Gulliver's Travels_, 167.
+
+_Gustavus Vasa_, 243.
+
+
+Halifax, Montague, Earl of, 65, 66.
+
+Hamilton, William, of Bangour, 121.
+
+Hammond, James, 245.
+
+_Health, an Eclogue_, 108.
+
+_Henry and Emma_, 67.
+
+_Hermit, the_, 107.
+
+Hervey, Lord, 47, 59, 61.
+
+Hill, Aaron, 104-106, 195.
+
+Hoadly, Bishop, 9, 230.
+
+Homer, Pope's Translation of, 34, _et seq._, 206, 243, 244.
+  Tickell's translation, 35, 111.
+
+Hooke, Nathaniel, 245.
+
+Horace, _Ars Poetica_, 29.
+
+_Horace, Imitations from_, 55, 59, 60.
+
+Hughes, John, 40, 245.
+
+_Human Knowledge, Treatise on_, 221, 225.
+
+_Hylas and Philonous, Dialogue between_, 222, 227.
+
+_Hymn to Contentment_, 107.
+
+_Hymn to the Naiads_, 118.
+
+
+_Imperium Pelagi_, 76.
+
+_Instalment, the_, 79.
+
+_Iphigenia_, 193.
+
+_Italy, Letter from_, 131.
+
+_Italy, Remarks on Several Parts of_, 126.
+
+
+_Jane Shore_, 103.
+
+_John Bull, History of_, 177.
+
+Johnson, Esther, 152, 164, 166, 172.
+
+_Judgment Day, the_, 104.
+
+_Judgment of Hercules, the_, 116.
+
+
+_Kensington Gardens_, 111.
+
+King, _on the Origin of Evil_, 52.
+
+
+_Lady Jane Grey_, 103.
+
+_Lansdowne, Epistle to Lord_, 77.
+
+_Last Day, the_, 77.
+
+Law, William, 194, 230-236, 243.
+
+_Law, Elegy in Memory of William_, 85.
+
+Leibnitz, _Essais de Theodicee_, 52.
+
+_Leonidas_, 244.
+
+_Liberty Asserted_, 193.
+
+Lillo, George, 138.
+
+_Love in a Veil_, 246.
+
+_Lover, the_, 144.
+
+_Love's Last Shift_, 196.
+
+_Lying Lover, the_, 137.
+
+Lyttelton, George, Lord, 204.
+
+
+Mallet, David, 88, 118, 219, 220.
+
+_Man, Allegory on_, 107.
+
+Mandeville, Bernard de, 214, 230.
+
+_Mariamne_, 244.
+
+Marlborough, Duchess of, 13, 57.
+
+_Marlborough, Duchess of, Account of the Conduct of_, 245.
+
+Marriages in the Fleet, 11, 12.
+
+_Mathematical Learning, Essay on the Usefulness of_, 175.
+
+_Memoirs of a Cavalier_, 188.
+
+_Merope_, 106.
+
+Middleton, Conyers, 246.
+
+_Modest Proposal, etc._, 172, 184.
+
+Mohocks, the, 11.
+
+_Moll Flanders_, 188, 190.
+
+Montagu, Lady M. W., 14, 42, 44, 57, 198-202.
+
+Montague, Charles, Earl of Halifax, 65, 66.
+
+_Monument, the_, 192.
+
+_Moral Essays, the_, 55, _et seq._
+
+_Moralties or Essays, Letters, etc._, 206.
+
+_Mrs. Veal, Apparition of_, 186.
+
+
+_Namur, Taking of_, 70.
+
+_Night Piece on Death_, 107, 108.
+
+_Night Thoughts_, 76, 81.
+
+_Northern Star, the_, 104.
+
+
+_Ocean_, 76.
+
+_Ode on St. Cecilia's day_, 40.
+
+Opera, Italian, 127.
+
+Oxford, Harley, Earl of, 49.
+
+
+_Parallel in the Manner of Plutarch_, 206.
+
+Parnell, Thomas, 107.
+
+_Parties, Dissertation on_, 221.
+
+Partridge, John, 161.
+
+Party feeling, excess of, 19, 20.
+
+_Pastoral Ballad_, 116.
+
+_Pastorals_ (Pope's), 29, 191;
+  (Philips'), 98.
+
+_Patriotism, Letters on_, 221.
+
+_Patriot King, the_, 219, 221.
+
+Patronage of Literature, 5, 6.
+
+_Peace of Ryswick, the_, 126.
+
+_Persian Tales, the_, 100.
+
+Peterborough, Earl of, 45.
+
+_Phalaris, Dissertation on the Epistle of_, 160, 208.
+
+Philips, Ambrose, 11, 98.
+
+Philips, John, 101.
+
+_Plague, History of the_, 189.
+
+_Pleasures of Imagination, the_, 117.
+
+_Plot and No Plot, a_, 193.
+
+_Poetry, Rhapsody on_, 157.
+
+_Polly_, 74.
+
+_Polymetis_, 206.
+
+Pope, Alexander, a representative poet, 27;
+  his life, 28-64;
+  and Dennis, 191, 195;
+  and Cibber, 96;
+  and Lady M. W. Montagu, 14, 42, 44, 57, 199;
+  and Spence, 205;
+  and Arbuthnot, 209.
+
+_Pope, Epistle to_, 81.
+
+_Pope's Translation of Homer_, Spence's Essay on, 206.
+
+Pope, Mrs., 44, 59.
+
+Prior, Matthew, 5, 65-72.
+
+_Progress of Wit, the_, 105.
+
+_Projects, Essay on_, 182.
+
+_Prospect of Peace, the_, 109.
+
+_Public Spirit of the Whigs, the_, 143.
+
+
+_Querist, the_, 224.
+
+
+Ramsay, Allan, 120.
+
+_Rape of the Lock, the_, 31.
+
+_Reader, the_, 144.
+
+Religion, Condition of, 9.
+
+_Religion, Natural and Revealed_, 244.
+
+_Religious Courtship, the_, 189.
+
+_Remarks on Several Parts of Italy_, 126.
+
+_Revenge, the_, 79.
+
+_Review, the_ (Defoe's), 185.
+
+_Rise of Women, the_, 108.
+
+_Robinson Crusoe_, 180, 187, 189.
+
+_Rosamond_, 128.
+
+Roscommon's _Essay on Translated Verse_, 29.
+
+Rowe, Nicholas, 102.
+
+_Roxana_, 188, 189.
+
+_Royal Convert, the_, 103.
+
+_Ruin of Great Britain, Essay towards Preventing the_, 223.
+
+_Ruins of Rome, the_, 115.
+
+_Rule Britannia_, 95.
+
+
+Savage, Richard, 246.
+
+_Schoolmistress, the_, 115, 116.
+
+_Scriblerus, Martin, Memoirs of_, 178, 222.
+
+_Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, the_, 244.
+
+_Seasons, the_, 86, 87, 88-92.
+
+_Sentiments of a Church of England Man_, 162.
+
+_Serious Call_, 216, 233.
+
+Shaftesbury, Lord, 19, 52, 212-215.
+
+Shakespeare, Pope and Theobald's Editions of, 39;
+  Rowe's Edition, 132;
+  Warburton's Edition, 241.
+
+Sheffield, John, Earl of, 29, 40.
+
+Shenstone, William, 115, 205.
+
+_Shepherd's Week, the_, 73.
+
+_Shortest Way with Dissenters, the_, 184.
+
+_Siege of Damascus, the_, 245.
+
+_Siris_, 224, 228.
+
+_Sir Thomas Overbury_, 246.
+
+Social Condition of the time, 10.
+
+_Social State of Ireland, Essay on the_, 224.
+
+_Solomon_, 67, 71.
+
+Somerville, William, 40, 112.
+
+_Sophonisba_, 87.
+
+South Sea Company, the, 21.
+
+_Spectator, the_, 11, 14, 16, 19, 20, 98, 117, 125, 127, 128, 141, 142.
+
+Spence, Joseph, 59, 205.
+
+_Spleen, the_, 244.
+
+_Splendid Shilling, the_, 101.
+
+_Stage defended from Scripture, etc., the_, 194.
+
+_Stage Entertainments, Absolute Unlawfulness of_, 194, 232.
+
+Steele, Sir Richard, 125, 136-150.
+
+_Stella, Journal to_, 164, 166.
+
+_Study of History, Letters on the_, 221.
+
+Swift, Jonathan, 34, 42, 44, 48, 49, 50, 51, 62, 151-175.
+
+_Swift, on the Death of Dr._, 154.
+
+
+_Tale of a Tub, the_, 153, 158, 209.
+
+_Tales of the Genii_, 206.
+
+_Tamerlane_, 103.
+
+_Tancred and Sigismunda_, 88.
+
+_Tatler, the_, 125, 140, 148, 162.
+
+_Tea Table, the_, 144.
+
+_Tea Table Miscellany, the_, 120.
+
+Temple, Sir William, 152, 160, 208.
+
+_Temple of Fame, the_, 33.
+
+_Tender Husband, the_, 137.
+
+_Theatre, the_, 144.
+
+Theobald, Lewis, 39, 47, 48.
+
+_Theory of Vision, Essay towards a new_, 221, 225.
+
+Thomson, James, 44, 47, 85-95.
+
+Tickell, Thomas, 35, 109-111, 135.
+
+_Tour through Great Britain_, 190.
+
+_Town Talk_, 144.
+
+_Trivia_, 11, 73.
+
+_True Born Englishman, the_, 184.
+
+Trumbull, Sir William, 29, 34.
+
+
+_Ulysses_, 103.
+
+_Ungrateful Nanny_, 121.
+
+_Universal Passion_, 80.
+
+
+Vanhomrigh, Hester, 164, 222.
+
+_Verbal Criticism_, 118.
+
+Vida's _Scacchia Ludus_, 32.
+
+_Vision of Mirza, the_, 146.
+
+_Voltaire_, 5, 41.
+
+
+Walpole, Sir Robert, 6, 8, 21, 41, 79.
+
+Walsh, William, 28, 247.
+
+_Wanderer, the_, 247.
+
+Warburton, Bishop, 55, 56, 62, 230, 239-241.
+
+Wardlaw, Lady, 120.
+
+Warton, Joseph, 63.
+
+Watts, Isaac, 131.
+
+_Welcome from Greece, a_, 75.
+
+Welsted, Leonard, 47.
+
+Wesley, Charles, 131.
+
+Wesley, John, 67.
+
+_Whig Examiner, the_, 162.
+
+_William and Margaret_, 118.
+
+Winchelsea, Countess of, 247.
+
+_Windham, Sir W., Letter to_, 217, 221.
+
+_Windsor Forest_, 30.
+
+Women, position of, 14, 15.
+
+Wood's Halfpence, 169, 170.
+
+_World, the_, 203.
+
+Wycherley, William, 28.
+
+
+Yalden, Thomas, 248.
+
+Young, Edward, 15, 76-83.
+
+
+_Zara_, 106.
+
+
+
+
+HANDBOOKS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
+
+
+EDITED BY PROFESSOR HALES
+
+"The admirable series of handbooks edited by Professor Hales is rapidly
+taking shape as one of the best histories of our literature that are at
+the disposal of the student.... [When complete] there is little doubt
+that we shall have a history of English literature which, holding a
+middle course between the rapid general survey and the minute
+examination of particular periods, will long remain a standard
+work."--_Manchester Guardian._
+
+_Crown 8vo, 5s. net each._
+
+THE AGE OF ALFRED (664-1154). By F. J. SNELL, M.A.
+
+THE AGE OF CHAUCER (1346-1400). By F. J. SNELL, M.A., with an
+    Introduction by PROFESSOR HALES. 3rd edition.
+
+THE AGE OF TRANSITION (1400-1580). By F. J. SNELL, M.A. In 2 vols.
+    Vol. I.: The Poets. Vol. II.: The Dramatists and Prose Writers.
+    With an Introduction by PROFESSOR HALES. 3rd edition.
+
+THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE (1579-1631). By THOMAS SECCOMBE and J. W.
+    ALLEN. In 2 vols. Vol. I.: Poetry and Prose, with an
+    Introduction by PROFESSOR HALES. Vol. II: Drama. 7th edition.
+
+THE AGE OF MILTON (1632-1660). By the REV. J. H. B. MASTERMAN, M.A.,
+    with an Introduction, etc., by J. BASS MULLINGER, M.A. 8th
+    edition.
+
+THE AGE OF DRYDEN (1660-1700). By RICHARD GARNETT, C.B., LL.D. 8th
+    edition.
+
+THE AGE OF POPE (1700-1744). By JOHN DENNIS. 11th edition.
+
+THE AGE OF JOHNSON (1744-1798). By THOMAS SECCOMBE. 7th edition.
+
+THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH (1798-1832). By PROFESSOR C. H. HERFORD,
+    Litt.D. 12th edition.
+
+THE AGE OF TENNYSON (1830-1870). By PROFESSOR HUGH WALKER, M.A. 9th
+    edition.
+
+
+OPINIONS OF THE PRESS
+
+
+THE AGE OF CHAUCER
+
+"This little monograph may lay fair claim to be regarded as complete,
+acute, stimulating, and scholarly."--_School World._
+
+"The book is thoroughly up-to-date, an important consideration in
+dealing with Middle English literature, and does not lose itself in too
+minute a consideration of those works which are only of philological and
+not of literary value. The accounts of the W. Midland alliterative
+poetry, of the development of prose, and the work of the poet Gower, are
+specially good. The treatment of Chaucer is thorough and
+scholarly."--_University Correspondent._
+
+"An admirable handbook, dealing in a lucid style and in a highly
+critical spirit with one of the most important periods in the history of
+English literature."--_Westminster Review._
+
+
+THE AGE OF DRYDEN
+
+"This scholarly little volume from the learned pen of Dr. Garnett....
+Within the limits of his space Dr. Garnett surveys the several
+departments of literature in this period with singular comprehensiveness,
+broad sympathy, and fine critical sagacity."--_Times._
+
+"The series which Professor Hales is editing aims at being that very
+difficult and important something between the text-book for schools and
+the gracefully allusive literary essay. Dr. Garnett has done his part of
+the work admirably. Most readable is his book, written with a fine sense
+of proportion, and containing many independent judgements, yet even, so
+far as minor names and dates and facts are concerned, complete enough
+for all save a searcher after minutiae."--_Bookman._
+
+"Though planned on the scale of the manual, this book is actually the
+first attempt worth naming to grasp in one separate review the
+literature of the last forty years of the seventeenth century, a time
+which, as Dr. Garnett well says, 'with all its defects, had a faculty
+for producing masterpieces.' Dr. Garnett's name is a warrant for his
+acquaintance not only with the masterpieces but with much besides, and
+with more than all that need be named in the kind of survey he
+undertakes."--_Manchester Guardian._
+
+
+THE AGE OF POPE
+
+"A 'handbook' is scarcely a fair description of so readable and
+companionable a volume, which aims not only at giving accurate
+information, but at directing the reader's steps 'through a country
+exhaustless in variety and interest.'"--_Spectator._
+
+"The biographical portion of Mr. Dennis's book is really admirable. The
+accuracy of the details and the knowledge exhibited by the author of the
+social and political life of the period show how thoroughly he has
+mastered his subject."--_Westminster Review._
+
+"Mr. Dennis writes freely and simply, and with a thorough knowledge of
+the period with which he deals, and goes straight to the point without
+revelling in circumambient fancies. The result of this is that in 250
+pages of good print we have as concise a history of Queen Anne
+literature as we could wish."--_Cambridge Review._
+
+"An excellent little volume."--_Athenaeum._
+
+
+THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE
+
+"Both volumes are excellently done, with knowledge, judgement, and a
+pleasant touch of vivacity. It is no easy matter to make a text-book
+both informing and readable; but here the feat is accomplished. I have
+read 'The Age of Shakespeare' with unflagging interest and pleasure....
+Everywhere one has the restful sensation of dealing with men of
+competent scholarship and sound critical instinct. Especially valuable,
+to my thinking, is the chronological table of the chief publications of
+each year from 1579 to 1630."--Mr. William Archer in the _Morning
+Leader_.
+
+"These two volumes are, in short, a notable accession to the useful
+series to which they belong, and they constitute a luminous aid to the
+interpretation alike of the scope and quality of the literary activity
+which has rendered the 'Age of Shakespeare' classic in the annals of
+English literature."--_Standard._
+
+"The book is a well-informed and well-connected and intelligent
+exposition of its subject. It is more than a mere handbook. It is a
+_history_, though on a small scale."--_Journal of Education._
+
+
+THE AGE OF MILTON
+
+"A very readable and serviceable manual of English literature during the
+central years of the seventeenth century."--_Glasgow Herald._
+
+"Mr. Masterman has written a book which combines the preciseness of a
+text-book with the fullness of thought of a monograph. Indeed, this
+compact little work will be studied with as much earnestness by the
+student as it will be read with pleasure by the lover of _belles
+lettres_.... We lay down the book delighted with what we have
+read."--_Birmingham Daily Gazette._
+
+"A work which reflects the utmost credit on its author ... luminous and
+at the same time impartial."--_Westminster Review._
+
+"This excellent epitome ... very happily indicates the golden afterglow
+of the Elizabethan sun."--_Daily Chronicle._
+
+
+THE AGE OF JOHNSON
+
+"The uniform excellence of Mr. Seccombe's manual of English literary
+history from 1748 to 1798 affords scarcely any opening for detailed
+criticism. Little can be said, except that everything is just as it
+ought to be: the arrangement perfect, the length of the notices justly
+proportioned, the literary judgements sound and illuminating; while the
+main purpose of conveying information is kept so steadily in view that,
+while the book is worthy of a place in the library, the student could
+desire no better guide for an examination."--_Bookman._
+
+"He has knowledge, he is eminently careful, and, best of all in a
+handbook-maker of this kind, he is judicial. We like Mr. Seccombe's
+arrangement. There is a capital introduction, solid and grave rather
+than brilliant, on which the student may stand in confidence before he
+dives off into the stream of his tutor's survey. Briefly, we have here a
+thorough, almost encyclopaedic, review of a great literary
+period--stimulating to the younger student, and to his elder refreshing
+by its perception."--_Outlook._
+
+"This book is one of the best of its kind, and we heartily recommend it
+to our readers."--_Journal of Education._
+
+"The young student could not read a better book to get a comprehensive
+and yet detailed account of the literary history of the latter half of
+the eighteenth century."--_Morning Post._
+
+
+THE AGE OF WORDSWORTH
+
+"It is an admirable little work all the way through and one which the
+ripest students of the period may read with interest and
+profit."--_Guardian._
+
+"The desiderated text-book of the period 1798 to 1830 A.D. is no longer
+to seek. More than that, it has been written by the one Englishman most
+competent to deal with it. Whatever Professor Herford does he does well;
+but he has given us nothing at once so good and so helpful as this
+book."--_University Correspondent._
+
+"The introductory essay on Romanticism in our literature is an admirable
+piece of work, full of suggestive thought, but Professor Herford is at
+his best--and a very fine best it is--in his brief summaries of the
+lives and works of individual writers. His Cobbett, his Lamb, and
+others that might be instanced, are veritable gems of biographical and
+critical compression presented with true literary finish."--_Literary
+World._
+
+"A book which is remarkable for freshness and distinction of style,
+philosophic grasp of first principles, and critical insight.... When we
+add that the book is also conspicuous for delicacy of literary
+appreciation and ripe judgement, both of men and movements, we have said
+enough to show that we consider its claims are unusual."--_Speaker._
+
+
+THE AGE OF TENNYSON
+
+"A capital little handbook of modern English literature."--_Times._
+
+"An instructive and readable manual ... an admirable first text-book on
+the subject."--_Scotsman._
+
+"Professor Walker has done his allotted task with singular skill,
+wonderful judiciousness, critical insight, adequate knowledge and
+mastery of facts, keen discernment of qualities and effectiveness of
+grouping.... We have read no review of the whole of the Tennysonian age
+so genuinely fresh in matter, method, style, critical canons, and
+selectedness of phrase. As a small book on a great subject, it is a
+special treasure."--_Educational News._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+UNIFORM WITH THE HANDBOOKS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.
+
+_Fourth Edition Enlarged. 725 pages. Small Crown 8vo. 6s. net._
+
+INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LITERATURE
+
+BY
+
+HENRY S. PANCOAST
+
+"Seems to me to fulfil better, on the whole, than any other
+'Introduction' known to me, the real requirements of such a book as
+distinguished from a 'Sketch' or a 'Summary.' It rightly does not
+attempt to be cyclopaedic, but isolates a number of figures of
+first-rate importance, and deals with these in a very attractive way.
+The directions for reading are also excellent."--Professor C. H.
+HERFORD, Litt.D.
+
+LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
+YORK HOUSE, PORTUGAL STREET, W.C.
+
+
+LITERATURE OF THE AGE OF POPE.
+
+PUBLISHED BY
+
+G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
+
+=ADDISON'S= WORKS. With the Notes of Bishop Hurd, a short Memoir,
+    and a Portrait of Addison after G. Kneller, and 8 Plates of
+    Medals and Coins. Edited by H. G. Bohn. 6 vols. Small post 8vo.
+    3_s._ 6_d._ each.                        [_Bohn's Standard Library._
+
+    This is the most complete edition of Addison's Works ever
+    issued. It contains much new matter, and upwards of 100 Letters
+    not before published. A very full Index (108 pages) is appended
+    to the 6th vol.
+
+Vol. I.--Plays--Poems--Poemata--Dialogues on Medals--Remarks on Italy.
+
+    II.--Tatler and Spectator.
+
+   III.--Spectator.                                     [_Out of print._
+
+    IV.--Spectator--Guardian--Lover--State of the War--Trial of Count
+         Tariff--Whig Examiner--Freeholder.
+
+     V.--Freeholder--Christian Religion--Drummer, or Haunted
+         House--Various short Pieces hitherto unpublished--Letters.
+
+    VI.--Letters--Poems--Translations--Official Documents--Addisoniana.
+
+THE MISCELLANEOUS WORKS OF ADDISON. Edited by the late A.
+    Guthkelch, M.A. 2 vols. Vol. I, Poems and Plays. Vol. II,
+    Prose. Large Post 8vo, 10_s._ 6_d._ net each.
+
+=BERKELEY'S= WORKS. Edited by George Sampson. With a Biographical
+    Introduction by the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, M.P. 3 vols. Small
+    post 8vo. 6_s._ each.               [_Bohn's Philosophical Library._
+
+=BUTLER'S= ANALOGY OF RELIGION, Natural and Revealed, to the
+    Constitution and Course of Nature; together with Two
+    Dissertations on Personal Identity and on the Nature of Virtue,
+    and Fifteen Sermons. Edited, with Analytical Introductions,
+    Explanatory Notes, a short Memoir, and a Portrait. Small post
+    8vo. 6_s._                               [_Bohn's Standard Library._
+
+=DEFOE'S= NOVELS and MISCELLANEOUS WORKS. With Prefaces and Notes,
+    including those attributed to Sir W. Scott. 7 vols. Small post
+    8vo. 6_s._ each.                         [_Bohn's Standard Library._
+
+Vol. I.--Life, Adventures and Piracies of Capt. Singleton, and Life of
+         Colonel Jack. With Portrait of Defoe.          [_Out of print._
+
+    II.--Memoirs of a Cavalier, Memoirs of Captain Carleton, Dickory
+         Cronke, &c.
+
+   III.--Life of Moll Flanders, and the History of the Devil.
+                                                        [_Out of print._
+
+    IV.--Roxana, or the Fortunate Mistress; and Life of Mrs. Christian
+         Davies.                                        [_Out of print._
+
+     V.--History of the Great Plague of London, 1665 (to which is added
+         the Fire of London, 1666, by an anonymous writer)--The Storm
+         (1703)--and the True-born Englishman.          [_Out of print._
+
+    VI.--Life and Adventures of Duncan Campbell--New Voyage round the
+         World, and Tracts relating to the Hanoverian Accession.
+
+   VII.--Robinson Crusoe. With a Short Biographical Account of Defoe.
+
+=MONTAGU=, THE LETTERS AND WORKS OF LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU.
+    Edited by her great-grandson, Lord Wharncliffe, with Additions
+    and Corrections derived from Original Manuscripts, Illustrative
+    Notes, and a Memoir by W. Moy Thomas. New edition, revised,
+    with 5 Portraits. 2 vols. Small post 8vo. 6_s._ each.
+                                                 [_Vol. I out of print._
+                                             [_Bohn's Standard Library._
+
+=PARNELL'S= POETICAL WORKS. Edited, with Memoir, by G. A. Aitken.
+    Fcap. 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._ net.                       [_Aldine Edition._
+
+=POPE'S= POETICAL WORKS. Edited by G. R. Dennis, with Memoir by John
+    Dennis. 3 vols. Fcap. 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._ net each.
+                                                      [_Aldine Edition._
+
+---- HOMER'S ILIAD. With Introduction and Notes by the Rev. J. S.
+    Watson, M.A. Illustrated by the entire Series of Flaxman's
+    Designs. Small post 8vo. 6_s._
+
+---- HOMER'S ODYSSEY. With Introduction and Notes by the Rev. J. S.
+    Watson, M.A. With the entire Series of Flaxman's Designs. Small
+    post 8vo. 6_s._
+
+---- LIFE OF POPE, including many of his Letters. By Robert
+    Carruthers. With numerous Illustrations. Small post 8vo. 6_s._
+
+=PRIOR'S= POETICAL WORKS. Edited, with Memoir, by Reginald Brimley
+    Johnson. 2 vols. Fcap. 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._ net each.
+                                                      [_Aldine Edition._
+
+=SWIFT'S= PROSE WORKS. Edited by Temple Scott. With a Biographical
+    Introduction by the Right Hon. W. E. H. Lecky, M.P., and a
+    Bibliography by the Editor. With Portraits and other
+    Illustrations. 12 vols. Small post 8vo. 6_s._ each.
+                                             [_Bohn's Standard Library._
+
+   Vol. I.--Edited by Temple Scott. With a Biographical Introduction by
+            the Right Hon. W. E. H. Lecky, M.P. Containing:--A Tale of a
+            Tub, The Battle of the Books, and other early works. With
+            _Portrait_ and Facsimiles.
+
+       II.--The Journal to Stella. Edited by Frederick Ryland, M.A. With
+            _2 Portraits of Stella_, and a Facsimile of one of the
+            Letters.
+
+III. & IV.--Writings on Religion and the Church. Edited by Temple Scott.
+            With Portraits and Facsimiles of title-pages.
+
+        V.--Historical and Political Tracts (English). Edited by Temple
+            Scott. With Portrait and Facsimiles of title-pages.
+
+       VI.--The Drapier's Letters. Edited by Temple Scott. With
+            Portrait, reproduction of Wood's Coinage, and Facsimiles of
+            title-pages.
+
+      VII.--Historical and Political Tracts (Irish). Edited by Temple
+            Scott. With Portrait and Facsimiles of title-pages.
+
+     VIII.--Gulliver's Travels. Edited by G. Ravenscroft Dennis. With
+            the original Portrait and Maps.
+
+       IX.--Contributions to the 'Examiner,' 'Tatler,' 'Spectator,' etc.
+            Edited by Temple Scott.
+
+        X.--Historical Writings. Edited by Temple Scott. With Portrait.
+
+       XI.--Literary Essays. Edited by Temple Scott. With Portrait.
+
+      XII.--Index and Bibliography.
+
+POEMS. Edited by W. Ernst Browning. 2 vols. 6_s._
+
+=SWIFT'S= POETICAL WORKS. Edited, with Memoir, by the Rev. John
+    Mitford, M.A. Fcap. 8vo. 3 vols. 3_s._ 6_d._ net each.
+                                 [_Aldine Edition. Vol. I out of print._
+
+LONDON: G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
+YORK HOUSE, PORTUGAL STREET, KINGSWAY, W.C.
+
+
+PRINTED BY
+
+THE LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS, LIMITED
+
+LONDON AND NORWICH
+
+
+TRANSCRIBERS' NOTES
+
+General: Corrections to punctuation have not been individually noted.
+
+General: Bold text in the original is marked with ==. Italic text is
+marked with __
+
+Pages 57, 159: Variable hyphenation of death-bed as in the original.
+
+Pages 222, 232, 257: Variable hyphenation of Free(-)thinking as in the
+original.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Age of Pope, by John Dennis
+
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